Chris Salter is an artist, Professor of Immersive Arts and Director of the Immersive Arts Space at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) in Zurich, Switzerland. He is also Professor Emeritus in the Department of Design and Computation Arts at Concordia University, Montreal and former Co-Director of the Hexagram network for Research-Creation in Arts, Cultures and Technologies. He was co-founder of the Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture and Technology, also at Concordia.
Living and working in Zurich, Salter’s work explores the borders between the senses, art, design and new technologies through large-scale installations as well as books, critical writings and lectures on the international scene. His immersive and physically experiential works are informed by theater, architecture, visual art, computer music, perceptual psychology, cultural theory and engineering and are developed in collaboration with anthropologists, historians, philosophers, engineers, artists and designers. In addition to his artistic work, Salter has consulted internationally for academic and cultural institutions on the integration of digital technologies into cultural practices, among them the Barbican Center in London.
Salter studied economics and philosophy at Emory University and received his PhD in theater directing and dramatic criticism where he also researched and worked at CCRMA. In the 1990s he collaborated in London, Frankfurt, Salzburg and Paris with Peter Sellars and William Forsythe/Frankfurt Ballet. In 1996, he co-founded the art and research organization Sponge.
His work has been seen at major international exhibitions and festivals all over the world such as the Venice Biennale (architecture), Barbican Centre (London), Berliner Festspiele/Martin Gropius Bau (Berlin), Wiener Festwochen (Vienna), HeK (Basel), Grand Palais Immersif (Paris), MEET Center (Milan), Forum Groningen (Groningen), re:publica (Berlin), Berliner Festspiele/Martin Gropius Bau (Berlin), Musée d’art Contemporain (Montreal), LLUM_BCN (Barcelona), Schauspielhaus Bochum (Bochum), Chronus Art Center (Shanghai), Muffathalle (Munich), Vitra Design Museum (Basel), HAU3 (Berlin), BIAN 2014 (Montreal), LABoral (Gijon), Lille 3000 (Lille), CTM Berlin (Berlin), National Art Museum of China (Beijing), Ars Electronica (Linz), Villette Numerique (Paris), Todays Art (The Hague), EXIT Festival (Maison des Arts, Creteil-Paris), among many others.
Salter’s projects have been covered in the New York Times, Sueddeutschezeitung, NPR-Berlin, We Make Money Not Art, Frieze, The Guardian, The Wire, Leonardo, and the Creator’s Project, among others. He is a regular presenter at national and international conferences, has given more than 100 invited talks and keynotes at universities and cultural institutions worldwide and has sat on numerous juries including ISEA, Pro Helvetia and the Prix Ars Electronica.
He is the author of Entangled: Technology and the Transformation of Performance (MIT Press, 2010), Alien Agency: Experimental Encounters with Art in the Making (MIT Press, 2015) and Sensing Machines (2022). He is currently working on a new book project focused on immersion across the arts, gaming, computing and the environment