Kathleen Ruiz is a media artist who creates simulations, games, sculpture and photography. Her work explores issues about perception, behavior, interaction and the confluence of the imaginary and the real, inviting inquiry into how conceptual constructs are built and how they serve to shape ethics and power. Ruiz poses questions about the oxymoron of virtual violence, catharsis, and desensitization in simulated space. She provides us with simulated places where multiple viewpoints can be explored and expanded, while challenging us to simultaneously perceive the perspectives of the observer, the observed and the process of observation. Ruiz is an Associate Professor of Integrated Arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute where she develops and teaches courses in simulation, experimental game design, photography, digital imaging, and emerging genres. She is a founding member of the ErGoGenics Game Research Group and the CapAbility Games Research Project. Ruiz holds a Master of Arts from New York University and is a doctoral candidate (abd) at the European Graduate School where she studied with French sociologist, cultural critic, and theorist Jean Baudrillard; political philosopher and media aesthetics theorist Jean Luc Nancy; media philosopher Wolfgang Schirmacher; French film maker Chantel Ackerman; British sculptor Antony Gormley; Palestinian/Israeli filmmaker Elia Suleiman; British photographer, and critic Victor Burgin; performance artist, researcher in neurology and anthropologist of the virtual world, Sandy Stone; and German philosopher of photography Hubertus von Amelunxen; and others. She is the recipient of the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation Award, a New York City Department of Cultural Affairs Percent for Art Commission, the New York State Council on the Arts exhibition grant, the Experimental Television Center Grant, and the New York State Council on the Arts Individual Artist award. Her work was recently sponsored by Sony Computer Entertainment in Europe. Ruiz's art has been exhibited at numerous galleries and museums in the United States, Mexico, Europe, South America, and Asia and has been reviewed/published in the New York Times, Aperture, Art News, ARTI, Jornal do Brasil, The College Art Journal, The MIT Press, Reuters Video News International, Computer Graphics, Yale University Art Gallery, Wired, USA Today, arteTV, Kultur:Deutsche Welle, TeknoKultura, and others. Ruiz's current research is centered on simulation, perspective and empathy.