Mirosław Rogala is a Polish-born American video artist and interactive artist. He has worked in the areas of interactive art, video installation and live performance, post-photographic transformation, and musical composition. Education 1972–76 Studied at Panstwowa Srednia Szkola Muzyczna, (School of Music), Kraków, Poland 1979 Master of Fine Arts in Painting, Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts 1983 Master of Fine Arts in Video, School of the Art Institute of Chicago 2000 PhD in Interactive Arts, CAiiA-STAR Centre for Advanced Inquiry in the Interactive Arts, University of Wales, Newport Interactive Art Rogala's first art work to receive widespread acclaim was his Pulso-Funktory, a pre-interactive mixed media installation created between 1975 and 1979 that contained pre-virtual interactive analogue components. An assemblage of six panels with neon lights and electronic sound effects, it allowed for up to six viewers at a time to interact with it by allowing them to switch between "off" and "on" settings. Although this work was produced to fulfill requirements for a master of arts degree in painting, it prefigured the direction Rogala's art was quickly to take. In the words of critic Frank Popper, "When Rogala moved from Poland to the United States in 1979, he remained attached to his early works, which inspired a need to search for a medium that could synthesize the intrinsics of individual media and the desire to seamlessly cross the boundaries of each medium without losing the intensity, density, and precision in an effort to continue the same idea in different media." Obtaining a master of arts degree in video from the Art Institute of Chicago, Rogala continue to pursue his interest in expanded forms of interactive media. In 1994-95, he received a residency from the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, in Karlsruhe, Germany. The culmination was an installation entitled Lovers Leap. Lovers Leap used two screens facing one another. The viewer's movement within the space triggered the images to change. Rogala's photographic component was of a street in Chicago that would, if the viewer provided the right conditions, jump or "leap" to video clips shot in Jamaica. Lovers Leap was first exhibited at the MultiMediale 4: das Medienkunstfestival des ZKM Karlsruhe, 13-21 Mai 1995. A related CD-ROM version followed. Timothy Druckery has seen Lovers Leap as a major development in interactivity: "In the coupling of spatial and narrative forms ... the spatial becomes a sphere of activity, and the image a