“If I were to die tomorrow, I would not regret the things I never dared to do” Tamiko Thiel

You have a professional background in arts and technology. How do these two fields influence you?

As an undergraduate, I chose a major that combined engineering, art, and design. I studied Product Design at Stanford, technically an engineering degree but with space for art and design courses. That was my starting point in the 1970s.

After graduation, I worked as a product design engineer at Hewlett Packard in Silicon Valley, designing injection-molded parts for computer terminals. When the work became repetitive, I moved to MIT for a master’s in mechanical engineering.

After completing the required courses, I explored electives and discovered two groups in the Architecture Department that later became the MIT Media Lab – the Architecture Machine Group and the Visual Language Workshop.

I took courses in computer graphics and in art and design that explored society and culture. A Bavarian German professor encouraged us to reflect on our place in society and express it visually. That was the turning point. I called my parents and said that while I could work as an engineer, what I truly wanted was to become a media artist. That was in 1982, and it defined my path.

“My education was rooted in physics and mechanical engineering. These were creative environments, yet I felt a void, the absence of art.”

Is there a different way of thinking as an artist compared to an engineer?

My education was rooted in physics and mechanical engineering. At MIT I was surrounded by my social crowd was people like Marvin Minsky and his students in the MIT AI Lab. After graduation one of them, Danny Hillis, asked me to join his new company Thinking Machines Corporation, where I was lead product designer on his Connection Machine – the world’s first AI supercomputer, and even worked with Nobel physicist Richard Feynman. I worked on the Connection Machine with Danny Hillis at Thinking Machines Corporation.

These were creative environments, yet I felt a void, the absence of art. My mother was an artist who moved from abstract woodblock prints to Japanese performing arts and then calligraphy. My father came to MIT in 1950 as a lecturer in naval architecture and while there shifted to design and architecture, focusing on how people move through inhabit and perceive space.

That dual background showed me what was missing in my highly technical world. When the Connection Machine project ended, I left the technology bubble. I left my job, home, and language and moved to Munich.

The Munich Academy of Fine Arts was traditional, centered on painting and sculpture, but one design professor and his assistant worked with video and even simple computer graphics. Access to video and computer graphics was rare, and that became my entry back into digital and media art.

You left a stable career to start over. Where did you find the courage?

I knew I could return to engineering. Hewlett Packard supported women engineers, and I had mentors and a strong network. At Thinking Machine I had just completed the design for a five million dollar AI supercomputer, which gave me confidence.

My father always said to do what you truly want because you will be good at it and it will work out. He had left naval engineering to become an architect. We did not have much money, but we lived among artists and designers who made it work. That gave me faith.

So AR becomes a form of activism?

It can. AR offers visibility to underrepresented voices and creates space for dialogue. Parts of the art world still seek exclusivity, but that is changing. With basic media training many people can create AR works. It has become a democratic form.

Is there an ethical dimension when anyone can use it?

All art has an ethical dimension. Public art, physical or digital, invites debate. AR lowers permission barriers for creating in public space, which opens participation and dialogue. If we value free expression, we must also accept disagreement.