Artist's Biography

Paul's video art work has been presented in Japan, Turkey, France, Germany, Holland, Spain and throughout the United States, including at the Primitivism Show at The Museum of Modern Art and The American Century Show at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Mr. Ryan authored Cybernetics of the Sacred and Video Mind, Earth Mind. His articles have appeared in numerous journals including IS Journal, Millennium, Leonardo, Terra Nova and Semiotica. NASA published his Earthscore Notation System. Mr. Ryan was part of the early video movement, founded and edited a bioregional magazine in North Jersey, and co-founded and directed the Gaia Institute at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. His design for an Environmental Television Channel has been presented at the United Nations. Mr. Ryan studied with both Marshall McLuhan and Gregory Bateson. His teaching experience includes New York University, SUNY New Paltz, The Savannah College of Art and Design and Parsons School of Design. Currently he is a Member of the Core Faculty in the Graduate Communication Program at the New School University.

N.B. Paul Ryan is available for lectures, workshops, consultations and commissions. Please contact by email at waterpr3@aol.com or go to the Contact page of this website.

Paul Ryan's Resume

• Descriptions of his Work
  • For Anthropologists - Tom De Zengotita
  • For Peirce Scholars - Roberta Kevelson
  • For Artists - Frank Gillette


• Conversations with Paul Ryan
  • Artist's Interview with Willoughbly
  • Metalogue with Gregory Bateson
  • Dialogue with Pierre Levy

Commentary on the Work of Paul Ryan

….a fresh synthesis of the artistic and the technological… no refutation of science and technology here: rather, a system is defined which embraces the multiple ways humans 'know,' in order to address the environmental crisis.

John Giancola, Associate Professor of Communications,
Tampa University Former Director of Video Program at New York State Council on the Arts

Interdisciplinary… intercultural… To see what Ryan does with anthropology is to realize what anthropology has become and what if failed to be… Most interesting [is] Ryan's persistent and developing critique of duality …in favor of an assortment of triadic structures…devised…to bring a self regulating openness to human conscious and community…when Ryan takes on duality, he takes on human community and consciousness itself, not an academic commentary.

Thomas De Zengotita, Anthropologist, New York University

Both the ecological possibilities of TV and the problems of fascistic domination of it have been grasped by Paul Ryan-artist and polymath-subtle, complex, relevant, Ryan proposes that we generate feed-back by television from the scientifically informed, thousand eyed demos, the people. This is something new under the sun…decentered, democratic system in which we all can contribute in unpredictable, self-correcting ways.

Bruce Wilshire, Professor of Philosophy, Ruters University

This thinking is remarkably consistent…informed by an intelligent creative use of the theories of Charles S. Peirce, Gregory Bateson, Rene Thom, Nelson Goodman…Ryan makes some original contributions himself in the conceptual realm…he is working in an American tradition of theorizing, exemplified in the work of Buckminster Fuller and John Cage…one of the most innovative explorers… addressing the operations of an electronic civilization on its own terns.

Gregory Ulmer, Professor of Literature, University of Florida

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