Joseph Nechvatal (°1951, USA) makes computer-robotic assisted paintings that allow the tradition of canvas painting to collide with our present digital and technology-based culture. In this sense they create an interface between the virtual and actual - what Nechvatal calls the "viractual". His current viractual work stems from a computer virus program developed by the artist in 1991. Working with electronic visual information and computer-robotics since 1986, Nechvatal's featured paintings translate intimate body images into basic pictorial units which the computer virus mutates and transforms. Nechvatal's innovative work fuses drawing, digital-photography, written language, and externalized computer code. The results of this extensive process are acrylic paintings which engage the viewer in what Johana Drucker has described as a form of "critical pleasure".