Siavash Tohidi

Siavash Tohidi is an artist and designer working in the intersection of art, technology, and healthcare. Along with expertise in fabrication processes with various materials, he has extensive experience in practicing and teaching 3D digital design and emerging fabrication technologies, including 3D asset creation, algorithmic-aided-design, and additive/subtractive manufacturing technologies.

As an artist, Tohidi relishes the ideas of place-making and our understanding of how we negotiate spaces in our daily life, especially as an outsider to a new culture and space. He is also interested in exploring how the digital world is shaping, altering, and even replacing our physical existence. For example, how does pre-exploratory digital sightseeing on a map service alter how our brain constructs the memory or perception of spaces before and after an actual visit? Can a digital projection replace your skin or create an alternate augmented reality on an existing physical entity? While using a variety of materials, media, and technologies to convey his ideas to the audience, his practice and research are evolving toward projects that incorporate digital media, such as augmented reality and computer vision. Tohidi has taught sculpture and 3D digital design and fabrication in various institutions, and also has collaborated as grant principal investigator and co-principal investigator with researchers and educators in other disciplines such as architecture, medicine, and engineering. In doing so, he has effectively integrated emerging technologies within art departments by developing fabrication labs that would foster the role of emerging technologies and their applications in various disciplines.

Tohidi earned a Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture and Expanded Practice from Ohio University and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Crafts from University of Art in Tehran, Iran.