Ed Zajec

Education
BFA Painting, Akademija za Likovno Umetnost, Ljubljana, SLO, 1966;
MFA Painting, Ohio University, Athens, OH, 1968.

Biography
Edward Zajec is a senior professor within the Computer Art Program at Syracuse University's Department of Transmedia. 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.