CATHERINE RICHARDS lives and works in Ottawa, Canada, where she is an assistant professor in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Ottawa. In 1991, Richards and Nell Tenhaaf organized the Virtual Seminar on the Bioapparatus conference at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Alberta. This was one of the first public arts events in Canada to examine virtual realities and the interfaces between technology and the human body. This innovative project earned her the 1992 Corel Prize from the Canadian Conference of the Arts. In 1993, she won the Petro-Canada Award in Media Arts from the Canada Council for the Arts for her outstanding use of new technologies in media arts and, specifically, for Spectral Bodies (1991). That same year, her interactive work Virtual Body was shown at the Antwerp '93 Festival in Belgium. She received a Canadian Centre for the Visual Arts Fellowship at the National Gallery of Canada for 1993 and 1994 to continue her work in contemporary art. For 1994 and 1995, the gallery awarded her the Claudia De Hueck Fellowship in Art and Science for her Charged Hearts project (1997). (Biographical notes written by Jean Gagnon) [2001]