Garnet Hertz


Garnet Hertz is a Canadian artist, designer and academic. Hertz is Canada Research Chair in Design and Media Art and is known for his electronic artworks and for his research in the area of critical making.

Work

Hertz is known for robotic artworks that are a synthesis of living insects and electronic machinery. His Cockroach Controlled Mobile Robot uses a giant Madagascan cockroach to control a robot that moves through the gallery space. In his 2001 work Fly with Implanted Web Server, viewers of a specific URL browsed web pages served from inside a biological organism.
Several of his works involve the repurposing of obsolete media technologies. His work Outrun turned a video game cabinet into a street-driveable vehicle. As the vehicle is driven, it converts the a camera view of the real street into an 8-bit video screen view that the driver uses to navigate.

Academic career

Hertz is the Canada Research Chair in Design + Media Arts at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. Hertz was previously Research Scientist and Artist in Residence in the Department of Informatics at the University of California Irvine and was also Faculty in the Media Design Program at the Art Center College of Design.

Awards

In 2003, Hertz won a Canada-U.S. Fulbright Award to pursue graduate studies at the University of California Irvine in an interdisciplinary program in art, computing and
electrical engineering. In 2008, Hertz won the Oscar Signorini prize for robotic art. In 2013, Hertz was awarded a Canada Research Chair as Canada Research Chair in Design and Media Arts. In 2019, Hertz was awarded a second term as Canada Research Chair as Canada Research Chair in Design and Media Arts.