Tamiko Thiel is a visual artist exploring the interplay of place, space, the body and cultural identity. She expresses herself in a variety of media including digital prints, videos, interactive 3d virtual worlds and augmented reality. She has taught and lectured internationally at institutions such as Carnegie Mellon University, the MIT Media Lab, Harvard Center for European Studies, the Bauhaus-University in Weimar, Germany, University of California/San Diego, the University of Southern California School of Cinema-Television and the School of Film and Television in Babelsberg, Germany. In winter semester 2011-2012 she was Visiting Professor for Technologies of Non-linear Dramaturgies at the Berlin University of the Arts, Institute of Time-Based Media. A founding member of the cyberartist group Manifest.AR, she participated in the pathbreaking augmented reality exhibit “We AR in MoMA,” an uninvited guerilla takeover of MoMA New York. Videos of Thiel’s “Art Critic Face Matrix” were featured in articles in the New York Times and on WNYC (National Public Radio). In 2011 she led the Manifest.AR Venice Biennial AR Intervention, placing her work series "Shades of Absence," on censorship in the visual arts, in the Venice Giardini and in the German National Pavilion, which won the Golden Lion Award for best national pavilion.