Amerika received his MFA from Brown University. After publishing two cult-novels, The Kafka Chronicles and Sexual Blood, he turned his energy towards net art. His goal is to expand the concept of writing so that it includes writing in and with new media technologies. He is the founder of the Alt-X Online Network, one of the oldest online art and literary networks. Originally founded as a Gopher site by Amerika in late 1992, it features the art, fiction, poetry, and critical theory of over 500 international contributors. In 1993, Amerika published the widely translated Avant Pop Manifesto on Alt-X.
Amerika is also the creator of GRAMMATRON, "a virtual writing machine that translates your experience for you as you experience it." The experiential aspects of hypertext fiction were thoroughly investigated in GRAMMATRON. GRAMMATRON was the first of three major net art works that Amerika created over a decade of pioneering new media forms. The second work in the net art trilogy is PHON:E:ME, an mp3 concept album with hyper:liner:notes that premiered as a newly commissioned artwork at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Whereas GRAMMATRON explored the nature of multilinear narrative in cyberpace, PHON:E:ME looked back at the influence of conceptual art on new media culture. The work deals with the interrelationship between writing, sound, and hypermedia narrative, and features Amerika's unique vocals (he was the former lead vocalist for the now defunct art-rock band, Dogma Hum). The final work in the new media trilogy is FILMTEXT which premiered at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London as part of Amerika's HOW TO BE AN INTERNET ARTIST retrospective, the first-ever European net art retrospective (Amerika's "Avant-Pop: The Stories of Mark Amerika" net art retrospective in Tokyo, was the first net art retrospective in art history). FILMTEXT is an exploration into digital narrative across new media platforms and incorporates a Flash art website, an mp3 concept album, an experimental artist ebook, and a series of live audio-visual performances. These live performances eventually morphed into Amerika's international tour as "VJ Persona."
Amerika's major collection of artist writings from 1993-2005 is entitled META/DATA: A Digital Poetics (The MIT Press/Leonardo Books).
His latest work is a series of feature-length "Foreign Films" made in various media formats including HDV and mobile phone video. The first of the series is entitled "My Autoerotic Muse" and the second is entitled "Immobilité". A solo exhibition of "Immobilité" premiered at the Chelsea Art Museum's Project Room for New Media in April/May 2009. "Immobilité" was featured at the Tate museum website as part of their Intermedia program.
On October 22, 2009, UNREALTIME, a comprehensive retrospective exhibition of Amerika's diverse portfolio of artworks, opened at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens, Greece. The show ended on January 10, 2010.
Amerika is a Professor of Art and Art History at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Amerika has been named a "Time Magazine 100 Innovator," and his digital artwork has been shown at museums around the world, including four major retrospectives, one each at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, the Media Arts Plaza in Tokyo, Ciberart Bilbao, and FILE in São Paulo. He has received art commissions from venues such as the Walker Art Center, the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, IBM, Sony PlayStation, and the Machida City Museum of Graphic Arts in Tokyo. His net art work PHON:E:ME was nominated for a Webby Award in 1999. Amerika has delivered many keynote addresss at a variety of interdisciplinary conferences and festivals including the "Disrupting Narratives" symposium at Tate Modern, the "Visionary Landscapes: Electronic Literature Organization 2008 Conference" in Vancouver, Digital Art and Culture in Bergen, Norway, Ciber@rt Bilbao, the "Buddhism and New Media" conference at Dongguk University in Seoul, Transmediale 2001 in Berlin, and the UNESCO-sponsored WSIS Summit on "ICT and Creativity" in Vienna.
