Don Ritter
Year born:
1959
Location:
Canada
Don Ritter is a Canadian artist and writer who has worked internationally in the field of media art since 1988. His interdisciplinary artworks and theoretical writings assimilate fine art and digital media with ethics and aesthetics. Most of Ritter’s artworks are large video-sound installations and projections controlled by music, voices or the body gestures of audiences. His recent work includes architectural projections depicting humanity through ancient metaphors, and metal prints resembling road signs that convey issues of morality and sustainability.
Ritter has presented exhibitions and performances in 23 countries at venues throughout North America, Europe and Asia, including SITE Santa Fe (USA), Winter Olympics 2010 Cultural Olympiad (Vancouver), Metrònom (Barcelona), Sonambiente Sound Festival (Berlin), Verona Jazz Festival (Italy), Exit Festival (Paris), Ars Electronica Festival (Linz), New Music America (New York City), and the Daegu Culture and Arts Center (South Korea). His most widely exhibited work is Intersection (1993), an immersive-interactive sound installation that has been experienced by over 700,000 persons in eight countries. During his performances of video controlled by live music, Ritter collaborated mostly with trombonist George Lewis, and also with musicians Nick Didkovsky, Amy Denio, Thomas Dimuzio, Ikue Mori, Geneviève Letarte, Ben Neill, Trevor Tureski and Tom Walsh. Ritter’s prints and paintings are held in private collections in North America, Europe and Asia, and his work has received support and recognition from the Canada Council for the Arts, The Banff Centre (Canada), Pratt Institute (USA), ZKM (Germany), Ars Electronica (Austria), DGArtes (Portugal), the Goethe Institute (Germany), the European Union Culture Programme (EU), and City University of Hong Kong. In 2024 he received a Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts for Artistic Achievement.
Ritter completed his graduate degree in visual studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center For Advanced Visual Studies, MIT Media Lab, and Harvard University’s film department. His professors included German artist Otto Piene (MIT), documentary film-maker Richard Leacock (MIT), computer scientist Marvin Minsky (MIT), and film theorist Vlada Petric (Harvard). He has undergraduate degrees in fine arts and psychology from the University of Waterloo and a diploma in electronics engineering from NAIT. Prior to his academic positions, Ritter worked as a researcher and telecommunications designer for Northern Telecom/Nortel and Bell-Northern Research in Toronto and Ottawa. He held full-time and tenured professorships in art and design between 1989 and 2017 at Concordia University (Montreal), Pratt Institute (New York City), Hanyang University (Seoul, South Korea), and the School of Creative Media at City University of Hong Kong. Ritter maintained his art studio in Toronto (1988-1989), Montreal (1989-1996, 2017-present), New York City (1996-2005), Berlin (2006-2013), and Hong Kong (2013-2017).