SCARLETMOTIFF (Noel Apitta b.1993) is an audio-visual artist from Kampala, Uganda, operating in the interstitial spaces between creative technology, audio production, graphic design, and the materiality of light. Through a practice centered on iteration, repetition, and spontaneous composition he seeks to convert the rich analog narratives of human experiences into digital expressions, blending real-time generative computer graphics and original soundscapes to create abstracted vignettes of directed emotion.

Since July 2020, this iterative approach has birthed over 1400 unique webnative video artworks as part of the daily audio-visual project GENERATIVE DREAMS; and seen his practice evolve to explore light and its relationship to physical space as a medium for immersive journey-making. From video sculpture and immersive projection mapping to interactive audiovisual installations, his work has been exhibited at the Noor Riyadh Light Art Festival (Riyadh, 2022), Afri Art Gallery (Kampala, 2022), the NEOSHIBUYA 15 Second Museum (Tokyo, 2021) , Afropocene StudioLab (Kampala, 2023) and the BuzzFest Tech Art Festival (Austin,TX, 2022).

Leilani Abeyta is an emerging Latinx artist who primarily works with photorealistic and hyperrealistic oil paintings. She attended Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore and is on the Board of Directors of arts nonprofit, Platteforum. 

Her works aim to capture the beauty of moments in her everyday life, either with friends or people she meets, using color, light, shadow, and intricately rendered detail to illustrate how the contemporary Renaissance painter views their world. 

Leilani hopes to share stories and capture people of this time period in a unique and lasting way; repaying those who have shown her love with love in the form of artistic admiration.

Daniel Maw hails from a gritty, industrial town along the Mississippi River in Iowa. His academic journey led him to the University of Tennessee, where he earned a Master of Fine Arts in Printmaking. Following his time at Bowling Green State University, he relocated westward. Currently residing in Fort Collins, Colorado, Maw teaches art at Laramie County Community College in Cheyenne, Wyoming. In addition to his teaching role, he directs the Esther and John Clay Fine Art Gallery. Outside of his professional pursuits, he indulges in simple pleasures such as enjoying eggs, reading, lifting weights, and maintaining a skin care routine.

Chanee Choi is a transdisciplinary artist and educator. She has developed a ritualistic craft-based art practice that transcends the conservative and isolationist roots of traditional East Asian craftwork by focusing on a celebration of feminist theory and modern tech. Within this hybrid genre, she produces both embodied and virtual immersive experiences exploring the effect of immigration on issues of identity, and the synesthetic processes of corporeal-cognitive space.

Originally from South Korea, Chanee now lives, works, and studies in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She holds positions as an assistant professor at the University of New Mexico in The Department of Film & Digital Arts. Alongside her academic role, Chanee has earned degrees including a BFA in Craft Design from Dongduk Women's University in 2013, an MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from the Art Institute of Chicago in 2016, and a Ph.D. in Art and Technology from DXARTS at the University of Washington in 2022.

Her artistic endeavors have been featured in publications including UW News, UW College of Arts & Sciences, GeekWire, International Examiner, Seattle Times, KUOW National Public Radio, KING-TV, ISEA2022, SIGGRAPH Asia 2022, and WIRED magazine.

Dev Harlan works in sculpture, installation and digital media and explores a range of themes including landscape, anthropogenic change and technological consumption. His work often uses technology to question itself and the narrative that human societies and technology are somehow separate from the natural world. Rather he asks, how are they entangled and embedded within each other? 

Harlan has exhibited in the US and internationally. He is a 2020 NYFA Fellowship Finalist in Digital Media Arts and winner of the 2022 Mozaik Artist Grant. Solo exhibitions include Christopher Henry Gallery (NY) and Gallery Madison Park (NY). Group shows include “Noor” at the Sharjah Art Museum, the New Museum’s “Ideas City” NY and the Singapore Light Art Festival. Dev has been an artist in residence at the Frank Lloyd Wright School Of Architecture and the SVA Sculpture & New Media Residency. Dev is currently pursuing a BA in Earth Science at Columbia University.

Iván Casís Jr. is a Multidisciplinary Artist and Architect born in Panama City, Panama, in 1979. He obtained his Bachelor's Degree in Architecture from the University of Panama in 2006 before venturing to Buenos Aires, Argentina, the subsequent year to pursue a Master’s Degree in Advanced Architectural Design. During this formative period, he began looking for ways to fuse his lifelong passion for art, digital fabrication, and Architecture and this exploration ultimately culminated in the discovery of his distinct artistic style.

Upon his return to Panama in 2010, while still dedicating most of his time to Architecture, he began experimenting with CNC and laser-cutting machines to craft wall installations based on his digital drawings. This approach eventually paved the way for his first art gallery showcases.

In 2017, Casís Jr. moved back to Argentina, where he is currently based, to focus more on his artistic career. In March 2021 he entered the NFT space. Since then, his work has featured in several physical-digital exhibitions including Exquisite Workers' Exhibition at 0xSOCIETY™ (Canada), Denver Digerati's Public LED Exhibition (USA), NFT Liverpool

(UK), LABITCONF PremioB-Arte (Argentina), POESIA DE PROTESTA at Miami Art Week (USA), NFT.NYC 2023 (USA), NFT Biennal at Rincon Projects (Colombia), SCREENSAVERS at Uncommon Gallery (Korea), GIFFEST 2023 (Singapore) and ‘Dostoevskian Echoes in the Digital Age’ at techcontemporary (Denmark).

His art has also been featured recently in international publications such as EYAYAH!Magazine (Singapore) and The Light Observer (Italy).

Nero Chenxuan He is a Beijing-born educator, an architectural designer, and a multi-media artist. He has studied architecture and design in the United States and Denmark. He leads his own creative practice, HeXagōn{分集研究所}, whose work has been exhibited in music videos, storefronts, galleries, digital billboards, and museums in various countries. He is an assistant professor at Texas Tech University (TTU) Huckabee College of Architecture where he runs his own design research lab, Quasi Design Lab, and has been invited to initiate and teach the public digital art program at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA). Before his current role at Texas Tech, he held the visiting professor position at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech). He has also taught studios and seminars at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc).

He has been developing workflows in phygital constructions and automavisions. He is interested in creating quasi-autonomous procedures to synergize human and non-human design agencies. His work is the byproduct of a non-rectilinear process, which has no finite result. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities and a Master of Architecture degree from SCI-Arc.

Valentina Ferrandes is a London-based, southern Italian visual artist and designer.
Interweaving a technology-driven approach to image-making with archival found footage, environmental recordings, archaeological findings and documentary video, she creates narrative strategies to explore potential new worlds between past and present.

Shortlisted for Aesthetica Art Prize in 2023, former artist in residence at Meta London headquarters as part of Meta Open Arts Programme, winner of Emerging Scene Arts Prize in Dubai. In 2016 her work "Other Than Our Sea" receives a Jury Selection at Japan Media Arts Festival. Between 2011 and 2015 she is a finalist for the international Celeste Art Prize, The Italian Cultural Institute's Renaissance Art Prize in London and Fabbri Prize for Contemporary Art. In 2008 she is an artist in residence at China Academy of Art.

She exhibits internationally in festivals such as Visions du Reel, Bideodromo, Supernova Animation Festival, Bogota Experimental Film Festival, Cinemigrante, European Media Art Festival Osnabruck, London International Documentary Festival, DokuFest Kosovo, Cairo Video Festival, Rencontres Internationales.

A graduate of Fine Arts at the University of The Arts London, Humanities at Bologna University in Italy and a former artist in residence at China Academy of Art, she also works as experience designer for creative and tech agencies in Berlin and London.

MASARY Studios is a transdisciplinary artist collective reconsidering environments through site-specific installations using sound, light, interactivity, and performance. Based in Boston, the studio's practice includes live percussion performance, electronic music and production, facade projection-mapped video, artistic research, technology and materials fabrication, and the expansive use of animation. The studio is artist-owned and managed and was founded in 2015.

MASARY is an interdisciplinary collaborative team with artists at the center. Studio founders and principals are Sam Okerstrom-Lang and Ryan Edwards. The extensive creative and technical team expands out to coders, engineers, architects, designers, percussionists, animators, arts administrators & more.

AVA Animation and Visual Arts is a BIPOC women-led internationally awarded animation studio based in Toronto, that specializes in creating extraordinary visual experience solutions for brands, events and government agencies who want to bring joy and engage communities through art, light, technology, creativity and storytelling.

AVA’s goal is to deliver joy through experiences and visual journeys,  believing art can transform spaces and reactivate economies. Their main objective is to engage communities with art, providing safe public experiences and spaces where people can feel represented using light and colour to spark a sense of wonder and connection. 

AVA’s expertise covers both the creative and technical aspects: from research, planning, projection calculations, design, content animation, artist workshops and production to temporary and permanent installations. With years of experience collaborating in placemaking and safe public art experiences with public and private organizations like: The city of Toronto, Toronto History Museums, LiveTo, The City of Brampton, the City of Mississauga, The CN Tower, The Woodlands Institute, the Gardiner Museum, the Amsterdam Light Festival, the Tokyo Light Festival, the Tokyo Government, OCAD University, Seneca Polytechnic, Banff Centre for the Arts, among others. Their work has been presented in more than 12 countries, on landmarks like the Burj Khalifa, The Palace of Parliament and Odawara Castle. Their latest collaboration, “Tokyo Concerto” at the Tokyo Metropolitan Government building was awarded a Guinness World Record for the Largest Permanent Projection. 

As a BIPOC Women-led company, when collaborating with artists, AVA prioritizes talented individuals coming from diverse, multicultural and often racialized or underrepresented communities, usually coming from Black, Indigenous, Latin, Arabic, Black, Asian, LGBTQ2S+ backgrounds and/or being recent immigrants or recent graduates. 

WORLD PREMIERE @ The Denver Museum of Nature and Science

MELT: THE MEMORY OF ICE

BETSEY BIGGS

Saturday, September 14, 2024

Doors: 6:30 pm / Film: 7:00 pm

Followed by a presentation and Q&A

Join us in the Infinity Theater for the world premiere of MELT: The Memory of Ice. Experience this exploration of our changing planet through the lens of local filmmaker Betsey Biggs, Ph.D. Following the screening, we are honored to welcome Richard Nunn, Assistant Curator and database manager of the National Ice Core Laboratory (NICL), for a discussion on the significance of this work and the invaluable insights that ice can reveal. Watch the trailer below.

We are thrilled to partner with the Denver Museum of Nature & Science to present this immersive world premiere. Exclusively showcased at DMNS, this event is a highlight of the 9th Annual Digerati Experimental Media Festival, which delves into experimental works at the intersection of art, science, and technology. We extend our gratitude to DMNS, and specifically to Austin Terrell, for collaboration in bringing this unique program to the community.

MELT: The Memory of Ice is a minimalist cinematic song cycle for singers, electronic music, and film, a personal reckoning with the earth’s body changing, melting, and spilling as global warming melts our ice caps and threatens winter. MELT’s sounds, images and texts are drawn from four weeks with the director's mother and young daughter exploring the Greenland Ice Sheet and the world’s most actively melting glacier, the Jakobshavn Glacier in Ilulissat, Greenland, as well as from personal and archival materials. 

Betsey Biggs (b. 1965, Connecticut, USA) is an artist and composer whose work, described by the New Yorker as “psychologically complex, exposing how we orient ourselves with our ears,” explores relationships among sound, image, identity, and place through audiovisual installations, walks, performances, photographs, scores, and films. Recent work includes a feature-length cinematic song cycle, MELT: The Memory of Ice; We Are Here FM, a web-based audiovisual installation,  and performances with the international transmission art collective The Conduction Series (founded by August Black). Biggs earned her PhD in Music Composition at Princeton University, and serves as an Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Nima Bahrehmand

Nima Bahrehmand is an artist, scholar, and educator. His artistic research explores bodies, archives, and places that became suppressed and desertified due to being subjugated by political, economic, and technological progress. Via a digital voyage, he builds worlds that allow relocating the desertified from their initial setting into a new environment or platform, thus allowing the creation of new stories about them. Working with emergent media, he interrogates technology that claims accessibility, fairness, and welfare. He creates discursive ties around redefining and reworking data, unraveling how the databasing apparatuses service the dominance of the Global North in order to extract and manipulate the dignity of the Global South.

His artworks have been included in exhibitions and venues, including Digital Native as part of the Tbilisi Oxygen Biennial, Tbilisi, Georgia; ISEA, International Symposium for Electronic Arts, Barcelona; Denver Digerati, Denver; Kandovan Gallery, Tehran, Iran; Kunstraum Potsdam, Berlin; Marres, Maastricht, Netherland; Kiosk, Ghent, Belgium; VAC, Austin and AG Gallery, Tehran; among others. He also published some of his writing in outlets such as MAST, the Journal of Media Art Study and Theory, xCoAx, Conference on Computation, Communication, Aesthetics & X, Porto; Institute of Network Culture, Amsterdam; and RAI, the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland.

Nima received his BFA from the University of Kerman, Iran; MA from the School of Art, Ghent, Belgium; MFA in studio art (Transmedia) from the University of Texas at Austin, and Ph.D. in Emergent Technology and Media Arts Practices from the University of Colorado Boulder. Nima is currently an assistant professor of art at the Metropolitan State University of Denver.

https://nimabahrehmand.com/

Phillip David Stearns

Phillip David Stearns is a Denver based artist whose practice deals with themes that include the impacts of contemporary information systems, electronics and communications technology, emerging materials and hybrid processes. Through playful experimentation, deconstruction, and reconfiguration, Phillip engages these themes to reveal the obscured or invisible, and give form to the intangible. He approaches technology as a critical medium, positioning it in a way that is self-reflexive to seek out the sublime in the mundane.

Phillip is a Greene Fellowship recipient for 2024. His projects have been featured in WIRED, The Huffington Post, VICE Motherboard, The Creators Project, Hyperallergic, and FRAME. His work has been exhibited internationally by institutions including the Zhongzhou Art Museum, Carl & Marilynn Thoma Art Foundation, Haus der Elektronischen Künste Basel, Park Avenue Armory, ELEKTRA-BIAN, Tate Britain, Transmediale, Anyang Public Art Project, Festival de Arte Digital (FAD), FILE, and Transitio MX.

Phillip has taught as adjunct professor at the University of Denver’s Emergent Digital Practices program, Parsons School of Design Design + Technology program, NYU IDM, NYIT, and led a seminar on the digital dark age at Hochschule Düsseldorf. He holds an MFA in music from the California Institute of the Arts and a BS in music from the University of Colorado in Denver.

In 2012, Phillip Stearns founded GlitchTextiles, a textile design studio dedicated to exploring the intersections of digital art and jacquard weaving. In 2023 he launched Pickl.art, a weave on demand platform that allows anyone to create their own custom woven products.

https://phillipstearns.com | Facebook | Instagram | X

https://glitchtextiles.com | Facebook | Instagram | X

https://pickl.art | Instagram

Ian Hatcher (he/they) is an artist, writer, voice actor, and sound poet whose work focuses on technological narratives. He is the author of a poetry collection, Prosthesis, as well as chapbooks, records, and assorted digital ephemera. He is a member of the performance collective Lucky Pierre and the theatrical synth-punk band SLZY MYLFS. A former Fulbright Scholar, he currently teaches at MassArt and is a doctoral candidate at CU Boulder.

Bimbonita (Ethan Bradford Barrett Villarreal) is a Mexican-American web developer and DJ specializing in cumbia, reggaetón, and Spanish-language hip-hop. They also serve as the director of Denver Arts Organized and are on the board of Tilt West, a nonprofit for community exchange and critical dialogue on art, ideas, and culture. While currently based in Denver, Bimbonita's family ties to Iztapalapa, Mexico City—the birthplace of Mexican reggaetón—have deeply influenced their love for dance music. Drawing from their experiences in both cities, Bimbonita seamlessly blends the latest releases with reimagined classics from Latin America, igniting dancefloors with friends from Black Pony Club, Dirty Little Secret, Consensual, among others.

Colleen Lee is a Denver-based video artist, actor, and photographer whose work explores the world of language, communication, and linguistic expression. Through her use of video and live performance elements, her work investigates themes of inarticulacy, verbal repetition, and language reduction in our lives. Inspired by the complexities of human communication, Colleen’s art aims to challenge viewers to reflect on how language shapes our understanding and relationships with others and ourselves.

Johannes DeYoung (US) is an accomplished artist and filmmaker whose innovative approach bridges the realms of computational and material processes. His moving-image works have garnered international acclaim, showcased at prominent venues such as the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Alicante in Spain and Festival ECRÃ in Brazil. His pieces have also graced significant exhibitions like the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts and the B3 Biennale of the Moving Image in Germany, alongside numerous festival screenings across various countries, including Australia, Greece, and Vietnam.

DeYoung's artistic contributions have been recognized in reputable publications such as The New York Times and The Huffington Post. His academic role includes serving as an Associate Professor of Electronic and Time-Based Media at Carnegie Mellon University School of Art, where he continues to inspire the next generation of artists. Previously, he held the position of Senior Critic and Director of the Center for Collaborative Arts and Media at Yale University School of Art from 2008 to 2018.

Annie Hui-Hsin Hsieh is a Taiwanese-Australian composer currently based in the United States. Her music has been presented internationally at events including Lucerne Festival, Huddersfield Festival of Contemporary Music, WasteLAnd Music Series (LA), Tectonic Festival, ISCM World Music Days, International Rostrum of Composers, SEAMUS, New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, Sonic Matters (Zurich), Pittsburgh Festival of New Music, and Bendigo International Festival of Exploratory Music. She received her doctorate from the University of California, San Diego, and is an Associate Teaching Professor of Electronic Music Composition at Carnegie Mellon University.

Adán De La Garza is an artist, co-conspirator, curator/programmer, and recovering academic. Usually in that order, depending on what job he’s applying for. Recent works have begun to examine the dire circumstances of late capitalism, the relationship between political and emotional stagnation, catharsis and protest, sonic warfare, and emerging futures brought about by climate change. Adán has shown all over the place and shook some hands. If you wanna see that proof you can check out his CV here. 

Adán was a co-conspirator of the media arts exhibition seriesNothing To See Here(2013-2016), is the sole member of the anonymous video screening seriesCollective Misnomer(2016 - present), smashes a lot of buttons putting on video game exhibitions withDizzy Spell(2018 - present), and recently co founded the city wide video art biennialDenver Month Of Video(2023-present). Originally from Tucson Arizona, Adán is currently based in Denver, Colorado, where he hates writing in the third person.

Phillip David Stearns is a Denver based artist whose practice deals with themes that include the impacts of contemporary information systems, electronics and communications technology, emerging materials and hybrid processes. Through playful experimentation, deconstruction, and reconfiguration, Phillip engages these themes to reveal the obscured or invisible, and give form to the intangible. He approaches technology as a critical medium, positioning it in a way that is self-reflexive to seek out the sublime in the mundane.

Phillip is a Greene Fellowship recipient for 2024. His projects have been featured in WIRED, The Huffington Post, VICE Motherboard, The Creators Project, Hyperallergic, and FRAME. His work has been exhibited internationally by institutions including the Zhongzhou Art Museum, Carl & Marilynn Thoma Art Foundation, Haus der Elektronischen Künste Basel, Park Avenue Armory, ELEKTRA-BIAN, Tate Britain, Transmediale, Anyang Public Art Project, Festival de Arte Digital (FAD), FILE, and Transitio MX.

Phillip has taught as adjunct professor at the University of Denver’s Emergent Digital Practices program, Parsons School of Design Design + Technology program, NYU IDM, NYIT, and led a seminar on the digital dark age at Hochschule Düsseldorf. He holds an MFA in music from the California Institute of the Arts and a BS in music from the University of Colorado in Denver.

In 2012, Phillip Stearns founded GlitchTextiles, a textile design studio dedicated to exploring the intersections of digital art and jacquard weaving. In 2023 he launched Pickl.art, a weave on demand platform that allows anyone to create their own custom woven products.

Rachel Halmrast: Rachel is a dance artist and maker based in Boulder, CO. They received their BFA in Dance from the University of Colorado, Boulder in 2022. Their personal practice and choreographic work centers athleticism as aesthetic, finding flow in effort, and the play between strength and vulnerability that can be found through physicality.

Deven Verma is an experimental filmmaker based in Brooklyn, NY. Negotiating the intersectionality between classical experimental tropes and modern technology, he plays with, muddies, destroys and rebuilds the film plane in order to find narratives where narratives typically are not.

My name is Edward Lee and I’m currently at the University Of Colorado in my last year studying to achieve my Bachelors of Fine Arts degree in dance. I was born and raised in Aurora, Colorado, and I didn’t start dancing until I was about 15 years old. What I hope to achieve through my movement is inspiring others to get up and move their bodies at any capacity. Uplifting communities and exposing myself to allow for deeper connections.

Indi approaches movement from a solid foundation in the dance world. Growing up in classical ballet, she found deep appreciation for movement as a container for emotional process. Indi holds a BA of Interdisciplinary Studies from Naropa University, where they studied the intersection of somatic psychology and dance under mentorship of Gwen Ritchie, dance faculty. She has experience in a variety of genres such as ballet, jazz, modern, tap, social dance, and assorted street styles, with her immediate focus being contemporary/modern technique and improvisational repertoire. Currently, Indi’s attention lies within the inherent intimacy of movement; being that our emotional landscape is intricately woven into our physical form, how can we deeper explore that relationship through process, protest, and proclamation?

Brianna, originally from Littleton, CO, has been passionately dancing since the age of three. She trained at a pre-professional studio, specializing in ballet, jazz, lyrical, contemporary, hip-hop, and tap. A graduate of the University of Colorado Boulder, Brianna holds degrees in Psychology, Dance, and Business. In addition to her extensive training and performance experience, she has co-choreographed pieces in jazz, contemporary, and burlesque/heels for various CU Boulder performances, showcasing her versatility and creativity across multiple dance styles.

Emily grew up outside of Boulder, CO and went to the University of Colorado. She studied biology and dance and now works as a research assistant for the university. She loves exploring new movements and getting to continue dancing.

Sparrow earned a BA in Philosophy & Neuroscience from Duke University, where they were a member of and choreographer for student-run dance groups Embodiment Contemporary Dance, Duke Swing, and Street Medicine (also serving StreetMed as an artistic director). Currently, they are a Ph.D student in Philosophy at the University of Colorado, Boulder. They work in aesthetics and the philosophy of dance while training in styles of Breaking, House, to Julio, Nathan, Taino, Bobby, Luca, and the rest of the breakers for teaching, welcoming, and inspiring them.

Sumi graduated from Sarah Lawrence college with a BA in Dance and Philosophy and then went to NYC to train with Merce Cunningham, Carolyn Brown, Albert Reid. After teaching and performing in England and Wales for 10 years, Ms. Komo returned to Boulder, Colorado where she taught at Naropa University and the University of Colorado as well as developing workshops for the Colorado Dance Festival on Alexander Technique and dance. For the last 3 decades she has found ways in both performance and teaching to interweave dance, movement, meditation and martial arts to create subtlety and sensitivity to moment to moment awareness. Ms. Komo is currently the director of the ATMA (R) Centre where she teaches the Alexander technique privately and runs a Three Year Internationally approved training program for teachers of the Alexander technique.