Ali Hossaini (b. West Virginia, 1962) is an American artist, philosopher, theatrical producer, television producer, and businessperson. In 2010, The New York Times described him as a "biochemist turned philosopher turned television producer turned visual poet". In 2017 Hossaini published the Manual of Digital Museum Planning and subsequently became co-director of National Gallery X, a King's College London partnership that explores the future of art and cultural institutions. Prior to National Gallery X Hossaini worked with King's College to develop Connected Culture, an action research programme that tested cultural applications for 5G supported by Ericsson. As a working artist and producer, Hossaini's genre-spanning career includes installations, performances and hundreds of media projects. Since 2018 Hossaini has worked with security think tank Royal United Services Institute and, in a 2019 special edition of its journal, he assessed the threat from AI from the perspective of biology.
Early life and education (1962-1994) The son of an Iraqi father and American mother,Beyond the multicultural ghetto . openDemocracy (2004-09-28). Retrieved on 2012-01-29. Hossaini was born in West Virginia in the United States. Hossaini came of age during the Reagan Era, and became a producer and host (1989–1994) for Alternative Views, a television program that offered progressive news, commentary and interviews.By Douglas Kellner PUBLIC ACCESS TELEVISION: ALTERNATIVE VIEWS (PDF) He also produced short films that were distributed by Deep Dish Television and went on to write for the Village Voice and other publications.
Education Hossaini studied at Washington University in St. Louis, Columbia University & The University of Texas at Austin where he was awarded a doctorate in philosophy in 1994. His thesis – Archaeology Of The Photograph traced the development of optics from Sumer to the Hellenistic period. This thesis would go on to inform much of his subsequent forward-looking work in academic publishing, media technology and optics including contributions to the Encyclopedia of Twentieth Century Photography and Vision of The Gods: How Optics Shaped History published by Logos (journal).
Career
Early roles (1994-2001) From 1994 to 1996 Hossaini worked as a sponsoring editor at the University of Texas Press Austin where he academic manuscripts in the humanities, including classics, media studies, and women's studies. Hossaini helped launch The Surrealist Revolution at the University of Texas Press, a book series whose inaugural volume, Surrealist Woman, revealed the suppressed histories of female artists. He also published one of the first electronic books, Istanbul Boy, in 1996.Nesin, Istanbul Boy, University of Texas Press. Utexas.edu. Retrieved on 2012-01-29. and produced one of the first public webcasts, Come to Me, that same year.Elaine Dove in A Million Miles Away . Cyberopera.org (1996-10-23). Retrieved on 2012-01-29.
In 1996, Hossaini left Texas to join the staff of The Site, a San Francisco-based television newsmagazine on MSNBC, as a producer and commentator. He did pioneering work in social media by building audience interaction into television. He moved to ZDTV in 1997 where he continued to develop interactive projects that integrated audience tools like chat and webcams into television programs.Ali Hossaini. infonortics.com From 1999 to 2001, Hossaini was a vice president for community at Oxygen Media, he developed applications for video sharing and managed presence to integrate numerous corporate acquisitions into a single network.Ali Hossaini. opendemocracy.net
Rainbow DBS and Voom HD Networks (2002-2009) As a director of programming and executive producer for Rainbow DBS (later Voom HD Networks) from 2002 until 2009, Hossaini managed production, licensing and broadcast efforts for the first dedicated art documentary and video art television channels – Gallery HD, LAB HD, as well as Equator HD high-definition television channel devoted to travel, culture and natural history until 2009.NHK docs head for Equator. c21media.net
Robert Wilson Video Portraits As executive producer of LAB HD, Hossaini fostered the creation of several dozen avant-garde films, including the Voom Portraits Robert Wilson, a project which became well known after Vanity FairColacello, Bob. (2011-08-01) The Subject as Star | Culture. Vanity Fair. Retrieved on 2012-01-29. featured one of its subjects, actor Brad Pitt, on its cover.HD takes still life to next level for artist Robert Wilson . Broadcastengineering.com. Retrieved on 2012-01-29. The series of HDTV videos feature performances by Hollywood stars, including Robert Downey Jr., Isabella Rossellini and Willem Dafoe, European and Persian royalty and notable artists. The Voom Portraits Robert Wilson exhibition opened in 2007 at Paula Cooper Gallery and Philips de Pury Gallery in New York City.Kalb, Jonathan. (2007-01-30) Robert Wilson, Beckett and a Celebrity From the Neck Up – New York Times. Nytimes.com. Retrieved on 2012-01-29.
Hossaini describes the genesis of the project in Robert Wilson Video Portraits, an edited volume published by ZKM. In a separate interview for HD TV Technology Hossaini noted that his early adoption of HD video in the production of Wilson's portrait enabled the conscious evolution of the video art to be consumer akin to other art forms such as painting.
"The other idea of the video portrait is to do a very playful extension of the painting. Wilson is noted for very, very slow movement in all of his theater and film work that he has done before. In this case, he wanted to create these things that almost look like a still life on the wall, but then they started gradually to move. The more you watch them, the more you see in terms of that movement. They sit up on your wall as permanent installations, so video is the perfect medium for this kind of exercise."
Greg Moyer of Voom HD Networks would go on to comment that this production "brought Robert Wilson to high definition in some regards. He'd been using the medium prior, but we facilitated every aspect of the portraits."
The establishment of Pantar Productions (2009-2011)
In 2009 Hossaini expanded his independent consulting and production activity under the umbrella of Pantar Productions. From 2009-2011 he produced content for clients that included NHK, High Fidelity HDTV, The Submarine Channel Submarine Channel - Interactive Storytelling and Indieflix, amongst others. In this time Hossaini produced the Metropolis Art Competition for Babelgum productions – a short film competition in which a jury (including Isabella Rossellini and Guy Maddin) awarded an emerging film maker $20,000 first prize and screened their short film in Times Square. Hossaini also produced Epitaph an autobiographical short directed by Dennis Hopper shortly before his death.
Through Pantar Productions Hossaini realised the first iteration his Ouroboros: The History of The Universe art installation at the Ise Cultural Foundation Ise Cultural Foundation in Soho, New York. In a review for The New York Times Dennis Overbye remarked that the work "bypass the rational part of the brain and head[s] straight for someplace deeper, to make us experience the universe not as a concatenation of forces but as a poem."
Ouroboros would set a trend for much of Hossaini's subsequent artistic and professional activity, ostensibly exploring how art and technology can, in his words (2016), "help facilitate a shift from authentic objects to authentic experiences."
Luminaria (2012-2014) In 2012 Hossaini was approached by the City of San Antonio to develop a five-year strategic plan to transform their Lumniaria Arts festival into a globally significant festival of arts and ideas. Hossaini's preliminary plan developed with Dissident Industries, a New York-based firm, would be to alternate the festival annually with a workshop or "a participatory lab for festival development and experimentation.". The plan advocated the expansion of the new biannual event into a ten-day festival and was credited with aligning the festival with downtown development initiatives and the city's strategic ambitions.
In a 2014 interview Hossaini commented that the goal was to convert Luminaria from a "by San Antonio, for San Antonio" event into a "by San Antonio, for San Antonio, and for the rest of the world" The president of the Luminaria board credited the report with a helping to instigate paradigm shift for the organisation – "Living event to event isn't working,.. Now we're talking about Luminaria as a concept, as an organization (instead of a once-a-year event)"
Cinema Arts Network (2011-2017) In 2011 Hossaini became CEO of CAN: Cinema Arts Network, a UK-based consortium of cinemas and art centers funded by the BFI. The company launched with a live broadcast of the London Symphony Orchestra from the Barbican Centre. Cinema Arts Network completed a national broadband "Network for the arts" in 2014, and in 2015 Hossaini announced CAN 2.0, an initiative to engage audiences via smartphones in sixteen UK arts venues. Art for Tomorrow Hossaini remarked at the Johannesberg Summit of Global Congress of the Wireless Broadband Alliance technological convergence allows initiatives like this Cinema Arts Network to proflierate, nothing that connectivity alone is a "transformative factor that catalyses transformative changes in society."
Manual of Digital Museum Planning In 2017, Hossaini coedited the Manual of Digital Museum Planning with Ngaire Blankenberg which the publisher, Rowman & Littlefield, describe as the comprehensive guide to digital planning, development, and operations for museum professionals and students of museums studies and arts administration.
King's College Since 2017 Hossaini has been visiting research fellow in the Department of Informatics at King's College London. In 2019 he co-founded National Gallery X, a joint research studio maintained by the National Gallery and King's College London. In 2020 Hossaini was promoted to visiting senior research fellow in the Department of Engineering at King's College London. In this capacity, he serves as co-director of National Gallery X, and his responsibilities include curating and collaborating with studio residents and building creative links between the Gallery and King's College London researchers.
Connected Culture In 2016 Ericsson and King's College London announced that Hossaini would lead Connected Culture, a joint project that applies 5G networking techniques to immersive media. Connected Culture examined how vision, hearing and touch perform over 5G networks. Public workshops were held at National Theatre Studio, RADA and Sadler's Wells, and Hossaini tested a new spatial audio system Soundscapes within his 3D video installation Ouroboros. As a result of Hossaini's project in June 2018 the city of London announced they would be hosting the world's first 5G connected theatre in collaboration with Berlin. The project report contains details on how to manage art-science collaborations and reports on perceptual tolerances to network faults.
With the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 Ericsson explored work of the connected culture initiative noting the way that well before an event like COVID-19 the Hossaini's vision "had the ambition to show how the three sensory elements of touch, sight and sound could be heightened to make any experience much more immersive.". In a virtual panel as a part of the Ericsson UnBoxed Office social series , "5G: Connecting Culture", Hosseini noted that with 5G, independent artists will have the same kind of access that major cultural institutions do and suggested that this will help drive a major cultural explosion in small towns around the world as creativity is going to be one of the primary ways of maintaining connection to others.
National Gallery X