Identity area
Type of entity
Person
Authorized form of name
White, Norman
Parallel form(s) of name
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
7 Jan. 1938-
History
Norman White, a new media artist, was born in San Antonio, Texas, in 1938. He grew up in and around Boston, Massachusetts, and obtained his B.A. in Biology from Harvard University in 1959. Originally planning to become a fisheries biologist, White changed his mind and decided to travel to places like New York City, San Francisco, London, and the Middle East during the 1960s.
While living in San Francisco, he worked as an electrician at Hunter's Point Naval Shipyard, and developed a fascination for electrical switching systems. In London England, 1965-1967, he began to experiment with electronics. He then moved to Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where he began creating a series of kinetic, digital logic driven light machines. His first artwork utilizing "RTL" integrated circuits was shown in the E.A.T. sponsored group exhibition entitled "Some More Beginnings", in 1969, at the Brooklyn Museum. From 1978 to 2003. White taught classes such as "Mechanics for Real Time Sculpture" as part of the Integrated Media Program of the Ontario College of Art & Design
A retrospective of his work and influence, called Norm’s Robots and Machine Life, with works by both White and several Canadian artists he has influenced, was shown at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, Ontario in 2004. From 1992 to 2003, White was an essential force behind the OCAD Sumo Robot Challenge, an annual competition akin to an automaton Olympics. From 2003 to 2016 , White taught in the Radio Television Arts Department of Ryerson University, Toronto, Ontario. He retired from teaching in 2016.
Places
Legal status
Functions, occupations and activities
Mandates/sources of authority
Internal structures/genealogy
General context
Relationships area
Access points area
Subject access points
Place access points
Occupations
Control area
Authority record identifier
Institution identifier
Rules and/or conventions used
Status
Level of detail
Dates of creation, revision and deletion
Language(s)
Script(s)
Sources
Biographical sketch from the Wikipedia article on "Norman White" at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_White (accessed 2023-01-18).