Toni Dove is a New York

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

-based artist working primarily in electronic and interactive media. She is considered one of the pioneers of interactive cinema

Interactive cinema

Interactive cinema tries to give the audience an active role in the showing of movies. The movie Kinoautomat by Czechoslovakian director Raduz Cincera presented in the Czech Pavilion in Expo '67 in Montreal is considered to be the first cinema-like interactive movie...

 http://www.zkm.de/futurecinema/index_e.html, and has shown work at ZKM, the Banff Centre

Banff Centre

The Banff Centre, formerly known as The Banff Centre for Continuing Education, is an arts, cultural, and educational institution and conference complex located in Banff, Alberta...

 for the Arts, the Brooklyn

Brooklyn

Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...

 Anchorage

Anchorage, Alaska

Anchorage is a unified home rule municipality in the southcentral part of the U.S. state of Alaska. It is the northernmost major city in the United States...

, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. She has been affiliated with Creative Time

Creative Time

Creative Time is a New York-based nonprofit arts organization. It was founded in 1973 to support the creation of innovative, site-specific, socially engaged works in the public realm, especially in vacant spaces of historical and architectural interest...

 and Harvestworks, and a DVD version of scenes from her pieces has been distributed by Cycling '74

Cycling '74

Cycling '74 is a San Francisco-based software development company and music label, specializing in Interactive Media. The company is best known for their work with the digital signal processing software environment Max...

. She is the granddaughter of American abstract painter Arthur Dove

Arthur Dove

Arthur Garfield Dove was an American artist. An early American modernist, he is often considered the first American abstract painter.-Youth and education:...

.

In 2001 Toni Dove received funding from the Daniel Langlois Foundation

Daniel Langlois Foundation

The Daniel Langlois Foundation is a non-profit, philanthropic organization endowed by Daniel Langlois and chartered in 1997 with the mission to support artistic and scientific projects and research dedicated to further general human awareness as well as the understanding of human relation with its...

 to produce Spectropia: A Ghost Story on the Infinite Deferral of Desire, the second part in a "trilogy of narrative, interactive installations begun in 1998". The first installment Artificial Changelings dealt with "the emergence of compulsive consumerism in the 19th century". In this second installment "Dove continues her inquiry into the subconscious at work in the capitalist society of the early 20th century".

Her work blends cinematic tropes typical of Studio-age

Studio system

The studio system was a means of film production and distribution dominant in Hollywood from the early 1920s through the early 1960s. The term studio system refers to the practice of large motion picture studios producing movies primarily on their own filmmaking lots with creative personnel under...

 film noir

Film noir

Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...

 with contemporary narrative trends in science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

, cybernetics

Cybernetics

Cybernetics is the interdisciplinary study of the structure of regulatory systems. Cybernetics is closely related to information theory, control theory and systems theory, at least in its first-order form...

, and new media

New media

New media is a broad term in media studies that emerged in the latter part of the 20th century. For example, new media holds out a possibility of on-demand access to content any time, anywhere, on any digital device, as well as interactive user feedback, creative participation and community...

. Her pieces are embodied as hybrid of film

Film

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

, installation art

Installation art

Installation art describes an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called Land art; however, the boundaries between...

, and experimental theater where performers or installation participants interact with an unfolding narrative movie, often using minimally invasive interface

User interface

The user interface, in the industrial design field of human–machine interaction, is the space where interaction between humans and machines occurs. The goal of interaction between a human and a machine at the user interface is effective operation and control of the machine, and feedback from the...

 technologies such as speech recognition

Speech recognition

Speech recognition converts spoken words to text. The term "voice recognition" is sometimes used to refer to recognition systems that must be trained to a particular speaker—as is the case for most desktop recognition software...

 and computer vision

Computer vision

Computer vision is a field that includes methods for acquiring, processing, analysing, and understanding images and, in general, high-dimensional data from the real world in order to produce numerical or symbolic information, e.g., in the forms of decisions...

 to allow users to "perform" their on-screen avatar

Avatar (computing)

In computing, an avatar is the graphical representation of the user or the user's alter ego or character. It may take either a three-dimensional form, as in games or virtual worlds, or a two-dimensional form as an icon in Internet forums and other online communities. It can also refer to a text...

s.

Notable works

• Lucid Possession (2009–present)
• Spectropia (2001–2010)
• Artificial Changelings (1995–2000)
• Casual Workers, Hallucinations and Appropriate Ghosts (1994)
• Archeology of a Mother Tongue (1993)
• The Blessed Abyss - A Tale of Unmanageable Ecstasies (1992)
• Mesmer - Secrets of the Human Frame (1990)