Marius Watz is an artist concerned with generative systems for creating visual form, still, animated or realtime. His signature is a brand of visual hedonism, marked by colourful organic shapes and a maximalist attitude. Most of his works deal with drawing machines implemented in software, live visuals for music or large-scale projections of plastic visual systems.
A veteran of media art, Watz has been exploring the use of software as an aesthetic medium since the early 1990s, and is renowned for his vivid colors and hard-edged abstractions.
Watz discovered the computer at age 11 and immediately found his direction in life. At age 20 he defected from Computer Science studies to do graphics for raves, using his programming to create organic shapes in 2D and 3D. In parallel to creating his own work, Watz worked as a graphic designer for many years, probing the limits of design. In the years 2000-2002 he ran the studio Products of Play with Erik Johan Worsøe Eriksen before deciding to focus on his art practice.
In 2003 he premiered the public art commission Drawing Machine 1-12, a work that was shown for two years on the home page of the Norwegian Government and Ministries of State.
In 2005 Watz started Generator.x, a platform for generative art and design which so far has resulted in a conference, a blog, a travelling exhibition and concert tour. In 2005 he also received an honorary mention for his project Universal Digest Machine.
Watz is a lecturer at the Oslo School of Architecture and the Oslo National Academy of the Arts. He is currently based in Oslo and New York City.