Etan Ilfeld

Etan Ilfeld is a London-based entrepreneur, and the author of Beyond Contemporary Art, an image-driven contemporary art book, which spans disciplines ranging from science, design and architecture to new media, film-making and performance art.

Education

Ilfeld graduated at the top of his undergraduate Physics class at Stanford University and was awarded the David Levine Award. He is also a member of Phi Beta Kappa and holds a Masters in Film Studies from the University of Southern California, and a Masters in Interactive Media from Goldsmiths, University of London.

Media and Art

In 2007, Ilfeld founded Tenderpixel Gallery, a contemporary art gallery in central London. In 2008, Tenderpixel began hosting an annual experimental film competition known as Tenderflix. Ilfeld is also a digital artist and his New Kind of Cinema work was showcased at TEDxLondon in 2011, included in the Apparatjik iPhone magazine and archived in Rhizome's ArtBase. New Kind of Cinema was programmed in Mathematica and inspired by the usage of cellular automata after training with Stephen Wolfram in Pisa during the summer of 2009. Ilfeld was also an executive producer of the feature films Killer Pad (directed by Robert Englund), and Remainder an adaptation of Tom McCarthy's Remainder_(novel) directed by Omer Fast. Ilfeld also produced the sci-fi graphic novel, Binary, based on Chris Hinz's award winning Liege-Killer novel. He has written extensively on contemporary art. His article Contemporary Art and Cybernetics was published in the peer-reviewed Leonardo Journal published by MIT Press in February 2012, and his book, Beyond Contemporary Art, was published in October 2012 by Vivays Publishing.

Watkins Media

Ilfeld is the owner of Watkins Books, London's oldest Mind Body Spirit bookshop (established in 1893). He is also the editor-in-chief of the Watkins' Mind Body Spirit magazine. In the February 2011 issue of Watkins' Mind Body Spirit magazine, Ilfeld launched the 100 Spiritual List, which ranks the 100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People in the world. The 100 Spiritual list continues to be published annually.

In 2014, Ilfeld acquired Watkins Publishing, Nourish, and Angry Robot from Osprey Publishing.

Mind Sports

Ilfeld is a competitive strategy games player having won the World Amateur Poker Championship Title in 2010; he is a ranked USCF chess master, and winner of the under 2300 section of the 2003 US Open. Ilfeld is also the inventor of Diving Chess, a chess variant played in a pool such that each player can think during their turn for as long as they can hold their breath underwater. He is currently the chief organizer of the Mind Sports Olympiad.