Janell Baxter is an artist, educator, and interactive media developer. She began creating interactive art (in both traditional and digital mediums) in 1993 and has been focusing on emergent and adaptive systems for the past several years. She is currently working on a series of small bots that analyze visuals in search of meaning and inspiration for their own "artwork". These bundles of code have been anthropomorphized in her view as budding artists, and their continued artistic development will soon expand to include audio (in collaboration with Dr. Joseph Cancellaro).
Commercial work over the past decade has primarily focused on building solutions that enhance communication and collaboration; creating technologies that increase the effectiveness of teams and individuals. These applications have been primarily web based utilizing technologies and languages such as .NET, C#, SQL, ASP, CSS, and XML. Applications that write web standards compliant code have been a particular interest.
Ms. Baxter has been teaching interactive media at Columbia College Chicago since 1998. She has a MS degree in computer science from the University of Chicago, a BFA in studio arts from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and she is a McCarthy Technologies certified instructor. More information about her and her work can be found on her website: janellbaxter.com