Professor Christian Moeller has been appointed chair of the UCLA Department of Design Media Arts effective July 1. Moeller succeeds professor Rebecca Allen, whose leadership has guided the department since July 2014. Peter Lunenfeld will serve as vice chair.
Moeller has served on the faculty at UCLA since 2001. He is an artist working with contemporary media technologies to produce innovative physical events, which take shape in everything from handheld objects to architectural-scale installations. In the past year, Moeller has installed two large-scale public artworks in the United States: “Stix” in Nashville, Tennessee, and “MetroGnomes” at San Diego International Airport. These, along with his other large-scale site-specific works, interrogate and explore the synergies between architecture, technology and motion. His work has been exhibited internationally at venues including Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt; Spiral Art Center, Tokyo; Centro Cultural de Belem, Lisbon; Science Museum, London; National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts; and ARS Electronica.
Moeller studied architecture at the College of Applied Sciences in Frankfurt, Germany and the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. He was a professor at the State College of Design in Karlsruhe, Germany, until he moved to the U.S. in 2001.
