Since the mid-1980s, George Legrady Studio has explored the transformative impact of computation on the photographic image and cultural narrative through creative coding, data processing and analysis. Projects explore the encoding of aesthetic values through computation for both fine arts applications and academic research.

Prior to my involvement with computer based research begun in the early 1980’s, I was involved with formal, conceptual, and theoretical models to examine the conventions of another technological representational medium: the photographic image. The semantics of photographic representation and the production of cultural and syntactic meaning generated through the photograph’s mechanical and technological visualization were the key topics of these investigations. These include archaeological or archive classification, sampling and fragmenting of information, recontextualizing found materials, strategies of linguistic and semiotic structuring, the analysis of cultural narrative construction and other modes of information management that have entered art practice through the conceptual art movement of the 1960’s. Artistic methods of that era that have served as references for my current work include archive classification work, algorithmic based instructions, some conceptual artists' conditional propositions and narrative systems, and the socio-political investigations of artworks that engage with critical discourse.

My current research investigates arts & engineering studies in swarm mobile camera interaction, data collection, data analysis and visualization presented simultaneously in interactive installations and the internet. The projects make use of self-organizing systems and machine-learning for AI algorithmically generated visualizations.

Research have been supported by a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Science Foundation Intelligence & Information Systems grant, a National Science Foundation Arctic Social Science grant, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, the Daniel Langlois Foundation for the Arts, Science, Technology, Montreal; Creative Capital Foundation, New York; Canada Council for the Arts, Ottawa; National Endowment for the Arts, Washington; Project Socrates, IBM Corporation; University of Southern California Innovative Research Award; University of Southern California Innovative Teaching Award; University of California Santa Barbara Research Across Disciplines; University of California Santa Barbara, College of Letters & Sciences; University of California Santa Barbara Faculty Research Grant; Center for Nanotechnology in Society at UCSB.

Artistic projects have received support from the Siemens Kultur Programm, Munich; Ontario Arts Council; Centre Georges Pompidou Museum of Art, Paris; Kunst und Austellunghalle der Bundes Republic, Bonn; Haus der Kunst, Munich; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; ZKM, Center for Art & Technology, Karlsruhe; c3 Center for Culture Communication, Budapest; Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart; Centre Gantner, Belfort; Frankfurt Museum of Communication; Cornerhouse Gallery, Manchester; Ebner Stolz Associates, Stuttgart; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; Ars Electronica, Linz; Dutch Electronic Arts Festival, Rotterdam; Osnabruck Media Festival; Interval Research Corporation & Voyager Company, San Francisco; Seattle Public Library/ Seattle Arts Commission; Los Angeles Metro Rail; University of Oklahoma, Tulsa; San Francisco State University College of Creative Arts.