A native of Slovenia and a theatre and radio director by
profession, Peljhan founded the arts and technology organization
Projekt Atol in the early 90’s and cofounded one of the first
media labs in Eastern Europe, LJUDMILA in 1995. In the same year, the
founded the technology branch of Projekt Atol called PACT SYSTEMS where
he developed one of the first Global Positioning Systems based
participatory networked mapping projects, the Urban Colonisation and
Orientation Gear 144. He has been working on the Makrolab, a project
that focuses on telecommunications, migrations and weather systems
research in an intersection of art and science from 1997-2007, the
Interpolar Transnational Art Science Constellation during the
International Polar Year (project 417) and is currently coordinating
the Arctic Perspective Initiative art/science/tactical media project
focused on the global significance of the Arctic geopolitical, natural
and cultural spheres together with Matthew Biederman. Peljhan has
also been the flight director of ten parabolic experimental flights in
collaboration with the Microgravity Interdisciplinary Research
initiative and the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre, creating
conditions for artists to work in alternating gravity conditions.
During the series of World Information.org projects, he has installed
several communications mapping and interception systems and projects
and his research led him to map the command and control communications
networks and response during the Srebrenica genocide. He is the
recipient of many prizes for his work, including the 2001 Golden Nica
Prize at Ars Electronica together with Carsten Nicolai for their work,
polar, and the UNESCO Digital Media Prize for Makrolab in 2004.
During 2008, Peljhan was appointed as one of the European Union
Ambassadors of Intercultural dialogue. His work was exhibited
internationally at multiple biennales and festivals (Venice, Gwangju,
Brussels, Manifesta, Johannesburg, Istanbul), at the documenta X in
Kassel, several ISEA exhibitions, several Ars Electronica presentations
and major museums, such as the P.S.1 MOMA, New Museum of Contemporary
Art, ICC NTT Tokyo, YCAM Yamaguchi, Van Abbemuseum and others. From
2009 on he is the one of the series editors of the Arctic Perspective
Cahiers series (Hatje Cantz and API).He holds joint appointments
with the Department of Art and the Media Arts & Technology graduate
program at the University of California Santa Barbara, and was
appointed as Co-Director of the Univerisy of California system-wide
Institute for Research in the Arts in 2009, where he is coordinating
the art/science Integrative methodologies initiative. He is also
the director of the MAT Systemics Lab, located in Elings Hall. Kunstradio Broadcasts: |