Kevin Cunningham is an award-winning New York based artist and producer. He is the founder and Executive Artistic Director of 3-Legged Dog Media and Theater Group. Over the last 16 years he also ran 3LD Art & Technology Center, 3-Legged Dog's multi-venue high tech development studio for experimental arts of all kinds in Lower Manhattan. He is known for artistic and technological innovation as well as business innovation in the not for profit arts. He is the author, director and designer of many large-scale interdisciplinary artworks and experiences, both original works and commissioned large-scale experiences. These works include House of Bugs, The Realism of Simple Machines (MAP Grant), Automatic Earth, Degeneracy (MAP Grant), Accidental Records (Venice Biennale) Losing Something (Hewes Award, Prague Quadrennial), and Fire Island (Prague Quadrennial). He is currently creating Not-Knowing a very large-scale immersive work based on texts by Chuck Mee. He has produced 140 complex multi-media productions since 2006 and 7 feature length films garnering consistent critical acclaim and his productions have won many awards including a Pulitzer Prize, five Drama Desk Nominations, four Selections to Sundance and selection for the Venice Biennale among others. Works range from interactive installations to large-scale immersive theater and opera to installations that are made up wholly of the audience's literal hallucinations to full length dances between humans and industrial robots.
His artistic focus over the last 30 years has been on the creation of large-scale interdisciplinary artwork of all kinds and on the creation of artists' tools that enable intuitive manipulation of timebased and sensory elements. In recent years he has worked to create a self-sufficient platform for artistic experimentation in the face of declining philanthropic support for the arts. The business model leverages his international pool of talented associates and his knowledge and connections in technology and the arts to create custom teams that build one of a kind largescale artworks and experiences for clients as diverse as the The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lady Gaga and Vogue China. Proceeds from these works finance purely artistic projects where he and his teams develop the tools and methods that drive innovation in the next commission.
He is the recipient of many awards and has received major grants from most major private cultural foundations and has raised significant funding from social and traditional venture capital funds in the U.S. and Europe. Awards and honors include two Rockefeller Foundation Residencies in Bellagio Italy, Edward F. Albee Foundation Residency, selection for the Venice Biennale 2004 and 2008 for interactive media design, 2007 American Theater Wing Hewes Design Award and a Hewes Nomination in 2008. Two of his works have been selected for the prestigious Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design 2011, Official Selection for the 2013 Sundance, American Film Institute, New York, Hamptons Film Festivals and CPH:DOX. In 2016 and 17 he was nominated for four Drama Desk Awards and in 2017 he co-produced Angels Bone which won the Pulitzer Prize in Music for composer Du Yun. In 2018 his work Not Knowing was sponsored by Nokia/Bell Labs Experiments in Art and Technology and in 2019 his Immersive Stage was selected along with three immersive artworks for the Sundance Festival New Frontiers Central Venue. He has twice been awarded the Rockefeller Foundation Cultural Innovation Fund Grant.
Cunningham frequently speaks publicly about diversity in collaborative artistic practice, freedom of expression and censorship, digital technology and the arts, the benefits of digital production processes, alternative business models for the arts, disaster recovery for the arts and the importance of the arts to economic, community, individual and social development in an open society. He has taught at Columbia University and lectured at NYUITP, Carnegie Mellon, Rice University, Pace University and The New School. He has also spoken publicly at the Americans for the Arts National Conference, Temp d’Image in Montreal, Quanta Arts Foundation in Taipei and the Click Festival, Denmark. He has provided keynote addresses for the Nordic Arts and Audiences Conference, Canadian Arts Summit and The China Shanghai International Arts Festival as well as many local conferences and artist gatherings.