Biography of Jaron Lanier

Jaron Lanier is a computer scientist, composer, visual artist, and author. Currently, Lanier serves as the Lead Scientist of the National Tele-Immersion Initiative, a coalition of research universities studying advanced applications for Internet 2. The Initiative demonstrated the first prototypes of tele-immersion in 2000 after a three year development period. His current tele-immersion-related research interests include real time, remote, terascale processing, autostereo methods, haptics and software simulation integration and reusability.

He is also the Chief Scientist of Eyematic Interfaces, a computer vision company. He is a visiting artist at the Interactive Telecommunications Program of the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and a visiting scholar at the Columbia University Computer Science Department. He serves on numerous advisory boards, including the Board of Councilors of the University of Southern California, Medical Media Systems (a medical visualization spin-off company associated with Dartmouth University), Microdisplay Corporation (makers of LCOS displays), NY3D (developers of autostereo displays) and Harvestworks (an arts organization in New York City).

Lanier is probably best known for his work in Virtual Reality. He coined the term "Virtual Reality". In the early 1980s he co-developed the first glove device for virtual world interaction and was the first to study full hand interactions with virtual objects. In the late 1980s he led the team that developed the first implementations of multi-person virtual worlds using head mounted displays, for both local and wide area networks, as well as the first "avatars" or representations of users within such systems. He co-developed the first implementations of virtual reality applications in surgical simulation, vehicle interior prototyping and assorted other areas. His company VPL Research, founded in 1983, was the first company to introduce immersive virtual reality products. VPL introduced the first commercial interface gloves (1984), head mounted displays (1987) and networked virtual world system (1989). He led the team that developed the first widely used software platform architecture for immersive virtual reality applications. As a computer scientist, Lanier is also known as a pioneer in the field of visual programming. He has also worked on the problem of making software simulations into reusable parts in order to improve their integration into scientific method.

Lanier has proposed and implemented a variety of technologies that have since spawned industries in their own right. Among his lineup of "firsts" are the first "avatar" for network communications, the first moving camera virtual set for television production, and the first performance animation for 3D computer graphics. He was the first to propose web-based network computers. Sun Microsystems acquired Lanier's seminal portfolio of patents related to Virtual Reality and networked 3D graphics.

Lanier has been active in the world of new "classical" music since the late seventies. He is a pianist and a specialist in unusual musical instruments, especially the wind and string instruments of Asia. He maintains one of the largest and most varied collections of actively played instruments in the world. Lanier has performed with artists as diverse as Philip Glass, Ornette Coleman, Vernon Reid, Terry Riley, Duncan Sheik, Pauline Oliveros, and Stanley Jordan. Current recording projects include his "acoustic techno" duet with Sean Lennon and an album of duets with flautist Robert Dick.

He also writes chamber and orchestral music. Recent commissions include: A concert length sequence of works for orchestra and virtual worlds (including "Canons for Wroclaw", "Khaenoncerto", "The Egg" and others) celebrating the 1000th birthday of the city of Wroclaw, Poland, premiered in 2000; A triple concerto, "The Navigator Tree", commissioned by the National Endowment for the Arts and the American Composers Forum as part of the Continental Harmony project, premiered in 2000; and "Mirror/Storm", a symphony commissioned by the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and premiered in 1998. His CD "Instruments of Change" was released on Point/Polygram in 1994. He is currently at work on reconstructing the music of ancient Egypt under a commission from the BBC and the Discovery Channel.

Lanier's work with Asian instruments can be heard on the soundtrack to "Three Seasons", which this year became the first film ever to win both the Audience and Grand Jury awards at the Sundance Film Festival. He is at work with Terry Riley on a collaborative opera to be titled "Bastard, the First." Lanier has also pioneered the use of Virtual Reality in musical stage performance with his band Chromatophoria, which has toured around the world as a headline act in venues such as the Montreux Jazz Festival. He plays virtual instruments and uses real instruments to guide events in virtual worlds.

Lanier's paintings and drawings have been exhibited in museums and galleries in the United States and Europe. In 1994 he directed the film "Muzork" under a commission from ARTE Television. His 1983 "Moondust" is generally regarded as the first art video game and the first interactive music publication. He has presented installations in New York City, including the "Video Feedback Waterbed" and the "Time-accelerated Painting", which was situated in the Brooklyn Bridge Anchorage. His first one man show took place in 1997 at the Danish Museum for Modern Art in Roskilde.

Lanier is also a well known author and speaker. He writes on numerous topics, including high-technology business, the social impact of technological practices, the philosophy of consciousness and information, Internet politics and the future of humanism. His book, "Confessions of a Closet Human", was recently published by Basic Books. His writing appears in The New York Times, Discover, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Harpers Magazine, The Sciences, Wired Magazine (where he is a founding contributing editor) and Scientific American. He has edited special "future" issues of SPIN and Civilization magazines. The nation of Palau has issued a postage stamp in his honor. He appears on national television regularly, on shows such as "The News Hour", "Nightline" and "Charlie Rose", and has been profiled on the front pages of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. The Encyclopaedia Britannica includes him in its list of history's 300 or so greatest inventors. He has designed future worlds for science fictions movies (including parts of Spielberg's "Minority Report" and was portrayed (oddly) by Pierce Brosnan's character in "The Lawnmower Man". He has served in various research groups concerned with the future, including the World Economic Forum Fellows, the MacArthur Foundation Roundtables, and the Global Business Network.