Joseph Nechvatal

Joseph Nechvatal (born January 15, 1951) is an American post-conceptual digital artist and art theoretician who creates computer-assisted paintings and computer animations, often using custom-created computer viruses.
Life and work.
Joseph Nechvatal was born in Chicago. He studied fine art and philosophy at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Cornell University and Columbia University. He has had a solo exhibition in Berlin
His work in the early 1980s chiefly consisted of postminimalist gray graphite drawings that were often photomechanically enlarged. Beginning in 1979 he became associated with the artist group Colab, organized the Public Arts International/Free Speech series, he was a member of Colab in the 1980s and helped established the non-profit group ABC No Rio. In 1983 he co-founded the avant-garde electronic art music audio project Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine. In 1984, Nechvatal began work on an opera called "" (1984-6) with the no wave musical composer Rhys Chatham.
He began using computers and robotics to make post-conceptual paintings in 1986 and later, in his signature work, began to employ self-created computer viruses. From 1991–1993 he was artist-in-residence at the Louis Pasteur Atelier in Arbois, France and at the Saline Royale/Ledoux Foundation's computer lab. There he worked on "The Computer Virus Project", his first artistic experiment with computer viruses and computer virus animation. He exhibited computer-robotic paintings at Documenta 8 in 1987.
In 2002 he extended his experimentation into viral artificial life through a collaboration with the programmer Stephane Sikora of music2eye in a work called the "Computer Virus Project II". Nechvatal cites influecnes such as John von Neumann, John Horton Conway, John Koza, Gustav Metzger and Marcel Duchamp.
Nechvatal has also created a noise music work called "viral symphOny", a collaborative sound symphony created by using his computer virus software at the Institute for Electronic Arts at Alfred University.
From 1999 to 2013, Nechvatal taught art theories of immersive virtual reality and the viractual at the School of Visual Arts in New York City (SVA). A book of his collected essays entitled "Towards an Immersive Intelligence: Essays on the Work of Art in the Age of Computer Technology and Virtual Reality (1993–2006)" was published by Edgewise Press in 2009. Also in 2009, his book "Immersive Ideals / Critical Distances" was published. In 2011, his book "Immersion Into Noise" was published by Open Humanities Press in conjunction with the University of Michigan Library's Scholarly Publishing Office. 
Viractualism.
"Viractualism" is an art theory concept developed by Nechvatal in 1999 from Ph.D. research Nechvatal conducted at the University of Wales College. There he developed his concept of the "viractual," which strives to create an interface between the biological and the virtual.