Biography
Isa Gordon is a world-renowned new media/performance artist, researcher, curator, teacher and designer, exploring the intersection of human and machine for over two decades. Based in LA since 2006, she holds an MFA in Studio Art/ Intermedia and a Bachelors Degree with Honors in Theatre.
She’s best known for Psymbiote, a conceptual performance alter-ego with functional cyborg devices, initially funded by a two-year creative research fellowship. In 2002 she was asked by the SIGGRAPH Conference Committee to organize a fashion event around the underlying ideas. Over the next five conferences a co-evolution emerged, as Psymbiote hosted events Isa curated and produced. The Cyberfashion Show inspired pioneers in the field for over a decade and prompted its own chapter in Garb, a fashion and culture textbook. In 2008 Isa wrote and produced a documentary short on Psymbiote. Originally commissioned for Evolution Haute-Couture, a curated program for film festivals and scholarly book with DVD insert, it premiered at the Moscow International Film Festival. It was later included in the program Momentum: Women/Art/ Technology, screened at the Whitney Museum of American Art and other venues.
Isa’s most recent curatorial project was the WIGI-E3 Experimental Realities Interactive Art & Animation Festival in 2017 and 2018. Sponsored by Women In Games International, these pop-up galleries at the Los Angeles Exchange included dozens of artists and were experienced by over a thousand attendees. Isa has also exhibited at venues such as the New York Hall of Science, Phoenix Art Museum and Chicago Cultural Centre. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, Wired Magazine, LA Weekly, on NPR and in Stephen Wilson’s book Art & Science Now.
Isa has taught in the Photography and New Media department at Kansas City Art Institute; Interdisciplinary Arts and Performance at Arizona State University West; and Digital Media at Phoenix College. In 2003 she left academia to co-found a fashion and design company. They developed a laser-cut clothing and accessories line and an innovative modular cargo-system for carrying gear hands-free, featured in Entrepreneur Magazine. Their work appeared in books, popular media, international fashion shows, music videos and feature film.
She has remained a pioneer researcher in wearable technology, as well as a guest speaker at academic conferences. Her paper was accepted for presentation at the “Cyborg” themed Amber Conference in Istanbul in 2009. Her talks on wearable tech at the BIL Conferences in 2009, 2011 and 2016 were all standing-room only.
Isa still works as both a freelancer in digital design as well as a studio artist, making and exhibiting her work on both coasts and art centers throughout the United States. She is currently developing a new body of digital media work, and accepting collaborations and commissions across the full range of her expression.