Ali Momeni was born in Isfahan, Iran and emigrated to the United States at the age of twelve. He studied physics and music and completed his doctoral degree in music composition, improvisation, and performance with computers from the Center for New Music and Audio technologies at UC Berkeley. Momeni is interested in interactivity in the arts, technologically mediated social interaction, gesture to sound/image mappings, and data‐driven search and synthesis techniques. He currently holds an assistant professorship in the Department of Art and the Interdisciplinary Program for Collaborative Arts (IPCA) at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.
The Joyce Award supported the MIA to commission Momeni to create collaborative, new media installations to engage younger audiences and the diverse residents of the museum’s community, the Whittier neighborhood; nearly one‐third of Whittier residents were born outside of the United States. The commission launched with emergent contemporary art programming at the MIA in 2011.