27 Facts About Helen Thorington

Helen Louise Thorington was an American radio artist, composer, performer, net artist and writer.

Helen Thorington was the founder of New Radio and Performing Arts, a nonprofit organization based in New York City; the founder and executive producer of New American Radio ; and the founder and co-director of Turbulence.

Helen Thorington has performed nationally, including at Kennedy Center, Jacob's Pillow, Dance Theatre Workshop, and The Kitchen.

Helen Thorington began creating Internet art in the mid-1990s, co-producing several multimedia, hypertext narratives and networked performances that culminated in an installation of the seminal work, Adrift, at The New Museum in 2001.

Helen Thorington was born in Philadelphia and grew up in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania.

Helen Thorington was the daughter of Richard Wainwright Thorington and Katherine Louise Thorington, and sister of Richard W Thorington Jr.

Helen Thorington was a graduate of The Baldwin School, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania and Wellesley College.

Helen Thorington studied English Literature at the University of Minnesota ; continued with Special Studies in the English Comic Novel taught by John Bayley, New College, Oxford University, England ; and completed coursework for a PhD in English literature at Rutgers University.

Helen Thorington died of complications of Alzheimer's disease on April 13,2023, at the age of 94.

Helen Thorington published short stories and other fiction in the 1970s.

Helen Thorington co-authored with Jacki Apple the limited edition artist's book, The Tower in 2015; published in Contemporary Music Review; and was commissioned by Tate Modern, London to write Radio, Art, Life: New Contexts.

Helen Thorington's essays have been published in several books, including First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game and Unsitely Aesthetics - Uncertain Practices In Contemporary Art.

Helen Thorington was commissioned by RAI, RNE and ORF.

Helen Thorington's collaborators included Suzan-Lori Parks, Regine Beyer, Shelley Hirsch, Pamela Z, Agnieszka Waligorska and Sarah Montague.

Helen Thorington spoke at international Radio art conferences and served as the Radio Editor for EAR Magazine from 1987 to 1989.

Helen Thorington curated the CD series Radius which was dedicated to presenting experimental works made for radio broadcast to a wider audience.

Helen Thorington created the score for Jones' Echo ; Sisyphus ; and Open Places, a "group work" at the Battery Park Landfill, New York City.

Helen Thorington collaborated with choreographers Victoria Marks, Susan Salanger, Peter Anastos, and Julie Wright.

Helen Thorington performed her compositions live at numerous venues in New York City, including Dance Theatre Workshop, Experimental Intermedia Foundation, and Roulette.

In 1997, Helen Thorington co-curated the performance series Performing Bodies and Smart Machines at the Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris with Toni Dove and Jeanette Vuocolo.

Helen Thorington composed sound scores for Barbara Hammer's Optic Nerve, which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival and the Whitney Biennial, and Endangered, which was shown at the 1989 Whitney Biennial.

In July 1981, Helen Thorington founded New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc and, with Associate Director Regine Beyer, began soliciting funds from government and private foundations.

Helen Thorington served as executive producer for New American Radio, which was distributed worldwide.

Net Art: Thorington created several works for the Internet, among them Solitaire, an interactive narrative experiment that invited users to co-author the piece; North Country, Parts 1 and 2, a hypertext, nonlinear narrative that can be experienced with or without audio accompaniment; and the multi-location, networked performance, Adrift, a cinematic journey across a harbor that included real-time webcam footage, text, 3D graphics, and soundscape.

Helen Thorington co-founded Networked_Performance and Networked_Music_Review, two research blogs that chronicled network-enabled practice.

Helen Thorington has lectured internationally, including at the conference Media in Transition 5: Creativity, Ownership and Collaboration in the Digital Age, Massachusetts Institute for Technology ; Digital Arts Weeks, Zurich ; and the conference Sounding Cultures, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.

Helen Thorington taught numerous courses and workshops, including at Emerson College, Boston, Massachusetts; School of Visual Arts, New York University, New York; School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and Arts Technology Center, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico.