Chris Ziegler

Bio

Chris Ziegler is a digital artist, architect and director,  working in the performing and visual arts. After teaching as a professor of „Interactive Media“ 2013 – 2021 at Arizona State University (USA), he returned to Europe in May 2021 to realize new stage productions. In 2022, he presented a robotic dance performance „Movement Robotics“ at ARS ELECTRONICA Festival Linz (Austria) and was a member of the DOCKdigital Motion Lab Berlin. He is currently working on ANA, a theater production with AI, funded by the Volkswagen Foundation. He collaborates with renowned theater directors and choreographers at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, the Wuppertal Opera House, the Karlsruhe State Theater, the Konzert Theater Bern and the Neue Oper Vienna.

In 1999, he founded movingimages and produces stage productions, mainly in the field of dance. He develops its own technologies for immersive stages and explores VR, AR, robotics and AI to create interactive theater experiences. His creative and artistic career began in 1994 at the Center for Art and New Media ZKM Karlsruhe with the development of a choreographic software for dancers of the Ballet Frankfurt, which was published in 2000 as a CD-ROM „Bill Forsyhte: Improvisation Technologies.“

In 2002 he received the first prize „Young Art and New Media“ in Munich and later the „Art Prize of the State of Baden-Württemberg“. He was nominated for the digital „Monaco Dance Forum Award“ and won several design awards for his multimedia and CD-ROM projects such as the New York „I.D. Magazine“ Bronze and Silver Award and the „New Voices New Visions“ Award, New York. In 2016 – 2018 he was a member of the European Theater Lab „Drama goes Digital“. The digital theater production „Stage your City“ toured in Europe at Théâtre de la Manufacture Nancy (France), Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe (Germany), Kote Marjanishvili State Drama Theatre Tbilisi (Georgia) and Det Norske Teatret Oslo (Norway) and was also presented at ARS ELECTRONICA Festival in 2018. He has been a lecturer, researcher and developer for the artistic research laboratory SINLAB at École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, Choreographic Center in Amsterdam (ICKAmstrdam), Amsterdamse Hogeschool voor de Kunsten (AHK) and Utrecht University in the Netherlands. In 2007 he was invited to the Kunstfest Weimar to be the artistic director of the first „Tanzmedien Akademie“. Previously, he was an associate artist in the EU dance network D.A.N.C.E, the Dance Apprentices Across Europe, an interdisciplinary postgraduate training for dancers founded by Europe‘s leading choreographers Frédéric Flamand, William Forsythe, Wayne McGregor and Angelin Preljocaj.

Teaching assignments have taken him to the Kunsthochschule Karlsruhe of the Center for Art and Media (ZKM/HfG Karlsruhe), to „Interface Cultures“ at the Art University Linz, Concordia University Montreal, to the Studio for interactive Arts and Technologies SIAT Vancouver, to LASALLE University in Singapore and the „School of Creative Media“ at City University, Hong Kong and to the Zurich University of the Arts ZHDK (CH).