Lynn Hershman

Pioneering media artist Lynn Hershman divides her artistic evolution between BC (Before Computers) and AD (After Digital). Hershman began her career as a performance artist, exploring themes of identity, alienation and sexuality that would later be expressed in her media pieces. In the late 1970s, Hershman turned to the electronic media, and exploited its interactive capabilities, continuing to confront issues of identity and alienation, now in relation to technology. Her first interactive media work, Lorna, has gained her international recognition for being the first artist laserdisc. In 1989, she completed Deep Contact, an interactive encounter of seduction and "penetration" with the computer medium. Her most recent work is an on-line / installation piece for ZKM (Center for Art and Media) entitled The Difference Engine, that erodes boundaries between the virtual and real.