Christopher Csíkszentmihályi (born June 1968) is an American artist and technologist. He is an Associate Professor of Information Science at

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...

Life

Csíkszentmihályi was born June 1968 in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Rockf ...

. His father,

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Mihaly Robert Csikszentmihalyi (, hu, Csíkszentmihályi Mihály Róbert, ; 29 September 1934 – 20 October 2021) was a Hungarian-American psychologist. He recognized and named the psychological concept of "flow", a highly focused mental ...

, was a psychologist who coined the concept of psychological flow. After leaving

Reed College Reed College is a private liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus in the Eastmoreland neighborhood, with Tudor-Gothic style architecture, and a forested canyon nature preserve at ...

in 1988, Csíkszentmihályi earned a BFA from the

School of the Art Institute of Chicago The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) is a private art school associated with the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to an art students' cooperative founded in 1866, which grew into the museum and ...

(SIAC) and an MFA from the

University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego is t ...

(UCSD) in 1998.

Academic career

Csíkszentmihályi is an Associate Professor in the Information Science department at Cornell University. Csíkszentmihályi is the former director of the MIT Center for Future Civic Media and the Computing Culture research group at the

MIT Media Lab The MIT Media Lab is a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, growing out of MIT's Architecture Machine Group in the School of Architecture. Its research does not restrict to fixed academic disciplines, but draws from ...

. In addition to

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

and at Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute, he has served as Distinguished Visiting Professor of Art and Design Research at

Parsons The New School for Design Parsons School of Design, known colloquially as Parsons, is a private art and design college located in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. Founded in 1896 after a group of progressive artists broke away from established Manhat ...

, was a 2005 Rockefeller New Media Fellow, a 2007–2008 fellow at Harvard's

Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University—also known as the Harvard Radcliffe Institute—is a part of Harvard University that fosters interdisciplinary research across the humanities, sciences, social sciences, arts, a ...

, and has taught at the

University of California at San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego is t ...

, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the

Art Center College of Design Art Center College of Design (stylized as ArtCenter College of Design) is a private art college in Pasadena, California. History ArtCenter College of Design was founded in 1930 in downtown Los Angeles as the Art Center School. In 1935, Fred ...

, and Turku University.

Work

Much of Csíkszentmihályi's art consists of working technologies of his own invention, which function as tools while also providing comment on technology and its implications for social power dynamics. These artwork/technologies include, but are not limited to: *Hunter Hunter (1991), a free-standing robotic technology that could detect the sound of a gunshot and return fire, which was a precursor to applied

Gunfire locator A gunfire locator or gunshot detection system is a system that detects and conveys the location of gunfire or other weapon fire using acoustic, vibration, optical, or potentially other types of sensors, as well as a combination of such sensors ...

technologies *DJ I, Robot (2000), a robotic disk jockey that could play and scratch vinyl records. *Afghan eXplorer (2001), a solar-powered, four-wheeled robot designed to report news from warzones *Freedom Flies (2005), an

Unmanned aerial vehicle An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft without any human pilot, crew, or passengers on board. UAVs are a component of an unmanned aircraft system (UAS), which includes adding a ground-based controll ...

designed to observe militia activity in the Southwestern United States *RoBoat (2006), a robotic kayak designed to protest at island prisons *ProBot (2019), a tele-operated, human-sized robotic protester, designed to allow physical acts of protest while protecting one's personal safety Other, more traditional artworks include 2005's Skin/Control, parallel installations that explore the tenuous nature of human influence over technology; and 2007's First Airborne, an installation consisting of hanging maple seedlings the size of the

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the Aerial warfare, air military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part ...

's Joint Direct Attack Munition bombs. With Jude Mukundane, he is the co-founder of RootIO, a civic media project developing wide-reaching, small-scale, peer-oriented radio networks, currently operating in

Uganda }), is a landlocked country in East Africa. The country is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south-west by Rwanda, and to the south by Tanzania. The sou ...

. By turning cell phones into standalone radio stations with village-sized catchment areas, RootIO provides a platform for localized media that requires little in terms of physical infrastructure and user literacy. From 2001 to 2011, he was an associate professor at the

, where he founded the Computing Culture Research Group, and, with Henry Jenkins and

Mitchel Resnick Mitchel Resnick (born June 12, 1956) is Lego Papert Professor of Learning Research, Director of the Okawa Center, and Director of the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab. , Resnick serves as h ...

, co-founded the Center for Civic Media, which he directed until 2011. From 2015 to 2020 he was Professor and European Research Area Chair of Human-Computer Interaction and Design Innovation at Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Csikszentmihalyi, Christopher MIT School of Architecture and Planning alumni American artists Living people School of the Art Institute of Chicago alumni University of California, San Diego alumni Place of birth missing (living people) Reed College alumni Parsons School of Design faculty 1968 births MIT Media Lab people