Al Razutis

holographic artist
(1946-present)
Born: Bamberg, Bavaria, Germany

 “When you see a hologram for the first time, you will either get hooked by what you are looking at, or not. For me the enchantment was instantaneous. I could see the future clearly in what holography was. It was the future of ‘imaging’ and within it was a remarkable capacity for art.”
―Al Razutis

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Biography

Al Razutis is a multimedia artist, educator and innovator in motion-picture film and video, holographic art and technologies, stereoscopic 3D video art, and web-digital graphics for websites and interactive 3D virtual reality.

Educated in physics and chemistry, he has brought a combination of technological interests to his multimedia arts which have spanned over 4 decades.

His recent projects include holographic displays, 4D holographic motion-picture prototypes, stereoscopic 3D video art short subjects and speech-interactive 3D VR avatars for product and technology displays, and include a 2014 presentation of holographic projection at Lanzhou, China to government officials, and interactive avatars for 2010 Winter Olympics Secretariat commissioned exhibitions. Previously in 2008, he was Technical Director and Lighting Director for the XIII-th Lithuanian Folk Dance Festival at Galen Center, Los Angeles which featured multi-media content.

He is President and CEO/CTO of Surreality Innovations Inc., and is currently in development of a 4D holographic motion-picture system for theater and cinema applications, and stand-alone units.

His multimedia art and avant-garde works are contained and updated at Visual Alchemy on the web (1996-2016) on-line studio and archives site. He is also the Trustee, Administrator and Curator for the Sharon McCormack Holography Collection & Archives which are available for exhibition and study.

His films and media works continue to be exhibited internationally, including a 2014 screening of invited work to Louvre Auditorium, Paris. His motion-picture film art works are in international collections, including the Museum of Contemporary Art – Pompidou, Paris, France; his works are archived by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences in Hollywood, USA and the National Archives of Canada, Ottawa, Canada. His stereoscopic 3D film works were honored by a show at the Louvre, Paris in 1997, and later retroscpective film screenings in Europe and Korea. His holographic works in the arts of holography have spanned over 40 years and have been internationally exhibited.

ART & MEDIA BIO SUMMARY:

He has been creating and exhibiting avant-garde and documentary films and video since the late sixties, holographic displays and art since the early 70’s, and web virtual reality and stereoscopic 3D video art since the 90’s. During this time he developed custom-made film optical printing, video synthesizer, holographic recording and imaging technologies used in his published and exhibited works. He is a ‘hands on’ creator and technical innovator who freely acknowledges those 60’s – 70’s innovators (Moog, Buchla, Whitney, Brakhage, Cross, Benton and others) in the technologies and the arts that influenced his creativities.

He created the first holographic art studio in Canada (Visual Alchemy) and brought holographic art to Canadian audiences for the first time in the late 70’s (including an exhibition in Ottawa on Canada Day, organized by Lorraine Monk and opened by then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau). His holographic works have been internationally exhibited ever since.

During the 80’s he was a tenured Associate Professor at Simon Fraser University, and headed a film and video department of production and film studies that steadily produced nationally recognized student achievements. He is a past publisher of two periodicals on film (‘Opsis – Journal of Avant-Garde and Political cinema’) and holography (‘Wavefront’), and has invented / developed a number of film, video, holographic and 3D imaging techniques for art and exhibitions.

His films have received a number of awards, including a 1988 Los Angeles Film Critics Award, and his media art works are found in a number of international collections and have been exhibited internationally, including a 1997 stereoscopic 3D video showing at the Louvre, a 2002 film-video retrospective at the Electronic Media Arts Festival in Osnabruck, Germany, and a 2004 exhibition of 3D video, film, video at SeNef, Seoul, Korea.

VIRTUAL REALITY and SPEECH-INTERACTIVE DISPLAYS:

He created his first VR worlds with video textures in 1997 in co-production with the Banff Center for Media Arts and later created a number of VR art works independently. In the mid-90’s he created a number of stereoscopic 3D video art works, which were exhibited in solo screenings in Vancouver, Portland, and in 1997 at the Louvre in Paris.

In 2000-01 he was Head of 2D/3D Graphics for the Mission Corporation (Bellevue, WA) in developments of speech-interactive (avatar-based) graphical interfaces for next-generation (post-PC) environments. These environments were speech-interactive virtual reality (3D) settings and achieved demo completion in both 2000 for Mission Corporation and in 2010 for the Winter Olympics Secretariat clients.

He continues in 2016 to create independent works in holographics and holographic art, stereoscopic 3D film art, including avant-garde films in 2D and 3D, and his projects include 4D holographic motion-picture technology and content for both art and commercial display.

Source: http://www.alchemists.com/visual_alchemy/razutis-brief.html