Victoria Vesna, professor of design media arts at UCLA, is featured in the exhibition “It Passes Like a Thought” at UC Irvine’s Beall Center for Art and Technology.
“It Passes Like a Thought” explores society’s obsession with birds through various media. Vesna’s installation “Bird Song Mimic” invites participants to listen and respond to recordings of bird songs or other humans mimicking bird songs. The goal is to have audiences listen and relate to the acoustic world of birds in ways they otherwise might not.
This interactive piece is part of a larger virtual reality immersive project called “Bird Song Diamond,” which was created during a period of five years by the Art | Sci Collective at UCLA, in collaboration with UCLA’s evolutionary biologist Charles Taylor, engineer Hiroo Iwata, physicist Takashi Ikegami and their laboratories.
Vesna’s installations investigate how communication technologies affect collective behavior and perceptions of identity shift in relation to scientific innovation. Her work involves long-term collaborations with composers, nanoscientists, neuroscientists, evolutionary biologists and she brings this experience to students. To date, Vesna has had more than 30 solo art exhibitions and more than 100 group shows.
“It Passes Like a Thought” will run through May 26. The exhibition will also be accompanied by public events that can be found on the Beall Center’s website.
