György Kepes – The Wizard of New Media Art

Márton Orosz

Hungary

Márton Orosz’s presentation delves into the life and contributions of György Kepes, a pivotal figure in the realm of new media art and the namesake of the Visual Design Studies Group journal, which has been published by the Department of Visual Design at Universidad de Caldas since 2004.

As a versatile artist encompassing painting, design, photography, and curation, Kepes championed an innovative vision at the crossroads of art, science, and technology. He was notably known for establishing the Light Department at the New Bauhaus in Chicago in 1937 and later founding the Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS) at MIT in 1967, laying the groundwork for contemporary media art institutions and educational initiatives.

Kepes’s enduring quest was to cultivate a technology-driven, human-centered ecology, which manifested in his holistic approach to shaping sensory-rich urban environments, pioneering theories of human perception, and fostering ecological consciousness through innovative uses of new media. The underlying question driving the presentation is: „What were the opportunities available to Kepes in his era, and what are the chances today to democratize our vision through the power of the (thinking) eye?”