A founding member of the pioneering media collective Raindance, PAUL RYAN was both a practitioner and theroetician of the early video movement in the 1970s. He remains active in the medium. Ryan's video work has evolved from free-form collaborations with members of Raindance to the invention of formal collaborative practices and the conceptualization of a notational system for interpreting the natural and built environment with electronic media. NASA published his Earthscore Notational System. Ryan's design for an Environmental Television Channel was presented at a United Nations conference. His conceptualization of a program for a new Hall of Risk in Lower Manhattan was presented at the Venice Biennale. Ryan has published in numerous journals, including Leonardo, Afterimage, Millennium, Terra Nova, and Semiotica. Ryan is the author of Cybernetics of the Sacred) and Video Mind, Earth Mind.
Ryan was born in 1943. He received a B.A. from New York University and pursued graduate studies with Marshall McLuhan at Fordham University. Mr. Ryan is a member of the Core Faculty in Graduate Media Studies at New School University. He lives in New York City.