Roy Ascott - Biography

Biography

Roy Ascott was born in Bath, England. He was educated at the City of Bath Boys' School. His National Service was spent as a commissioned officer in the RAF Fighter Command working with radar defence systems). From 1955-59 he studied Fine Art at King's College, University of Durham (now Newcastle University) under Victor Pasmore and Richard Hamilton, and Art History under Lawrence Gowing and Quentin Bell. On graduation he was appointed Studio Demonstrator (1959–61). He then moved to London, where he established the radical Groundcourse at Ealing Art College, which he subsequently established at Ipswich Civic College, in Suffolk. Notable alumni of the Groundcourse include Brian Eno, Pete Townshend, Stephen Willats, and Michael English (Hapshash and the Coloured Coat).

Ascott taught in London Ealing, and was a visiting lecturer at other London art schools throughout the 1960s. Then briefly was President of Ontario College of Art and Design, Toronto, before moving to California as Vice-President and Dean of San Francisco Art Institute, during the 1970s. He was Professor for Communications Theory at the University of Applied Arts Vienna during the 1980s, and Professor of Technoetic Arts at the University of Wales, Newport in the 1990s.,. where he established the Centre for Advanced Inquiry in the Interactive Arts. He established the Planetary Collegium at Plymouth University in 2003.

He has advised new media arts organisations in Brazil, Japan, Korea, Europe and North America, as well as UNESCO, and was Visiting Professor (VI), Design|Media Arts, School of the Arts, University of California Los Angeles (2003–07) at the UCLA School of the Arts. Ascott was an International Commissioner for the XLII Venice Biennale of 1986 (Planetary Network and Laboratorio Ubiqua ).

He is the founding president of the Planetary Collegium an advanced research center which he set up in 2003 at the University of Plymouth, UK, where he is Professor of Technoetic Arts. The Collegium currently has nodes (linked centers) in Zurich, and Milan., and the Ionion Node based in the Ionion Centre for the Arts and Culture in Kefalonia, Greece. In March 2012 he was appointed De Tao Master of Technoetic Arts with The Beijing DeTao Masters Academy (DTMA), a high-level, multi-disciplined, application-oriented higher education institution in Shanghai, China.