Webchair

For over 30 years I have been creating both art works www.telepresenceart.com and scientific discoveries using my robotic, virtual reality, photographic and telepresence inventions and have exhibited my artworks and deployed my inventions around the world. I directed the Virtual Reality Artist Access Program at the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto from 1993 to 1995, have taught interactive art at the Willem de Kooning Acadamie, Robotics and Industrial Design at the Utrecht School of the Arts, the interactive arts Masters program at Groningen University and overseen Masters students at the University of Amsterdam, and TU Delft.

In 1987 I started my 1st company, HorizonScan Inc. and worked with Virtual Reality pioneer Jaron Lanier to incorporate my panoramic imaging inventions into a VR computer graphics environment that was demonstrated at SIGGRAPH 1990. In 1996 I started my 2nd company, Telbotics www.telbotics.com to commercialize PEBBLES (Providing Education By Bringing Learning Environments to Students) which I co-invented with the University of Toronto http://www.research.utoronto.ca/edge/spring2003/research.html
Researcher Jutta Treveranius and Dr. Deborah Fels at Ryerson University that is currently installed in over 50 hospitals and schools in Canada and the US. In 2007 I started my 3rd company Webchair www.webchair.com in 2007 and have deployed 200 telepresence display units that links sick children to their learning environments in the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany and the USA.

My most recently exhibited art projects include an interactive video mural of the Berlin wall called “Intersection” www.intersection.tv that was showcased at the Transmediale festival in Berlin, "3rd i" which was produced for V2 http://www.v2.nl/events/virtual-city as part of the Dutch cultural exhibition for the World Expo2010 in Shanghai and "The Third Eye" www.the-third-eye.org which was exhibited in Essen, Germany and Wakefield UK as part of the Ruhr2010 Culture Capitol project. Projects currently under development include "Liberation" that will allow audiences the ability to experience the sensation of being weightless in orbit around the earth (the Overview Effect) and "Displaced Perspectives" which is a linked telepresence robot project for the 100th anniversary of Marshall McLuhan's birth. My most recent research projects are the "Emotion Chair" project with Ryerson University http://www.asid.ryerson.ca/ which is a multi-modal interface to allow deaf people the ability to experience music by projecting sound inputs onto various body parts and TARI (Telepresence Autism Research Initiative) that is studying the positive impact telepresence technology can have on people with Autism in conjunction with the Technical University Eindhoven.