Reviewing

Elements in Art and Tech

Max Chung, Victoria Vesna, Monica Duncan, Senem Pirler, Luc Vitk, GH Hovagimyan, Jessica Segall, Raphaele Shirley, Tilen Lebar

Featuring Walter Gekelman, Haley Marks, Allison Berkoy

Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center announces the Elements! in Art and Tech, an exhibition for our Art and Technology Program on Governors Island.  Programmed for Fall 2024, the artworks in this group show are inspired by elements of light, water, earth, flower plasma and their influence on humans. Selected by the Harvestworks arts committee and the Executive Director Carol Parkinson,  the works use creative technology such as audio/video spatialization,  gesture, body tracking  and vegetal power.

All events are free. 

Location: Harvestworks Art and Technology Program Building 10a, Nolan Park, Governors Island

Open to the public from 11 am to 5 pm Fri Sat and Sun. PLEASE NOTE THAT WE WILL NOT BE OPEN ON FRIDAYS IN OCTOBER.

Date: Opening August 30th, 2024 –  Closing October 27, 2024.

Artist Opening Saturday August 31, 2024 and Saturday September 7th from 2 – 4:30 pm.

PERFORMANCE on Saturday September 14th by Monica Duncan and Senem Pirler

Performance October 5th at 4 pm and October 12th at 2:45 pm by Luc Vitk

Performance by GH on Sunday October 20 at 2:45 pm

Closing Performance by Tilen Lebar on Sunday October 27th at 2:45 PM

Artists and Artworks include: 

Luc VitkWater Vision is a multichannel piece for water, visitors, and six speakers where the visitors will become part of the installation if they attend one of the three performances. The participants interpret a number score which then generates three hours of water music to be played in the installation space on non-performance days. The performances are on August 31, October 5th and October 12th.

Victoria Vesna with Walter Gekelman and Haley Marks – [SUN] Flower Waves explores the harmonious interaction between sunflowers and AlfvĂŠn waves, demonstrating how art and science converge to reveal deeper understandings. Sunflowers, with their heliotropic movement, symbolize growth and energy, while AlfvĂŠn waves in plasma transport energy along magnetic field lines, crucial for understanding space weather and solar phenomena.

Monica Duncan and Senem Pirler –  Tears for Lost Frequencies is an audio/visual installation that explores our complex relationship with plastic through the act of improvisation.  In Tears for Lost Frequencies, microplastics found in tears become material witnesses to the experience of one’s hearing loss and a speculative space for plastic healing. Performance: Saturday September 14, 2024 at 2:45 pm

Max Chung – metroequilibrium, a digital instrument that captures the relationship of sound and gesture that defines an immersive embodied experience. This installation uses cameras and Google MediaPipe to create an audiovisual experience that highlight an overwhelming and frenetic encounter.

OPENING SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 7, 2024

Jessica Segall – Nom Nom Ohm two antique chandeliers found in Nolan Park are rewired to illuminate the space using potatoes as a power source. Both futuristic and simple, the revival of the former elegant chandeliers through vegetal power suggests a compromised power grid, and the lengths we go to maintain a level of high consumerism rather than degrowth. The installation will follow the arc of the potato’s life cycle, and will be illuminated at listed times.

Raphaele Shirley – Agency (as in giving..) Shirley transforms the traditional officer’s home into an abstraction of light and geometry. The size and circularity of the work create a dynamic contrast with the room’s context, sparking a dialogue between story, time, and space. Through the tension between scale, figuration (the room), and abstraction (the light sculpture), Shirley invites a reconsideration of space and the present moment as a quantum duality of particle and wave, time and infinity.

SPECIAL PROJECT OPENING OCTOBER 5, 2024

Allison Berkoy and CollaboratorsYOU ARE PREPARED is a self-optimization system featuring immersive pop-up training centers and an interactive AI-powered webinar. Experience hands-on demos in NYC and Asheville, or join from home. Created by artist Allison Berkoy with CUNY students, this project explores the future of personal evolution. October 5 – 27, 2024 Artist Talk on October 19, 2024.

Bios of the Artists

Allison Berkoy is an interdisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn. Mixing physical and electronic media, she creates video sculptures, interactive installations, and performances between humans and machines.

Max Chung is a contemporary multi-media sound artist and composer in New York City who blurs the boundaries between EDM, interactive responsive visual technologies and acoustical instrumentation. His recent work has been focused on our shifting perceptions of time that affect our relationship between emotion and temporal illusions. His work explores the current psychological instability that shapes our culture today.

Monica Duncan and Senem Pirler have been collaborating since 2017, creating audiovisual performances that investigate everyday objects, concepts of agency and queer potentiality. They have been artists-in-residence at Harvestworks, Signal Culture (Owego, NY), PACT Zollverein (Essen, Germany), Institute for Electronic Arts (Alfred, NY) and LMCC at Governors Island (NYC).

Jessica Segall : Hostile and threatened landscapes are the sites for multimedia artist Jessica Segall’s work. While embedded in these sites, she plays with both the risk of engaging with the environment and the vulnerability of the environment itself, examining a queer ecology. Jessica is a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow and has received grants from The Pollock Krasner Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts.

Raphaele Shirley is a Franco-American multimedia artist based in New York City and upstate New York. Her work spans technology-based sculptural pieces, public art, place-making social interventions, and performance. She has been an artist-in-residence at Harvestworks with Rhys Chatham and GH Hovagimyan and has received several grants from the Norwegian Arts Council and awards for her collaborative projects. www.raphaeeshirley.com

Victoria Vesna, Ph.D., is an artist and professor in the UCLA Department of Design Media Arts and the founder/director of the Art|Sci Center at the School of the Arts and California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI). Trained as a painter at the University of Belgrade, her work now resides at the intersection of disciplines and technologies, focusing on experimental creative research. Her installations explore how communication technologies affect collective behavior and perceptions of identity in relation to scientific innovation (Ph.D., CAiiA-STAR, University of Wales, 2000).

Luc Vitk is a composer, improviser, and performer (accordion, hichiriki, synthesizer, harmonica, voice, and dance) from the Czech Republic, living in New York. Their compositions focus on sonification, while in their improvisation practice, Luc works with the characteristics of discrete spaces through the interaction between sound and movement. Their dissertation, Compositional Techniques of Christian Wolff and Social Aspects in Music, was published in 2021.

PERFORMANCES

September 14th at 2:45 pm Monica Duncan and Senem Pirler will perform a 20-minute variation on Tears for Lost Frequencies, an audio/visual installation that explores our complex relationship with plastic through the act of improvisation. The microplastics found in tears become material witnesses to the experience of one’s hearing loss and a speculative space for plastic healing.

October 5th at 4 pm and October 12th @ 2:45 pm: Luc Vitk Water Vision. The participants interpret a number score which then generates three hours of water music to be played in the installation space on non-performance days.

October 20, 2024 @ 2:45 pm: GH Hovagimyan will perform No/Nu, a Post Punk sound performance with guitar, looper and effects pedals in Raphaele Shirley’s light installation work. The piece is an outgrowth of the collaborative work called 3by3by3 with Raphaele Shirley and Rhys Chatham. GH was part of the original late 1970’s No Wave music scene in New York City.

October 27, 2024 @ 2:45 pm: Tilen Lebar Limen VIII. A multichannel spectral mutation of the sonic material that initially reveals the sound of extensive improvisations with an electroacoustic guitar. Tilen Lebar is a Slovene-Dutch composer, improviser and saxophonist.His work is circulating and creating a unique connection between memory and the resonance of different acoustic spaces.

Max Chung

Max Chung is a contemporary multi-media sound artist and composer in New York City who blurs the boundaries between EDM, interactive responsive visual technologies and acoustical instrumentation. His recent work has been focused on our shifting perceptions of time that affect our relationship between emotion and temporal illusions. His work explores the current psychological instability that shapes our culture today. Chung creates immersive audiovisual experiences that incorporates technology like body tracking AI systems to create electronic instruments that explore the connection between audio and physical gestures. His work focuses on creating responsive architecture that captures the relationship of sound and movement to define a new kind of embodied experience that highlights the psychological instability that shapes our experience of the world. Max’s work has been performed by the Neave Trio, Hypercube, the International Contemporary Ensemble, the PRISM saxophone quartet, Alice Ivy-Pemberton and the Yarn/Wire Ensemble. Performance of his compositions include the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center, the DiMenna Center for Classical Music, the New York Interactive Arts Performance Series, the Perry and Marty Granoff Center for performing Arts, the Longy School of Music and the Atlantic Music Festival. He received a B.A. from Brown University in Music and a M.M. in music technology from New York University. He currently lives and works in New York City.

Victoria Vesna

After premiering Bird Song Diamond in the 2015 New York Electronic Art
Festival, spent a few months in Japan as artist in residence where she had an
opportunity to further develop this work in the largest virtual reality space in the
world. In 2011, she was invited by evolutionary biologist and artificial life expert
Charles Taylor to join his highly interdisciplinary research group and help with the
outreach for “Mapping Acoustic Network of Birds.” It took her three full years of
absorbing, learning, and going along with the researchers recording and mapping bird
sounds early mornings in Santa Monica Mountains to start conceptualizing the piece.
She noticed that her relationship to space changed as she was hearing bird songs in
open spaces, both in natural and urban environments, and became keenly aware of how
we have edited this acoustic richness out of our daily experience.

Monica Duncan and Senem Pirler

Monica Duncan and Senem Pirler have been collaborating since 2017, creating audiovisual performances that investigate everyday objects, concepts of agency and queer potentiality. Their collaborative work has been shown in numerous festivals and venues such as Revolutions Per Minute, Kuala Lumpur Experimental Film, Video & Music, Transient Visions, Light Matter, Athens International Film + Video, Re-connect Art Festival as part of the Prague Biennale, Intermediale Festival of Audiovisual Forms, Chicago Underground Film Festival, Festival ECRÃ, Fisura, International Festival of Experimental Film & Video and forthcoming CURRENTS New Media Festival. Duncan and Pirler performed their audiovisual performance, “Surface Connection” at the 61st Ann Arbor Film Festival’s Expanded Cinema program and exhibited their work in the LEAF2023 Sync Exhibition. They have been artists-in-residence at Signal Culture (Owego, NY), PACT Zollverein (Essen, Germany), Institute for Electronic Arts (Alfred, NY) and LMCC at Governors Island (NYC). They are recipients of the 2024 Harvestworks New Works Artist Residency.

Luc Vitk

Luc Vitk is a composer, improviser, and performer (accordion, hichiriki, synthesizer, harmonica, voice, and dance) from the Czech Republic, living in New York. Their compositions focus on sonification, while in their improvisation practice, Luc works with the characteristics of discrete spaces through the interaction between sound and movement. In Luc’s recent work, they are interested in the social-political aspects of music in relation to everyday life and in reusing materials to build sonic costumes and instruments. Luc has been commissioned by the Roulette Intermedium, where they were a resident artist in 2018. They have organized the NYC Constellation Ensemble and the OPERA Ensemble. Their dissertation, Compositional Techniques of Christian Wolff and Social Aspects in Music, was published in 2021.

G.H. Hovagimyan

G.H. Hovagimyan is an experimental artist working in a variety of
forms. His work ranges from new media and hypertext works to digital performance
art, video art, photography and interactive installations. His work has been
showcased and a part of collections in many museums and festivals, including The
Whitney Museum, MOMA, The New Museum and more.

Jessica Segall

Hostile and threatened landscapes are the sites for multimedia artist
Jessica Segall’s work. While embedded in these sites, she plays with both the risk
of engaging with the environment and the vulnerability of the environment itself,
examining a queer ecology. She exhibits her work internationally, including at COP
26, The Fries Museum, The Queen Museum. The Coreana Museum of Art, The Havana
Bienal, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, The National Museum of Jewish American
History and The Mongolian National Modern Art Gallery. Jessica is a 2023 Guggenheim
Fellow and received grants from The Pollock Krasner Foundation, New York Foundation
for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts and Art Matters. She attended
residencies at Harvestworks, Van Eyck Academie, MacDowell, Skowhegan among others.
Her work has been featured in Cabinet Magazine, e-flux, and The New York Times. She
received her MFA from Columbia University and her BA from Bard College. She will
participate in this year’s Bangkok Biennial.

Raphaele Shirley

Raphaele Shirley is a Franco-American multimedia artist based in New
York City and upstate New York. Her work spans technology-based sculptural pieces,
public art, place-making social interventions, and performance. She has presented
solo and collaborative projects at venues including The Queens Museum, the Museum of
Moving Image, the Emily Harvey Foundation in New York, the NCCA, the 2nd Moscow
Biennale, and the Hermitage Museum in Russia, The Linz Museum in Austria, and The
Kai Art Center in Estonia, among others. Her collaborators range from renowned
composers to theater directors, architects, and technology experts. Raphaele, along
with Algis Kizys, received the 2023 Wave Farm Grant for their performance piece 20F.
She has also been an artist-in-residence at Harvestworks NYC with Rhys Chatham and
GH Hovagimyan (2016) and The Arctic Circle (2009/2010). Raphaele has received
several grants from the Norwegian Arts Council and awards for her collaborative
projects.

Tilen Lebar

Tilen Lebar is a Slovene-Dutch composer, improviser and saxophonist. His work is circulating and creating a unique connection between memory and the resonance of different acoustic spaces. Within the last decade, he developed a specific extended vocabulary for saxophone, electronics and other instruments that intrigue him personally and aim to push the boundaries of what is yet known, extend the possibilities of a conventional instrument and create pieces that create unforgettable experiences. Tilens’ sonic vocabulary besides improvisation duos with Guus Janssen, Szilard Benes and Domen Gnezda, includes sound art, sound installations, experimental operas, orchestral pieces, large ensemble works, electroacoustic performances and many instrumental pieces that were performed by Christoph Grund, Sae Lee, Luka Juhart, Anja Clift and Valentina Strucelj among others; ensembles as Asamisimasa, ensemble Oerknal, Slagwerk Den Haag, Ensemble Contrechamps, Concept Store Quartet; institutions as Experimental studio of SWR Freiburg, The Residentie Orkest, Orkest de Ereprijs, RKST21, Dutch National Opera & Ballet and conductors such as Clark Rundell, Andrew Hilary Grams and Gregory Charette.

Allison Berkoy

Allison Berkoy is an interdisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn. Mixing
physical and electronic media, she creates video sculptures, interactive
installations, and performances between humans and machines. With participatory and
often absurd narratives, Berkoy’s installations become stages for performance that
test the boundaries and etiquette of human-machine interaction as well as
human-human relationships. Berkoy holds an MFA in Electronic Arts from Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute, an MA in Performance Studies from NYU’s Tisch School of the
Arts, and a BS in Theatre from Northwestern University. She is an Assistant
Professor of Emerging Media Technology at CUNY’s New York City College of Technology
and serves on the Board of Directors of the New Media Caucus.

Walter Gekelman

currently leads the Large Plasma Device (LaPD) laboratory at the University of California, Los Angeles. The original machine was funded by the Office of Naval Research and a major upgrade funded by the National Science Foundation. The LaPD is now a national user facility funded primarily by the Department of Energy office of Fusion Science. He and his students have worked on a number of problems related to space and solar physics. These include a variety of waves (Alfven, whistler, lower hybrid, Langmuir, ion acoustic) to name a few. Experiments on magnetic reconnection, processes in which magnetic energy is converted to other forms occur when magnetic ropes collide or in intense laser plasma interactions. Additional studies involve trapped particles in the earth’s radiation belts caused by ejection of plasma from the sun. In addition to the work on basic plasma physics he is engaged in a low temperature plasma physics program with industrial support from LAM research corporation, one the world’s biggest manufacturers of etch and deposition tools used by the semiconductor industry. For years now Prof. Gekelman has engaged in projects on the intersection of science and art with Prof. Victoria Vesna in the media arts department.

Haley Marks

is a biomedical engineer with interests in nano-biosensor research, translational medicine, and optics education. She has expertise in developing novel reporter dyes, nanoparticles, and has extensive experience working with spectroscopy/microscopy instrumentation, 3D printing, and developing microfluidic and lateral flow assay platforms. Since joining CNSI in 2022, Haley has served as a technical expert, providing advanced light microscopy training and services to ALMS users. She works developing and optimizing ALMS’s existing super-resolution and high-speed optical methods, developing strategies and imaging tools for in vivo imaging, and optimizing and disseminating computational imaging techniques. Haley was a recipient of the Whitaker International Fellowship and of the SPIE Franz Hillenkamp Fellowship.