Mishka Kornai
Mishka Kornai (b.1991, USA) is a filmmaker, photographer, and multidisciplinary video artist, working between Europe and North America. Raised by three computational linguists in Palo Alto, Cal- ifornia, he has been interested in art and technology since child- hood. His most recent music video won the audience award for best music video Xnomination for best drama of the year at the 2019 Vimeo Awards. His work has been exhibited internationally in North America and Europe and his films have screened at film fes- tivals worldwide. He is a founder of Los Angeles based smartphone filmmaking collective PICKPOCKET (www.Pickpocket.tv), and his artist studio THEIA (www.Theia.studio) is based in Berlin, Germany.
His work explores what he refers to as “the infrastructure of human connection”, a notion describing the ways in which the technological tools we use to communicate come to shape the very nature of our social interactions. Kornai’s mother, father, and stepfather all hold PHDs in computational linguistics and while growing up in 1990s and early-2000s Silicon Valley he witnessed the same A.I. and natural language systems that his parents helped develop come to redefine communication in the modern world. The thematic focal points of his works are often cautionary, from the dystopian potential posed by online filter bubbles to the corrosive forces of phone addictionon teenage sexuality. After a formal education and professional ca- reer in film production, what began as single channel video works has grown over the years into a multi-disciplinary practice com- bining photography, digital collage, sculpture, and performance.