Professor Marko Peljhan

Marko Peljhan is Associate Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies: Art, Science, Technology, Performance, Digital Media, and Space Art, University of California, Santa Barbara.
 
Marko is a native of Slovenia and a theatre and radio director by profession, he founded the arts and technology organization Projekt Atol in the early 90s and cofounded one of the first media labs in Eastern Europe, LJUDMILA, in 1995. In the same year, he founded the technology branch of Projekt Atol called PACT SYSTEMS where he developed the Global Positioning System based participatory networked mapping project, the Urban Colonisation and Orientation Gear 144, one of the first works in the s.c. “locative media” genre.
 
He has been working on 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, together with Matthew Biederman, coordinating the Arctic Perspective Initiative art/science/tactical media project focused on the global significance of the Arctic geopolitical, natural, and cultural spheres.
 
Marko 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 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, Marko was appointed as one of the European Union Ambassadors of Intercultural dialogue. His work has been 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, and others.
 
Since 2009 he is one of the series editors of the Arctic Perspective Cahiers series (Hatje Cantz). 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 UC Institute for Research in the Arts in 2009, where he is coordinating the art/science Integrative methodologies initiative.
 
Watch Marko Peljhan – The Influencers 2005 parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. Watch Marko Peljhan – Reading Between the Frequencies – AV08. Read Marko Peljhan: Expert in Communication Technology and Earth/Space Environment applications. Read his LinkedIn profile.