Fonds F877 - Norman White fonds

Norman White, a new media artist, was born in San Antonio, Texas, in 1938. He grew up in and around Boston, Massachusetts, and obtained his B.A. in Biology from Harvard University in 1959. Originally planning to become a fisheries biologist, White changed his mind and decided to travel to places like New York City, San Francisco, London, and the Middle East during the 1960s.

While living in San Francisco, he worked as an electrician at Hunter's Point Naval Shipyard, and developed a fascination for electrical switching systems. In London England, 1965-1967, he began to experiment with electronics. He then moved to Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where he began creating a series of kinetic, digital logic driven light machines. His first artwork utilizing "RTL" integrated circuits was shown in the E.A.T. sponsored group exhibition entitled "Some More Beginnings", in 1969, at the Brooklyn Museum. From 1978 to 2003. White taught classes such as "Mechanics for Real Time Sculpture" as part of the Integrated Media Program of the Ontario College of Art & Design

A retrospective of his work and influence, called Norm’s Robots and Machine Life, with works by both White and several Canadian artists he has influenced, was shown at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, Ontario in 2004. From 1992 to 2003, White was an essential force behind the OCAD Sumo Robot Challenge, an annual competition akin to an automaton Olympics. From 2003 to 2016 , White taught in the Radio Television Arts Department of Ryerson University, Toronto, Ontario. He retired from teaching in 2016.