Clea T. Waite (aka Clea von Chamier-Waite)
SB 1984
MS 1989
PhD University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts 2019
Clea is currently Associate Professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou) in Computational Media and Arts. She directs the Expanded Cinema and Science Art (EcaSA) research group.
Clea is an internationally exhibited intermedia artist, scholar, engineer, and experimental filmmaker investigating the material poetics emerging at the intersection of art, science, and technology. She is a pioneering artist of immersive, cinematic works that engage embodied perception, dynamic composition, and sensual interfaces, as well as one inter-species collaboration with several hundred tropical spiders. Her multidisciplinary practice is modeled on the experimental laboratory, combining research, art-making, and scientific collaborations. Waite’s research encompasses science art as a media-specific practice, spatial cinema/immersive cinema, embodied form and somatic interfaces, XR/VR, experimental cinema, and data poetics. Her projects thematically examine climate change, water ecology, astronomy, particle physics, feminism, and popular culture. Waite earned her PhD in iMA+P interdisciplinary Media Arts + Practice at the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts, combining a background in physics, architecture, and computer graphics from the MIT Dept. of Architecture and the MIT Media Lab with her current research in cinema, media art, and critical theory.
Fun fact: Clea received the very first Media Arts and Sciences undergraduate degree in 1984 (before it was called that and before the Media Lab existed), Dept. of Architecture IVB.
Waite has been the recipient of numerous fellowships and artist residencies, significantly an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Fellowship, a Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies Fellowship, a Harvard University Film Study Center Fellowship, a CERN European Laboratory for Particle Physics artist-in-residence, a National University of Singapore artist-in-residence, Immensiva, Espronceda Institute of Art and Culture Barcelona fellow, and an Academy of Media Arts Cologne fellow.
Following her KHM Cologne fellowship, Clea moved to Berlin to take on a five-year position as Associate Professor of Montage at the Academy of Film and Television Babelsberg (now the Film Universität Babelsberg), followed by a guest professor position at the University of the Arts Berlin under a MINT fellowship (in support of women in mathematics, computer science, science, and technology in education). Before moving to Germany, she was an Assistant Professor of Computer Graphics at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.
Waite’s artworks have been exhibited and awarded internationally. Notable awards include the National Academies Keck Futures Initiative, the IBM Innovation Grand Prize for Artistic Creation in Art and Technology, the Lumen Prize, the Medienboard Berlin/Brandenburg, Tokyo Computer Graphics Grand Prix, Grand Prize, Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen Festival der Jugend Best Video Production, Prix Pixel INA, and Deutscher Videokunstpreis.
Recent commissions and exhibitions include The China-Hangzhou Biennale of Art and Technology, Yuhang Art Museum, European Media Art Festival, Osnabruck, Germany, The National Arts Club, NYC, All-Russian Decorative Art Museum, Moscow, SIGGRAPH, Ars Electronica Barcelona, The National Museum of Singapore, CODAME San Francisco, the Open Sky Project Hong Kong, the Miraikan National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation Tokyo, and the Boston CyberArts Festival.
How did your experience at the Lab influence your next step?
The Media Lab is a great calling card in the job market, and the network of people you build there will provide a lifetime of professional support, both for yourself and for those you mentor in the future. After graduating from MIT, I supplemented my education with knowledge of art history, critical theory, and artistic practice. This knowledge, combined with the technical and scientific expertise I gained at MIT, gives me a unique perspective and approach to making art. In particular, my ability to speak the language of science has helped me be accepted as a collaborating artist working with scientists in diverse fields.
MIT taught me to work my @ss off, to pursue the untrodden path, and to connect ideas across domains and disciplines radically. The Lab has changed significantly since my time there, but these fundamentals remain true.
"A mind is like a parachute. It doesn't work if it is not open." ~ Frank Zappa
RIP Senior House.