Eric Dyer
Professor
Animation & Interactive Media
410-455-3589 ITE 106
dyer@umbc.edu
Artist Eric Dyer, dubbed The Modern Master of the Zoetrope by Creative Capital, brings animation into the material world with his sequential images, sculptures, installations, and performances. His animated, often participatory works explore themes such as non-violence, motion hidden in everyday life, the city symphony, moving-image history, his own degenerative retinal condition, and the relevance of physical presence in an increasingly digital world.
He has been honored as a Fulbright Fellow, Sundance New Frontier Artist, Creative Capital Grantee, Bogliasco Foundation Fellow, Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professor, and Guggenheim Fellow; while his films have won numerous awards, including Best Animated Film and Best Experimental Film at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, and Director’s Choice, Jury’s Citation, and Jury’s Choice awards at the internationally-touring Black Maria Film and Video Festival.
Dyer has been a visiting artist at institutions such as Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, USA), East China Normal University (Shanghai, China), California Institute of the Arts (Los Angeles, USA), and the Royal College of Art (London, UK). His films and interactive animated sculptures have been widely exhibited at prestigious international events and venues including the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), Ars Electronica (Austria), Tabakalera (Spain), ARoS Museum of Modern Art (Denmark), the screens of Times Square (New York City), and the Cairo and Venice Biennales.
Dyer cut his teeth in the industry, animating for clients such as PBS Kids, Discovery Networks, Curious Pictures, and hiphop luminary Rakim; and directing music videos that aired on BET, The Box, MTV Europe, and MTV. He was artist Jeremy Blake’s animator in the late 1990’s, bringing motion to works that were included in two Whitney Biennials.
The importance of Dyer’s work has been recognized in leading academic publications in the field of animation studies, including Re-imagining Animation: the Changing Face of the Moving Image (Bloomsbury); Pervasive Animation (Routledge); Animation: A World History (Routledge); The Crafty Animator: Handmade, Craft-based Animation and Cultural Value (Palgrave); Art Journal (CAA publications); and A New History of Animation (Thames & Hudson). He is emeritus artist of the former Ronald Feldman Gallery and teaches animation and visual art at UMBC in Baltimore. Dyer’s talk on TED.com, The Forgotten Art of the Zoetrope [go.ted.com/ericdyer] has been viewed over 1.1 million times.