Dirk Koy (Swiss, b. 1977) is a Basel-based artist and filmmaker who works at the junction of graphic, photographic and video approaches with digital techniques including 2D and 3D animation, photogrammetry, drone footage and augmented and virtual reality. His work stages a meeting between the real world and a virtual one, testing the limits of the software he manipulates to give a distorted, singular view of everyday life.
Koy got his first video camera, a Sony Video8, at fourteen, and treated it as “a kind of pencil”, later connecting a camcorder to a television to generate analogue feedback loops, an early “experiment between control and coincidence” that remains part of his process.He studied visual communication at the Academy of Art and Design in Basel, completing his degree in 2002, then worked at KMS-Team Munich in graphic design and animation, contributing to Porsche Design's cross-media corporate identity.,In 2007 he co-founded the visual communication studio Equipo, and since 2011 has taught time-based media at the Institute of Visual Communication at HGK Basel.,
In 2016 he founded the experimental film studio Dirk Koy Bild und Bewegung, through which he has made commissioned work for the electronic music duo Yello, Nick Knight's SHOWstudio, Balenciaga, Mercedes-Benz and Fila, including a series of animations reimagining SHOWstudio's own logo.,In the series Shape Studies (2019-23), photographs and videos of objects and living beings are manipulated in what he calls “a dialogue between real objects and their digitisation”, including studies of his own 1982 Chevrolet Citation and of his cat Sina, who died in 2022. His 2022 work Bildraum, made with sound by Ben Kaczor for the opening of the Kunsthaus Baselland, unfolds a hand-drawn animated line over a 3D model, moving from surface into space.
He has made commissioned works for displays at Swiss and French train stations, supported by Geneva's Fonds Cantonal d'art contemporain and Centre d'Art Contemporain, and shown work on the digital screens of “Neo Shibuya TV” in Tokyo.His work has been exhibited at Art Center Nabi in Seoul, HEK (Haus der elektronischen Künste) in Basel, the Supernova festival in Denver and the FILE Festival in São Paulo, and won the Basel Media Art Prize in 2019 and the Prix du film Off-Limits at Annecy in 2022.,In 2025 the Museum für Digitale Kunst presented his work, exploring the crossroads of nature and technology, in the historic walls of Castel Grande in Bellinzona, alongside Esther Hunziker, Sabine Hertig, Andreas Gysin and Sidi Vanetti.
