George Legrady Discusses Interactive Media Art and Pockets Full of Memories Installation at Centre Pompidou

George Legrady, an interactive media artist and professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, explores the intersection of digital technology, photography, and archival practices. His recent installation, Pockets Full of Memories, debuted at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2001, inviting visitors to scan and describe personal objects, which are then organized by a self-organizing map algorithm. Legrady's career includes teaching at institutions like the Merz Akademie in Stuttgart and San Francisco State University, with exhibitions at venues such as the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the National Gallery of Canada. He began working with computers in the early 1980s after meeting Harold Cohen in San Diego, focusing on digital image processing and interactive works. His projects, like the Anecdoted Archive from the Cold War, examine memory, information theory, and the cultural biases in representation. Legrady's work often involves databases and interfaces that challenge traditional narratives, emphasizing viewer participation and the visibility of algorithmic systems. He has also curated exhibitions like Deep Storage at the Haus der Kunst in Munich in 1997. In the interview, he discusses influences from Claude Shannon's information theory and the evolution of digital media art from Eastern Europe post-communism.