John Craig Freeman
| John Craig Freeman | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
February 16, 1959 Los Angeles, California |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | University of California, San Diego, University of Colorado Boulder |
| Known for | Public Art, New Media, Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality |
| Awards | NEA, Individual Artists Fellowship |
| Website | JohnCraigFreeman.net |
| Patron(s) | FACT, LACMA, Rhizome, Turbulence |
John Craig Freeman (born February 16, 1959) is a contemporary artist and a Professor of New Media at Emerson College in Boston.
Freeman received his Bachelor of Arts degree from the Visual Arts Department at the University of California, San Diego, in 1986. He received a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1990.
Freeman is a public artist using emergent technologies to produce large-scale public work at sites where the forces of globalization are impacting the lives of individuals in local communities. Freeman's public art has evolved from the use of billboards in the early 1990s to mixed reality installations at the turn of the century, with current work focusing on augmented reality. In a 2012 interview, Freeman stated, "My work seeks to expand the notion of public by exploring how digital networked technology is transforming our sense of place."
The following are some examples of his work.
Freeman's earliest work, titled Operation Greenrun II and developed as his master's thesis at the University of Colorado, used billboards to draw attention to a contaminated nuclear production facility at Rocky Flats, Colorado. In this work, eleven billboard faces were created with a message protesting the Rocky Flats site. The ensuing controversy resulted in the decision to shut down Rocky Flats for good. Writing of this project in her book titled Digital Currents: Art in the Electronic Age, Margot Lovejoy says of Freeman that he "believes that a public art can circumvent problems of the gallery system such as the commodification of culture and the perpetuation of an exclusive, elite system for art. He believes in bringing art to the public." She goes on to quote Freeman, who said that "If people are too busy to go to the gallery or museum, it makes sense to bring art to them. They don't even have to get out of their cars."
The "interventionist, political nature" of Operation Greenrun II established a pattern that has remained consistent throughout Freeman's career. This pattern can be seen in the work he titles Imaging Place, an ongoing work which employs panoramic photography in location-based projects that highlight sites affected by globalization. Locations where this work has been done include Beijing; Taipei, Taiwan; São Paulo, Brazil; the U.S./Mexico border; the Miami River; Lowell, Massachusetts; Kaliningrad, Russia; Warsaw, Poland; and Belfast, among others. His process has been called a "nonlinear documentary method."
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