Federico Díaz is one of the most important of a new generation of artists from the Czech Republic today. Since the mid-1990s, he has been producing consistently innovative and engaging work through experimentation with new media. His imagination encompasses the rudimentary and the refined, a combination that infuses his work with particular emotional force.

Díaz explores ideas drawn from biogenetics and cosmogony and seeks to create a link between the two. As such, his work, which borders on virtual synthesis, sets in motion a continual reformulation of the relationship between man and the universe. It is perhaps unsurprising then that his installations and projects are without exception interactive: the spectator not only becomes part of the work of art, however, but influences it by the form, appearance and movement of his or her body.

The young artist is not interested in works of art as material artefacts or as aesthetic objects; instead he envisages art as a global visual and acoustic field, and aims at no less than reconstructing human sensibility. For several years, he has been working as the creative leader of the Prague-based company, E-Area which is currently engaged in an architectural project to build a new centre of education. The company, which specialises in integrating abstract art and cutting edge technology, hopes that this latest project will benefit both Czech and international academic communities.

The first part of the venture, called E-Mpact, is an attempt to built a computer large enough for a human being to fit inside it. The computer will then be used to enable students to experience a variety of situations in virtual reality in order to improve their understanding of the world around them. Another aim is to simulate the effects that our behaviour in the present will have on the environment in the future, without real time restrictions.

Diáz"s projects, which have been presented at Prague, Paris, London, Milan, Madrid, Dusseldorf and Tokyo, can be regarded as meditations on the core themes of appearance and disappearance, continuity and change, and fullness and emptiness.