Carol Parkinson, Executive Director of Harvestworks, NY, for 37 years since 1987, has focused on the development of experimental artworks that explore sound, data, and other emerging technologies. Parkinson’s professional services include panel participation at the New York Foundation for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Parkinson is the Executive Producer of the New York Electronic Art Festival, a series of workshops, concert performances, and exhibitions centered on art and technology. Parkinson is a founding member of TELLUS, the Audio Cassette Magazine, a cassette–based magazine of experimental music and sound art published between 1982 and 1996.
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Shaping Experimental Arts @ Harvestworks NY 1982-2025
In her talk, Shaping the Experimental Media Arts in New York City, former Executive Director and current Board Member Carol Parkinson will discuss works from artists in the collection, including Blue Morph by Victoria Vesna in the New York Electronic Art Festival (2011), Alan Rath in The Interactive Show (1992), and Christian Marclay in SoundWave NYC (1987), as well as a few current exhibitions.
Lita Albuquerque is an internationally renowned installation, environmental artist, painter and sculptor. She has developed a visual language that brings the realities of time and space to a human scale and is acclaimed for her ephemeral and permanent art works executed in the landscape and public sites.
Gustavo Alfonso Rincon, Ph.D., is educated as an architect, artist, curator, and media arts & design-engineering research scholar. He is an advocate for education and research as a human right. His academic and creative work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, while his professional practice has served clients across the globe.
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Curating Immersive Worlds: AI Visions, Spatial Narrative, and Speculative Media Architectures
A rethinking of the New Media Architectures (NMA) conceptual framework emerges as media arts research and technology continue to evolve through a series of curatorial investigations situated at the intersection of art, design, education, and immersive virtual environments (IVE) research. This presentation explores a journey through the language of experimental media design practices and speculative spatial systems that examine the future of artistic production, technological and sensory culture, and interdisciplinary research.
A range of creative research collaborations will be discussed, from investigations developed through the AlloSphere Research Facility to exhibition and community engagement initiatives presented through ACM SIGGRAPH conferences. The presentation will also reflect on a continuing series of online dialogues initiated at the beginning of the pandemic that explored AI, architecture, emerging media cultures, and science, organized in collaboration with Digital Futures.
Finally, the presentation revisits a series of ongoing curatorial projects as philosophical and experimental instruments for institutional critique, cultural reflection, and public engagement, offering a snapshot of the complex technological and social conditions shaping our world today.
Dr. Paul Thomas, Honorary Professor at UNSW Art and Design and founder of the Studio for Transdisciplinary Art Research as well as the founder and series-chair of the Transdisciplinary Imaging Conference series 2010-2022. In 2000 he instigated and was the founding Director of the Biennale of Electronic Arts Perth 2002, 2004 and 2007. As an artist he is a pioneer of transdisciplinary art practice. His practice led research takes not only inspiration from nanoscience and quantum theory, but actually operates there.
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Visualising Duration: A Quantum Perspective
Throughout the 20th century, radical experimental artists have challenged the fundamental questions brought to the surface by quantum mechanics, highlighting the invisible forces at play. Here, the observer is integral to quantum physics, becoming part of what is observed, shaping the visualisations of the elusive quantum phenomena. Drawing examples of two artists, Thomas Wilfred, and Takis from the David Bermant Foundation, and artwork from Dr. Paul Thomas' own practice, he will discuss the concepts of duration from a quantum perspective in connection to related visualising phenomena. The artworks create visual sensations and expressions of the immense complexity of visualising the invisible, ineffable, and intangible.
Following the talk, we will be joined by special guests: Kurt Hentschläger, Andrea Rassell, and Bill Seaman
Isabel Beavers (they/she) is a transdisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles working at the intersections of new media, ecology, and collective action. Across artistic production, curatorial practice and teaching, their research challenges us to imagine adaptive climate futures–ones that rely on alternative modes of knowing as structures for living. Embodied and site-specific research are central to their practice through which they have explored Arctic sea ice melt, plant and human adaptation to wildfire in the American west, deep sea mining, the ethics of artificial intelligence, and eco-feminist re-imaginings of Western mythologies.
Beavers’ work on deep sea mining was recently included in Getty's 2024 PST Art + Science Collide as part of Transformative Currents: Art and Action in the Pacific Ocean. Beavers is the Artistic Director of Supercollider LA, and the Hixon-Riggs Early Career Fellow in STS at Harvey Mudd University. Through artistic practice, teaching, and curating, they foster communities of care and experimentation, inviting audiences to sense the unseen and imagine new eco-futures.
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TENDER BODIES: HYBRID MEDIA + VERDANT KIN
In this presentation, Beavers discuss Nam June Paik’s Virtually Wise (1994), a work from the David Bermant Foundation Collection, and Anne Niemitz’s Kihikihi (2024), which was supported by a David Bermant Foundation grant. Drawing from these pieces, Isabel will explore how hybrid media, ecological awareness, and embodied experience can shape new frameworks for resilience and collective imagination.
Speaker: JoAnn Kuchera-Morin and Frederick Janka
Responders: Shannon Kennedy and Manjari Sharma
Our two co-presenters will be discussing four objects from the David Bermant Foundation Collection: Nam June Paik, Participation TV, 1969; Otto Piene, Light Ballet I; Marcel Duchamp, Rotorelief (optical discs) 1935-1953, edition c. 1965, and Alejandro & Moira Sina, Spinning Shaft 1978, 1983. Drawing connections between these artworks and current and upcoming artworks and projects at the Allosphere and the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, including DJ Javier: San Milano Drive (October 2025) and Falling into the Future: Kinetic Art at the Edge of the World (October 2026)
COLOR, LIGHT, MOTION is an online series featuring media artists and scholars in dialogue about artworks from the Bermant Collection of media and kinetic arts. Each featured presenter will discuss selected artworks in history and context and in relation to their own work and connections. This series is produced in collaboration with Harvestworks NY and the David Bermant Foundation.
Speaker: Val Ravaglia will discuss works from the David Bermant Collection including: Wen-Ying Tsai, Martha Boto, and Julio Le Parc
Responders: Francesca Franco and Darko Fritz
Val Ravaglia is Curator, Displays and International Art at Tate Modern, London, and Curator of Electric Dreams: Art and Technology before the Internet. They assisted with the complete rehang of Tate Modern's Collection Displays in 2015-16 and have curated numerous collection display rooms since 2012. They co-curated the Tate Modern exhibition A Year in Art: Australia 1992 (2021-2023) and led the touring Tate exhibition The Dynamic Eye: Beyond Op and Kinetic Art. They were the Assistant Curator for the 2017 Turbine Hall Commission by SUPERFLEX and Tate Modern’s Nam June Paik retrospective. Their research interests include the intersections of art, science, and technology, as well as non-anthropocentric philosophies and the posthumanities.
Speaker: Amber Stucke Artist Talk + Reviewing Christian Marclay's works in the David Bermant Foundation Collection
Responders: Mark Patsfall and Jovi Schnell
Amber Stucke is an interdisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles, California. She identifies her work within ideas of social relationships situated between artistic research, science, and imagination.
Amber Stucke's sound installation, Talking to Plants, is featured in Atmosphere of Sound: Sonic Art in Times of Climate Disruption, co-curated by Victoria Vesna and Anuradha Vikram as part of the Getty PST ART initiative.
Satinder Gil, Cambridge, UK, Emily Harris & John Halpern of I.C.A.I, Tuning Fork, NY, Victoria Vesna, Walter Gekelman & Haley Marks, UCLA
[SUN]Flower Plasma
art + physics = energy
Please join Satinder Gil, LASER, Cambridge, UK, Emily Harris & John Halpern of I.C.A.I, Tuning Fork, NY as they explore this art sci collaboratorative project with Victoria Vesna, Walter Gekelman, Haley Marks about the art sci collaborative process.
Friday, November 8th, 2024
10am PST, 1pm EDT, 19h CET
[SUN]Flower Plasma installation premiered August 31, 2024 in Elements! in Art and Tech exhibition, organized by Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center as part of their Art and Technology Program on Governors Island.
Funded in part by NYSCA.
Vimeo Link:
Building on the “Art + Physics = Energy” explorations, [SUN] Flower Plasma delves into the ecological and geopolitical significance of sunflowers and the scientific importance of Alfvén waves. The installation features sound and images from the Large Plasma Device, solar wind data from NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, and natural recordings, offering an immersive meditation on solar energy and the cycle of creation and destruction. The sound was mixed by Kevin Ramsay at Harvestworks NY, adding an additional layer of depth to the experience.
This art sci project resulted from years of dialogue between Victoria Vesna and plasma physicist Dr. Walter Gekelman, an expert in Alfvén waves who built one of the largest basic plasma machines in the world. In addition to gathering materials from the plasma lab, Victoria worked together with biomedical engineer Dr. Haley Marks to image sunflower parts, revealing their remarkable microscopic structures resembling the sun.
Discover more on: https://sunflowerplasma.com
As part of UCLA Honors Seminar Series on "Biotechnology and Art," taught by Prof. Victoria Vesna, we are excited to welcome artist and writer Ellen K. Levy for a captivating lecture. Known for her innovative exploration of science and technology through art, Levy's insights will enrich our understanding of the intersection between these fields. You are welcome to join the discussion.
The ideas and collections of D’Arcy Thompson, the University’s first Professor of Biology, have profoundly influenced many artists and writers who re-interpret natural history, projecting it through the lens of evolution, fantasy, consumption, fear or desire. This unique exhibition features a site-specific installation in the Tower Foyer Gallery with additional elements in the D’Arcy Thompson Zoology Museum. “Seeing Through” proposes tours of Thompson’s collection visualised as if through the lenses of futurist author J G Ballard and pop-artist Richard Hamilton. We visit the collection through dizzying perspectival renderings of merged organic/machine hybrids, eco-catastrophes and space travel, as alluded to by Hamilton and Ballard. Levy’s speculative exhibition explores our synergistic relationship with technology, including our aspirations and its threats. Our notions of evolution are, themselves, evolving.
