John Crawford is an intermedia artist, performance director and systems designer. Engaging directly with the emerging technologies of our time, his work creates rich immersive environments and compelling interactive experiences through embodied interaction.His artistic projects are performed in theatres, exhibited in galleries and presented as interactive installations, investigating how the human desire to transform our environment is unleashing destructive forces that endanger the world and everything in it, including ourselves. His embodied media research connects body-centered artistic practices with evolving methods for expanded media performance, multi-site interactivity and responsive system design.He is Professor of Intermedia Arts in the Dance Department at University of California, Irvine, where he directs the Embodied Media Research Group, which connects socially engaged artmaking with emergent media and connected design. He also is the co-founder of Eco ArtLab and Eco DesignLab, two nonprofit organizations employing art and design to respond to the escalating crisis driven by the rapidly evolving human capacity to alter planetary ecosystems.Active as an intermedia artist since 1992, Crawford has shown his work across North America and in Asia, Europe and South America, and frequently has been a visiting artist and researcher at universities and other venues in the United States, Europe and Asia.Prior to working as a professor, he led a dual life, alternating between parallel vocations: theatre artist and software developer. As a theatre director and actor in the 1970s, he studied with Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York, worked with theatre companies including Factory Theatre Lab and Theatre Passe Muraille, and directed an experimental performance group in Vancouver, Canada. As a software designer and research manager in the 1980s and 1990s, his credits included projects for Adobe, Microsoft and many other companies.

Eco ArtLab creates artistic performances and exhibitions to enhance ecological awareness, engaging with new forms of expression enabled by the emerging media technologies of our time. As a non-profit creative hub, we support artists and designers who are committed to environmentalism and climate justice.

Eco DesignLab creates open source software and hardware systems to enhance ecological awareness through artistic projects. As a non-profit technology collective, we provide opportunities for creators to learn and deploy these systems, engaging with new forms of expression enabled by the emerging media technologies of our time.