From Nature, an art and tech exhibition is the Fall 2025 exhibition programmed for the Harvestworks Art and Technology Program Building on Governors Island. The title of the exhibition – From Nature – is a poetic postcard reminding us of where we have been and where we may be going. Selected by the Harvestworks arts committee and the Executive Director Carol Parkinson, the works explore the human social fabric, ecological interdependence, avian, flora and fauna through multiple channel sound and video, artificial intelligence and no-input 3D gaming..
All events are free.
Location: Harvestworks Art and Technology Program Building 10a, Nolan Park, Governors Island
Open to the public: 11 am to 5 pm on Sat and Sun.
Opening: Saturday August 30, 2025 from 3 – 5 pm
1 pm Artist Talk by Henrik Soederstroem and Emilia Niciholson-Fajardo
2 pm Artist Talk by Pat Badani
Artists include Henrik Soederstroem, Pamela Z, TUG Collective, Pat Badani, and (opening September 20th) Itziar Barrios with Seth Cluett and opening October 18th Shawn Decker..
Art Works
No One Is There by Henrik Soederstroem is a mixed media installation incorporating found objects, generative AI, and a live-running no-input 3D game with a stochastically generated soundtrack. The project explores liminal states, uncanny agencies, and the entanglement of unique and multiple, virtual and material, data and trash. No One is There leverages a custom AI 3D model generator, trained on discarded furniture from the streets of NYC, to probe the subconscious of the city and the ghosts of household items through machinic eyes and minds. Artist talk on August 30, 2025
Syrinx is a multi-channel sound installation by Pamela Z named for the avian vocal organ. The piece is made from multiple layers of the various time-expanded and time-compressed permutations of birdsong and the human interpretation of it. To create this work, the artist took a short birdsong and slowed it down until it’s individual pitches and complex melodic material were revealed. She learned to sing the melody and sped her voice up until it was the same length and pitch as the original birdsong.
Cadence Interrupted, by TUG Collective probes the values and frameworks of the violence engendered through both the human/gun composite and militarism’s phenomenal power to create a change in someone’s state of mind as it infiltrates and mediates the human social fabric. In this interactive installation, the participant’s right hand hovers over the head of a snare drum using their bodily presence to change the drum’s behavior by interrupting the techniques and sonic affordances (cadences) connected to the instrument’s military roots.
BichEden: ParaDoxa by Pat Badani is a major work that engages in climate storytelling informed by efforts to regenerate Oceanic, Alpine, and Rainforest ecosystems in Mexico. At the project’s base is virtual ethnobotanical research in Red List databases that catalog endangered flora and fauna impacting bioecological food chains in these ecosystems. The soundscapes are informed by regenerative acoustic ecology research that seeks to understand the impacts of human generated noise on different ecologies. The resulting computer-generated ‘still life’ artifacts’ re-imagine species interactions in restored sites.
(Opening September 20, 2025) Particle Matter is a multi-channel video and sound installation by Itziar Barrio in collaboration with sound artist Seth Cluett. A materialist investigation into matter and multitudinous manifestations of the micro, Particle Matter approaches its subject in a rhizomatic fashion, utilizing the language of the montage–the dialectical technique of producing a new composite whole from fragments of moving images and sounds–to explore the forces catalyzing and created by the movements of the fragmented and microscopic; the pieces left over. Performance October 25, 2025
Opening October 18, 2025 Grass by Shawn Decker is an immersive multi-channel ambisonic sound installation that builds on his previous explorations of natural ecosystems. This project delves into current research in insect biology, focusing on the sounds generated by large populations of insects—such as crickets and cicadas—and their dynamic shifts between synchronicity and divergence as a form of communication. Through this sonic investigation, Grass seeks to reveal the intricate rhythms and patterns embedded in these natural soundscapes.
Bios of the artists
Henrik Soederstroem is a multidisciplinary artist from Stockholm, Sweden. He works with computer graphics, interactive and generative video, sound, spatial installation and sculptural objects. His work explores the limits and critical points of aesthetic, technological, social and linguistic systems. In recent years his focus has been on virtual worlds, their methods of meaning-making and their paradoxical relation to physical reality, often viewed through metaphors drawn from horror, the supernatural and folkloric. He is currently an artist in residence at Harvestworks.
Pamela Z is an internationally known composer/performer and media artist working with voice, live electronic processing, sampled sound, and video. Her solo works combine experimental extended vocal techniques, operatic bel canto, found objects, text, and sampled concrète sounds. She uses MAX MSP and Isadora software on a MacBook Pro along with custom MIDI controllers that allow her to manipulate sound and image with physical gestures. Her performances range in scale from small concerts in galleries to large-scale multi-media works in theaters and concert halls. In addition to her performances, she has a growing body of installation works using multi-channel sound and video.
TUG Collective (Gaelyn and Gustavo Aguilar, Co-Founders) braids together creativity, critique, and citizenship through interdisciplinary art practice. Fostering social cohesion among community partners invested in civic engagement, they create contact zones where people can generate insights about, and produce actions around, contemporary social issues, all of which manifests in diverse artistic forms including performance, multi-media installation, and site-specific interactions.
Pat Badani is an artist, writer, and scholar born in Argentina. Throughout her densely woven research-creation journey she has drawn from the fields of art, science, and technology to develop projects that inspect social, biological, and technological networks. Her projects have been recently shown in curated, international new media events. Pat Badani’s projects have been distinguished with over 20 awards and commissions by the Canada Council for the Arts; Illinois Arts Council; DCASE; National Endowment for the Arts; the Robert Heinecken Trust, Harvestworks and many others. Mariel Martinez currently collaborates with Pat Badani on the “BichEden” project using a range of technologies including photogrammetry and 3D models to explore the edge of physical and digital realms within food chains.
Itziar Barrios is an interdisciplinary artist producing long-term research-based projects that involve different agents and collaborators. By rewriting the dominant narratives through which our societies, identities, and realities are constructed, her work opens up new futures. Her survey exhibition was curated by Johanna Burton in 2018, and her monograph was published by SKIRA in 2023. Barrio has recently been awarded a 2024 Guggenheim Fellowship and 2024 NYFA/NYSCA Artist Fellow. She is currently an artist in residence at Harvestworks.
Seth Cluett is an internationally recognized composer and artist whose quiet, patient practice explores the territory between the senses, with a compelling attention to perception. His work is driven by themes of ecological collapse and resilience, often expressed through materials found in nature. Cluett is on the composition faculty at Columbia University, where he is Director of the Computer Music Center and Assistant Director of the Sound Art MFA Program. Since 2017 he has served as Artist-in-Residence at Nokia Bell Labs.
Shawn Decker lives and works in Chicago, IL, as well as collaborating internationally with various artists – most frequently, Jan-Erik Andersson in Turku, Finland and Anne Wilson in Chicago. . He is a Professor who teaches in the Art and Technology / Sound Practices department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is also a Visiting Professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing for the past 5 years. Shawn is a current artist in residence at Harvestworks.
Performances:
Saturday September 6 2025, Mia Zabelka and Katherine Librovskaya
Saturday September 27, 2025 @ 6 pm: Mari Kimura and the Cloud Ensemble
Sunday September 14, 2025 11 am to 5 pm Emmett Palaima outdoor experience. Rain Date Sunday October 19th
Saturday, October 11, 2025 – Floy Krouchi and James Brandon Lewis
Saturday Otober 18, 2025 Katherine Bennett
Saturday October 25, 2025 Performance by Itziar Barrios and Seth Cluett
The Harvestworks Art and Technology Program is funded in part by the New York City Dept of Cultural Affairs, The New York State Council on the Arts, mediaThe foundation Inc, Cycling 74 and Friends of Harvestworks.
ABOUT HARVESTWORKS: Founded in 1977, Harvestworks offers an environment where artists can make work inspired and achieved by electronic media. Harvestworks helps the community at large to understand, assimilate, and make creative use of new and evolving technologies. Harvestworks creates a context for the appreciation of new work, advances both the art community and the public’s agenda for the use of technology in art; and brings together innovative practitioners from all branches of the arts by fostering collaborations across electronic media.
Program subject to change. Check the website for the latest information: Harvestworks.org
