Uploaded September 2022 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Harvestworks Art and Technology Program, Governors Island 2022
Listening & Seeing, an art and tech exhibition is an exhibition of artworks, workshops and performances that focus on how technology can expand and impact the ear and the eye. Curator and director Carol Parkinson and the Harvestworks arts committee selected these artists because of their compelling use of multichannel video and audio.
Surabhi Saraf: Awoke & Awokened: Alaap, is an installation of experimental music, video, and sculpture by Surabhi Saraf. Weaving together the alchemical materiality of modern-day tech alongside the ancient technologies of earth, atmosphere, heat, and pressure, Saraf presents a speculative mythology of AI. The work unfolds as a series of encounters with Awoke — a mythical artificial emotional intelligence — and its believers.
Edin Velez: Stand Clear, a four channel video installation, is a poetic homage to the New York City subway as a rare place of shared humanity, chaos, and stillness. Drawing on four years of footage shot within the confines of the transit system, the installation works as a piece of tender observational cinema and a love letter to the diversity and strangeness of human experience.
Joe Diebes: District 33 – The Duel is an algorithmic music video installation that centers on the gentrification of the Greenpoint, Brooklyn waterfront and the role of art and artists in that process. The work’s ever-changing narrative follows Xenia (played by Christina Campanella), an artist-turned-detective with a forensic ear for sonic clues.
Ivana Dama: Command and Control explores the idea of playing a musical instrument with your eyes — using custom pupil-tracking software to move motors that would make an acoustic sound. By exploring the potential of using digital data to effect change in the physical world, Command and Control challenges the traditional idea of the performers as masters of the instrument.
Miya Masaoka: The New York-based composer and sound artist presents two new works:
Untitled 2022 – When you were a child, did you ever listen to the roar of the ocean in a sea shell and marvel at its paradoxical size, grandeur, simplicity? In this piece, resonant frequencies meet parabolic surfaces made from clay of the earth, animals of the sea, and the activity of human toil.
Conicals of Sound: Things to Hide, Things to Tell 2022 – Hyper Directional speakers and multiple conicals create a listening encounter specific to this location, investigating silence, locality and the inner workings of our human psyche.
About the Harvestworks Art and Technology Program on Governors Island.
The Art and Technology Program on Governors Island is centered on art works created at the intersection of art and technology and is a component of our Creative Residency and Sponsored Projects programs. It includes artists open studios, exhibitions of digital media art, public workshops and performances in our educational research facility in Nolan Park. Our goal is to provide exhibition opportunities to electronic media artists and also to educate the public about how artists use new and emerging technology for artistic expression.
About Harvestworks (www.harvestworks.org)
Founded as a not-for-profit organization by artists in 1977, Harvestworks’ mission is to support the creation and presentation of art works achieved through the use of new and evolving technologies. We create an environment where artists can make work inspired and achieved by electronic media; provide a public context for the appreciation of new art; and bring together innovative practitioners from all branches of the arts collaborating in the use of electronic media. We assist with commissions and residencies, production services, education and information programs, and the presentation and distribution of their work.
Listening & Seeing was made possible with funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, mediaThefoundation Inc. and The New York State Council on the Arts in Partnership with Wave Farm: Immersive Art & Technology Initiative, with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
Production Team:
Regina Toh
Kaestin Hisao
Alex M. Modlin
Alex Levinson
Edited by Eleanor Ridley
Harvestworks Art and Technology Program, Governors Island 2022
Listening & Seeing, an art and tech exhibition is an exhibition of artworks, workshops and performances that focus on how technology can expand and impact the ear and the eye. Curator and director Carol Parkinson and the Harvestworks arts committee selected these artists because of their compelling use of multichannel video and audio.
Surabhi Saraf: Awoke & Awokened: Alaap, is an installation of experimental music, video, and sculpture by Surabhi Saraf. Weaving together the alchemical materiality of modern-day tech alongside the ancient technologies of earth, atmosphere, heat, and pressure, Saraf presents a speculative mythology of AI. The work unfolds as a series of encounters with Awoke — a mythical artificial emotional intelligence — and its believers.
Edin Velez: Stand Clear, a four channel video installation, is a poetic homage to the New York City subway as a rare place of shared humanity, chaos, and stillness. Drawing on four years of footage shot within the confines of the transit system, the installation works as a piece of tender observational cinema and a love letter to the diversity and strangeness of human experience.
Joe Diebes: District 33 – The Duel is an algorithmic music video installation that centers on the gentrification of the Greenpoint, Brooklyn waterfront and the role of art and artists in that process. The work’s ever-changing narrative follows Xenia (played by Christina Campanella), an artist-turned-detective with a forensic ear for sonic clues.
Ivana Dama: Command and Control explores the idea of playing a musical instrument with your eyes — using custom pupil-tracking software to move motors that would make an acoustic sound. By exploring the potential of using digital data to effect change in the physical world, Command and Control challenges the traditional idea of the performers as masters of the instrument.
Miya Masaoka: The New York-based composer and sound artist presents two new works:
Untitled 2022 – When you were a child, did you ever listen to the roar of the ocean in a sea shell and marvel at its paradoxical size, grandeur, simplicity? In this piece, resonant frequencies meet parabolic surfaces made from clay of the earth, animals of the sea, and the activity of human toil.
Conicals of Sound: Things to Hide, Things to Tell 2022 – Hyper Directional speakers and multiple conicals create a listening encounter specific to this location, investigating silence, locality and the inner workings of our human psyche.
About the Harvestworks Art and Technology Program on Governors Island.
The Art and Technology Program on Governors Island is centered on art works created at the intersection of art and technology and is a component of our Creative Residency and Sponsored Projects programs. It includes artists open studios, exhibitions of digital media art, public workshops and performances in our educational research facility in Nolan Park. Our goal is to provide exhibition opportunities to electronic media artists and also to educate the public about how artists use new and emerging technology for artistic expression.
About Harvestworks (www.harvestworks.org)
Founded as a not-for-profit organization by artists in 1977, Harvestworks’ mission is to support the creation and presentation of art works achieved through the use of new and evolving technologies. We create an environment where artists can make work inspired and achieved by electronic media; provide a public context for the appreciation of new art; and bring together innovative practitioners from all branches of the arts collaborating in the use of electronic media. We assist with commissions and residencies, production services, education and information programs, and the presentation and distribution of their work.
Listening & Seeing was made possible with funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, mediaThefoundation Inc. and The New York State Council on the Arts in Partnership with Wave Farm: Immersive Art & Technology Initiative, with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
Production Team:
Regina Toh
Kaestin Hisao
Alex M. Modlin
Alex Levinson
Edited by Eleanor Ridley
