Digital Artist

Recognized as a pioneering force in the integration of dance and media, composer/media artist Mark Coniglio creates large-scale performance works that integrate music, dance, theater and interactive media. With choreographer Dawn Stoppiello he is co-founder of Troika Ranch (http://troikaranch.org) a dance theater company committed to creating hybrid, media intensive performances. As Troika Ranch, they have been honored with a New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award, a prize at Prix Ars Electronica, and an “Eddy” award from Live Design magazine. Most recently, the World Technology Network – and its partners CNN, and TIME Magazine – awarded Coniglio the 2012 World Technology Award in the category of the Arts. This prize recognizes his broad contribution and long-term legacy as an artist, technologist and as a teacher. From the start, Coniglio’s artistic practice has included the creation of custom interactive systems that allow performers to manipulate video, sound, and light in real-time. His first technological breakthrough came in 1989 when he created MidiDancer, a wireless system that allowed a performer to interactively control music. He is currently collaborating with choreographer Kerry Franksen Kelly on an evening-length improvisation performance to be premiered in early 2018, and with visual-artist Signe Klejs on a performance installation that will be completed in 2019. His passion for giving control to the performer led him to create the awardwinning software Isadora®, a flexible graphic programming environment that provides interactive control over digital media. Isadora is now the tool of choice for thousands of artist’s worldwide including such notables as The Wooster Group, Rimini Protokol, Morton Subotnick, Bebe Miller and the Royal Shakespeare Company. A native of Nebraska, he received his BFA degree in music composition in 1989 from California Institute of the Arts where he studied with electronic music pioneer Morton Subotnick. From 1990-94, he taught courses in interactive music at CalArts and was an integral member of the Center for Experiments in Art, Information and Technology there. Coniglio was the recipient of two consecutive ARM Fellowships from Dance Theater Workshop (2004/05) and was facilitator for that program in 2006. His writings about new media in performance have appeared in numerous books and journals, including “New Visions In Performance”, “La Scena Digitale: Nuovi Media Per La Danza” and Movement Research Journal. He relocated from New York to Berlin, Germany in 2008.