Julijonas Urbonas is an artist, designer, researcher, engineer, Vice-Rector for Art at the Vilnius Academy of Arts, and PhD student in Design Interactions at the Royal College of Art, London. Since childhood, he has worked within the field of amusement park development. Having worked in such a field — as an architect, ride designer, head of fairground — he became fascinated by what he’s calling ‘gravitational aesthetics’.  Since then the topic has been at the core of my artistic research, intermingling such fields as critical design, speculative engineering, vehicular poetics, design choreography, social sci-fi, space medicine, theatre and amusement park psychology. 

 

Urbonas’ work has been exhibited internationally and received many awards, including the Award of Distinction in Interactive Art, Prix Ars Electronica 2010. His projects can be found in private and museum collections such as the permanent collection of the Centre for Art and Media Karlsruhe (ZKM).