Edward Zajec BORN: Trieste, Italy, 1938

EDUCATION:
B.F.A. Painting, Akademija za Likovno Umetnost, Ljubljana, SLO, 1966;
M.F.A. Painting, Ohio University, Athens, OH, 1968.

CEdward Zajec is currently professor and Area Coordinator of the Computer Art Program at the Transmedia Center at Syracuse University. A painter
and printmaker by training (Minimalism,1967-68), Zajec started working
with computers in 1968 while teaching Painting, Figure Drawing and
Lithography at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. He returned
to his native Trieste in 1970 and lived in Italy for the next ten years.
Most of the work produced during that decade, was done at the Computer
Center of the University of Trieste in collaboration with Matjaz Hmeljak,
to whom goes the credit for the technical realization. Zajec joined
Syracuse University in 1980, where he re-founded the Computer Graphics
Program, wrote the curriculum, and established the Computer Graphics lab.

Zajec sees the importance of the computer in his work, in the effect
it had in shifting his attention from the art objects themselves to
the mental procedures involved in art making. He is particularly
interested in the computer's open-ended, general purpose
characteristics (TVC, LMC), in its two-way communication
possibilities (INFORMATRIX), and lately, in the temporal dimension
of electronic color (Orphics). He has been actively involved and has
participated in most international events concerning computers and
media arts since 1968. His work has been shown at the Cleveland
Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Centre Georges
Pompidou, Paris, and other art venues around the world, and several
times at the WRO Media Art Biennial, the Locarno Video Art Festival,
Ars Electronica, and at the ISEA, SIGGRAPH and other international
conferences.