Victoria Vesna

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Victoria Vesna
Victoria Vesna, performance lecture at Birdsong Farm, 2025.png
Victoria Vesna giving a performative lecture [SUN]Flower Plasma at Birdsong gallery, Hamden, NY, 2025. Photo: John Halpern
Born (1959-06-09) June 9, 1959 (age 66)
Washington D.C.
Education University of Wales and University of Belgrade
Known for nanoart, digital art, computer art, video art
Notable workBodies INC (1997), NanoMandala (2003), Blue Morph (2008), Noise Aquarium (2017), [Alien] Star Dust: signal to noise (2020)
AwardsOscar Signorini Prize, CINE Golden Eagle
Website https://victoriavesna.com/

Victoria Vesna (born 1959) is a digital media artist, theorist, and professor whose work investigates the interplay between art, science, technology, and consciousness. She is widely recognized as a pioneer of early Internet art: her projects Virtual Concrete (1993) and Bodies INC (1997) were among the first to use the web as a participatory, social, and performative environment, exploring virtual identity, collective authorship, and embodied presence online. [1] [2] [3]

Contents

Since the early 80s, Vesna has developed large-scale installations and long-term collaborations with scientists—including nanoscientists, plasma physicists, biologists, and neuroscientists—resulting in influential works such as NanoMandala, Zero@WaveFunction, Blue Morph, Noise Aquarium, Alien Star Dust, and [SUN]Flower Plasma. [4]

Early life and education

Victoria Vesna was born in Washington, D.C., on June 9, 1959. [5] She graduated from the High School of Art & Design in New York City, New York, in 1976. [5] She received a Fine Arts Diploma from the University of Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1984. In 2000, she completed her Ph.D. under the mentorship of Roy Ascott, a pioneer of telematic and interactive art, at CAiiA (The Centre for Advanced Studies in Interactive Arts) at the University of Wales with a thesis entitled "Networked Public Spaces: An Investigation into Virtual Embodiment" in 2000. [6]

In her early years in New York City, Vesna formed the post-punk band Crazy Hearts, immersing herself in the city’s 1980s industrial sound art and experimental post-punk movement, which later influenced her interest in sound as a performative and collaborative medium. [7]

Career

Teaching

Victoria Vesna was as the chair of the Department of Design | Media Arts at the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture from 2000-2007. She is the founder and director of UCLA's Art|Sci Center since 2005, as well as the director of California Nanosystems Institute (CNSI). [6] She previously held teaching positions at the University of Linz, University of Tsukuba, Parsons School of Design, and UC Santa Barbara.

Additionally, she is the founder and director of Art Sci Now, a collaborative educational platform for "Third Culture," as well as the host of the art & science dialogue series Vibrations Matter and lecture series Color, Light, Motion.

Awards

She received the Oscar Signorini award for best net artwork in 1998 and the CINE Golden Eagle award for best scientific documentary in 1986. [8] In 2011, she received the National Science Foundation Grant for their project, Acoustic Sensor Arrays for Understanding Bird [9] Communication, with collaborators Charles Taylor and Takashi Ikegami. She also received the Pacific Standard Time (PST) Art X Science Grant from the Getty Foundation and the Boroughs Wellcome Fund.

Artwork

Through creative research, she examines perception and identity shifts in connection with scientific innovation as well as examining bio and nanotechnology through art. [10]

Exhibitions include Spaceship Earth at the Centre of Contemporary Art Znaki Czasu in Toruń (2011) and MORPHONANO at the Beall Center for Art and Technology, Irvine, California (2012). [11]

Artweek reviewer Claudine Isé writes, “Vesna has created a number of Web-based works that examine the dichotomy between concepts of “virtual’ and ‘concrete.’ Her on-line projects include an upcoming electronic conference about the cultural production of death as well as a popular site called Bodies INCorporated, which gives visitors an opportunity to design their own ‘cyber bodies’ from a selection of organic and synthetic textures, such as water, lava, chocolate, rubber or plastic.” [12]

Sound and vibration is central in Vesna's practice, as Claire Farago, the art historian, writes: "it’s more than sound – it’s also vibration and frequency. And not just any vibration, but the hum of the universe. [13] In an interview with art historian Dobrila Denegri, Vesna describes the long term collaborative nature of her work which brings the art and science world together.

Early Work

Victoria Vesna produced and directed "Stephen Hawking: Life in the Universe CD," an interactive CM-ROM software program, for MetaTools (1996). Based on an essay by Stephen Hawking, the software combined animations, data visualizations, and interactive elements to explore cosmology, particle physics, black holes, and the possibility of life beyond Earth.

Author

In Christopher Hanson's review of her book Database Aesthetics: Art in the age of information overflow, he says that Vesna provides an engaging collection of essays about changing aesthetics in interactive art and its relationship to the database. [14]

Vesna is the North American Editor for AI & Society journal (Springer Verlag, UK), and on the advisory board of Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research (Intellect, UK).

Personal Life

Victoria Vesna was married to nuclear physicist Bogdan Maglich, with whom she has two children. During this period, she collaborated with Maglich on the documentary Searching for Hidden Chambers Using Modern Physics, which received a CINE Golden Eagle Award and marked the beginning of her sustained engagement with art and science.

From 2003 to 2023, Vesna was in a long-term partnership with nanoscientist James Gimzewski, a co-founder of the UCLA Art|Sci Center and longstanding collaborator on projects developed at the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) and the UCLA Broad Art Center. Their partnership significantly shaped her early art–science installations, including NanoMandala, Zero@WaveFunction, and Blue Morph.

Works

Publications

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

Group exhibitions

References

  1. ↑ "Victoria Vesna". Women of Vision. Histories in Feminist Film and Video. Vol. 9 (NED - New ed.). University of Minnesota Press. 2001. pp. 235–247. ISBN   9780816633715. JSTOR   10.5749/j.cttts8r3.19.
  2. ↑ Colman, Alison (2005). "Constructing an Aesthetic of Web Art from a Review of Artists' Use of the World Wide Web". Visual Arts Research. 31 (1): 13–25. JSTOR   20715365.
  3. ↑ Brown, Kristen (1999). "Trends in computer and technological art" (PDF). Art Criticism. 14 (2): 94–106 – via ARTBibliographies Modern, ProQuest.
  4. ↑ "Victoria Vesna". victoriavesna.com. Retrieved 2025-11-13.
  5. 1 2 "Victoria Vesna - Biography". vv.arts.ucla.edu. Retrieved 2020-03-27.
  6. 1 2 UCLA faculty profile; accessed December 2, 2017.
  7. ↑ Curtis, Cathy (1992-11-13). "ART / CATHY CURTIS : Paradise Found a Documentarian : Victoria Vesna Has a Singular Take on Modern Conceptions and Orange County Life". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2025-11-11.
  8. ↑ Profile, LABoral website; accessed December 2, 2017.
  9. ↑ "XXV Oscar Signorini Prize – Robotic Art – NOEMA – Technology & Society". noemalab.eu. 16 December 2008. Retrieved 2018-03-28.
  10. ↑ Profile, elmcip.net; accessed December 2, 2017.
  11. ↑ Profile, MutualArt.com; accessed December 2, 2017.
  12. ↑ Isé, Claudine (1996). "Everywhere and nowhere at once: out on the web". Artweek. 27 (2): 11.
  13. ↑ Vesna, Victoria; Kluszczyński, Ryszard W.; Kulazińska, Agnieszka; Poniatowska, Patrycja (2020). W stronę nieantropocentrycznej ekologii: Victoria Vesna i sztuka w świecie antropocenu = Towards a non-anthropocentric ecology: Victoria Vesna and art in the world of the anthropocene. Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej "Łaźnia", Uniwersytet Łódzki (Wydanie I. = First ed.). Gdańsk : Łódź: Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej ŁAŹNIA ; Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego. ISBN   978-83-61646-43-3.
  14. 1 2 Christopher Hanson, review of Database Aesthetics in Discourse 29:1, Winter 2007, p. 189., jstor.org; accessed December 2, 2017.
  15. ↑ "NANO | nanomandala". nano.arts.ucla.edu. Retrieved 2021-03-09.
  16. ↑ "Zero@wavefunction". notime.arts.ucla.edu. Retrieved 2018-03-28.
  17. ↑ Ridder-Vignone, Kathryn D. de (2012-08-31). "Public Engagement and the Art of Nanotechnology" . Leonardo. 45 (5): 433–438. doi:10.1162/LEON_a_00440. ISSN   1530-9282.
  18. ↑ "Virtual Concrete Essay". vv.arts.ucla.edu. Retrieved 2021-03-09.
  19. ↑ Kurtz, Glenn A. (April 1997). "Victoria Vesna at the San Francisco Art Institute". Artweek. 28: 20.
  20. ↑ Vesna, Victoria (1998). "Another Day in Paradise and Virtual Concrete: Installation and Telepresence Works" . Leonardo. 31 (1): 13–19. doi:10.2307/1576542. ISSN   1530-9282. JSTOR   1576542. S2CID   193021182.
  21. ↑ "Publication – Atmosphere of Sound" . Retrieved 2025-11-11.
  22. ↑ "PDF Flip". victoriavesna.com. Retrieved 2025-11-11.
  23. ↑ Lovejoy, Margot; Paul, Christiane (2011). Context providers: conditions of meaning in media arts. Bristol, UK: Intellect. ISBN   978-1-84150-308-0.
  24. ↑ ACM MM'10 & co-located workshops: proceedings of the ACM Multimedia 2010 International Conference; [this compilation is a cross-platform medium]; October 25 - 29, Firenze, Italy, ACM Press, 2010, ISBN   9781605589336
  25. ↑ Shanken, Edward A., ed. (2009). Art and electronic media. Themes and movements. London ; New York: Phaidon Press. ISBN   978-0-7148-4782-5.
  26. ↑ Murray, Soraya (2009). Vesna, Victoria; Paul, Christiane (eds.). "Digital Aesthetics: Two Handbooks". Art Journal. 68 (3): 112–115. JSTOR   25676496.
  27. ↑ "Diving into Deep Space with Noise Aquarium". Ars Electronica Blog. 2018-08-27. Retrieved 2025-11-11.
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