Michael Ricciardi

Icons in Motherboard

Digital photograph

“[This piece is] a modern-medieval juxtaposition featuring religious 'icons' on an obsolete computer 'motherboard'...I will often 'mix' various media (including sound and old and new media) in my work, especially in my earlier performance works. My artwork making is primarily inner-directed ('autotelic'), but I do find myself, at times, compelled by external events (scientific discoveries, wars, environmental disasters) to produce art that communicates or reflects universal human themes. I seek the scene that is impossible. I don't want to rule the world, I just want to be a consultant."

— Michael Ricciardi

About the artist

Michael Ricciardi

American

Michael Ricciardi is a published experimental poet and multi-media artist working primarily with photographic, 'mixed' media (hand-drawn + photo art + digital), film/video/audio, and new media. Many of his works address scientific or environmental themes and concepts. Since 2003, Michael has had various jury-selected works (photos, short videos) exhibited nationally (Seattle, WA, San Francisco, CA, Chicago, IL, Athens, GA, Taos, NM), and internationally (Buenas Aires, Argentina, Vancouver, British Columbia, Athens, Greece, Naples-Ischia, Italy). In 2002 and 2003, Ricciardi received two back-to-back grants from the Paul G. Allen Foundation for the Arts to curate, produce, and re-stage the new media, experimental poetics exhibition 'Future ForWORD' for the Seattle Poetry Festival (2002) and The Bumbershoot Arts Festival (2003).

In 2017, his 'micro-doc' video 'A Dream of Space' was included (as part of the public art component) on-board NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft mission to asteroid Bennu (#WeTheExplorers, ASU). Most recently, Michael was awarded runner up (2nd place) in the 8th annual (2022) 'Fotosophia' competition/exhibition (part of the annual 'Bellezza' (Beauty) / Filosophia Festival of Naples-Ischia (Italy) for his analog photo artwork 'Crime of Passion II ('Crimina di pasione II'). Also in 2022, Ricciardi was one of 5 selected winners in the inaugural #EqualSpace space games challenge (sponsor: Space Games Federation) for his live-action, micro-gravity, knot-tying game 'Zero-Gordian.' Michael lives in Seattle, Washington.