Michael Naimark is a longtime media artist and researcher. He is expert in "place representation” and has made interactive "moviemaps" of Aspen from the street, Paris from the sidewalk, San Francisco from the air, Karlsruhe from the rail, Banff from hiking trails, and stereo-panoramic movies in Jerusalem, Dubrovnik, Angkor, and Timbuktu. His work is an unusual combination of optimism and activism, for example, it currently ranks #1 on Google searches for both VR webcams and camera zapper. Naimark was instrumental in the founding of several world-renown research labs and his art projects exhibit internationally.

Naimark was on the original design team for the MIT Media Laboratory in 1980 and was a founding member of the Atari Research Lab (1982), the Apple Multimedia Lab (1987), and Lucasfilm Interactive (now LucasArts, 1989). He joined Interval Research Corporation, a long-term lab funded by Paul Allen, as it opened in 1992, and worked an additional year after it closed in 2000 on his webcam spinoff venture, Kundi.com. Patents for his work have been granted from 1989 through 2004 and several more are currently pending.

Naimark's art projects are in the permanent collections of the American Museum of the Moving Image in New York, the Exploratorium in San Francisco, and the ZKM | Center for Arts and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany. His 3D interactive installation "Be Now Here," produced by Interval with the cooperation of the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, toured in the ZKM's "Future Cinema" exhibition in 2002 and 2003.

Naimark was the 2002 recipient of the World Technology Award for the Arts and the 2003 recipient of a Rockefeller Foundation grant to direct a feasibility study for a unique, financially sustainable Arts Lab. In 2004, he taught the first “History of New Media” class at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program, taught the first graduate thesis seminar at USC’s new Interactive Media Division, and helped Columbia University write its strategic plan for art and technology. He also guest curated the Ars Electronica 25th Anniversary Symposium in Linz, Austria, themed “The World in 25 Years.” In 2005, the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena organized a 20 year survey of Michael Naimark's work.

In 2006, Naimark initiated a USC research project to explore ways of democratizing Earth mapping and modeling. In 2007, the project received a Google research award, and in 2008, the results were published online. The project, called Viewfinder, was well-received by the press, on blogs, at USC, and at Google. Along the way, he also coined the terms "Google Jockey" and "Google Feeling Lucky List."

Michael Naimark is a Research Associate Professor in the Interactive Media Division of the USC School of Cinematic Arts and serves on the Visiting Committee of the MIT Media Lab. He has been a member of the Society for Visual Anthropology since 1984.

Michael is currently on a leave of absence from USC to direct a project for the European Union Culture Capital, "Linz09." The project, "80+1: A Global Journey," is a telematic redux of Jules Verne's "Around the World in 80 Days" and will take place based in Linz Austria from 17 June to 5 September 2009.


CV (full 04/09)
CV (brief 04/09)
Google "Feeling Lucky" List