MARINA ZURKOW
Items tagged
Animation
2025
Marina Zurkow and James Schmitz
Animation: Ewan Creed
Research: David Guzman
Architectural installation: Blake Goble
Mural Painting: Frey Stahler and Josiah McCloud
Courtesy bitforms gallery
Documentation photos: Yi Hsuan Lai
Marina Zurkow: Parting Worlds presents three digital works featured both inside the gallery and on the adjacent terrace, each of which explores the inextricable weave of ecological and societal systems. Mesocosm (Wink, TX) (2012) and The Earth Eaters (2025) focus on the environmental consequences of relentless resource extraction. Her installation for the Hyundai Terrace Commission, The River is a Circle (2025), is…
2025
Commissioned in 2025 for The Hyundai Terrace at the Whitney Museum of American Art, The River is a Circle is a generative animation that portrays the Hudson River as a layered scene, dividing the view between life above and below the water’s surface. The animated imagery continuously shifts based on algorithmic probabilities, incorporating real-time weather, seasonal…
2025
Generative software animation, computer, monitors, custom plinth.
The Earth Eaters is a software-driven animated “fairy tale” that imagines the ongoing cycle of extracting raw materials from the earth to produce weapons of war. In response to the ongoing characterization of ecocide as “collateral damage,” the generative algorithms behind the work create an ever-changing environment that feature islands forming and disintegrating, a menagerie of…
2002
Created, Directed and Animated by Marina Zurkow
Music: Lem Jay Ignacio
A project of Creative Capital
What is the heart? It is not human, and it is not imaginary Rumi Parthenogenesis is an animated, allegorical nano-opera. It tells an oblique story of love, loss, and self-reconciliation by utilizing the language of international symbols, traditionally reserved for explicit instruction in the world. This pictographic language can produce multiple layers in a single…
2024
Digital AI prints, generative software works
Software works in collaboration with James Schmitz
Exhibition presented by Wasserman Projects, Detroit, with generous support from the Knight Foundation,
Wasserman Projects (link)
Two-person show with Jasmine Murrell. Curation: Alison Wong Special thanks to Gary Wasserman, Ian Rummell, and John Charnota Photos by PD Rearick, courtesy Wasserman Projects
2023
Custom software (color, silent)
Edition of 5, 1 AP
The Breath Eaters 2.0 is an an animated, custom software artwork that visualizes PM2.5 pollutants produced by wildfire and fossil fuel plant emissions. Inspired by an open source AI image of a World War II propaganda map and presented as a live, generative composition, the work demonstrates how particulate pollution is carried into the high atmosphere…
2023
Custom software (color, silent)
In collaboration with James Schmitz
In collaboration with James Schmitz
Commissioned by Visions 2030: Earth Edition for CalArts, 2023
This version of The Breath Eaters (diptych) offers two varying views of the Earth using data. The work addresses human impact on earth systems, fire management practices, and the planetary poetics of wind.
2023
Custom software (color, silent)
Generative, non-interactive
93 editions, 6 artist editions, 1 publisher proof
In collaboration with Ira Greenberg
Oystercraft website design: Pat Shiu
Part of the exhibition “Chain Reaction” on Feral File, curated by Christiane Paul
Created for the online exhibition “Chain Reaction,” curated by Christiane Paul on the Feral File platform.
2022
Digital prints, generative software works
Software works in collaboration with James Schmitz
Exhibited at bitforms gallery, New York
bitforms gallery (link)
World Wind is an exhibition featuring artworks by Marina Zurkow and collaborative, generative pieces by Zurkow and James Schmitz.
2022
Custom software (color, silent)
Edition of 5, 1 AP
The Breath Eaters is an animated, custom software work that visualizes PM2.5 pollutants produced by wildfire and fossil fuel plant emissions. Inspired by a Midjourney image of a world map and presented as a live, generative composition, the work demonstrates how particulate pollution is carried into the high atmosphere and across the globe on currents…
2022
Custom software, color, silent
8K screen and computer
Dimensions approximately 40′ x 10′
In collaboration with Jim Schmitz
Animation assistance: Ewan Creed
Hudson River consultants: Hudson River Park’s River Project: Hudson River consultants: Carrie Roble, Tina Walsh, Siddhartha Hayes, Toland Kister
Worldbuilding consultants:Una Chaudhuri, Lafayette Cruise, Carolyn Hall, Clarinda Mac Low, Tony Patrick
Commissioned by Google for Pier 57
The animated software-driven work Hudson Follies is a site-specific commission by Google for the lobby of their event space occupying Pier 57 along the Hudson River in Chelsea, Manhattan. It explores an alternate, present-day Hudson River estuary in which happy social and biological ecosystems live in harmony, where humans can interact with the water in…
2022
Custom software, color, silent
Projection or monitor and computer
Dimensions variable
In this animated software-driven work, an alternate, present-day Hudson River estuary exists in which relatively healthy social and biological ecosystems live in harmony; where humans can interact with the water in intimate ways, and experience what is happening below the surface.
2021
3 minute video loop, sound
Sound by Scott Reitherman.
Animation assistance: Ewan Creed.
Commissioned by 150 Media Stream, Chicago IL.
https://150mediastream.com/archive/
This work is part of the project:
On view Oct 2021 – Jan 2022, OOzy #2: like oil and water was conformed for a 16K screen in the lobby of 150 Riverside, Chicago. OOzy #2: like oil and water brings into view a sensual—but harsh—mix of kelp, marine organisms, human aquanauts, mermaids, plastics, and oil, who cycle and snake through the 150…
2022
3 minute video loop, sound
Sound by Scott Reitherman
Animation assistance by Ewan Creed
Commissioned by Niio
This work is part of the project:
The ocean is not a body—and it is. Seeking its own level, it expands as much as it can. The ocean is a container. It is also a shipping superhighway; a resource for food and minerals; a space of mystery, adventure, fantasy, dream, and myth; a space to be mapped, measured, and known; and “Earth’s”…
2022
3 minute video loop, silent
Animation assistance: Ewan Creed
Commissioned by Niio
This work is part of the project:
6,000 meters below the ocean surface, a human would experience crushing pressure, freezing temperatures, and total darkness. But other beings thrive in the Abyssal Zone; at 300,000,000 square km, it is the largest environment for earth life. Coral reefs, squid, sea spiders thrive; many are transparent, luminescent, lit from within. Minerals ooze out of hydrothermal…
2021
Custom software animation, screens, custom poplar wood pallets
Sound Design: Scott Reitherman. Software: Sam Brenner. Animation: Marina Zurkow and Ewan Creed. Technology: James Schmitz. Documentation: Jakob Dahlin
Curated by Kendal Henry
Commissioned by @artsbrookfield
This work is part of the project:
2021
Custom generative animation software, sound, screens, marine debris, wall drawings, custom wood scaffolds
Sound Design: Scott Reitherman. Software: Sam Brenner. Animation: Marina Zurkow and Ewan Creed. Technology: James Schmitz. Scaffold architecture: Keith Edwards. Documentation: Phillip Rittermann
Commissioned by the ICA San Diego
This work is part of the project:
Text by Guusje Sanders, curator: Aided by the constructed marine debris island, visitors can see, smell, touch, hear and taste their presence within the ocean. The installation invites participants to re-imagine their connections to the ocean and challenge their conditioned perspectives. By slowing down in a complex space of systems, an opportunity arises to assume…
A set of three software-driven animation works that explore the ocean and its inhabitants as a fractal and restless repository of reflections and projections. The series offers an ocean poetics to produce new affections for the ocean at large—a cosmopolitan sea inclusive of graceful, filthy, tangled, and fantastic realities and imaginary churns. Custom software allows…
2020
Custom software, wall drawings, silkscreen prints, toilet, recycled nurdles, fishbowl fountain
bitforms gallery (link)
This work is part of the project:
Wet Logic, a collaborative exhibition by Marina Zurkow and Sarah Rothberg, presents a model of the world organized according to a wet, oceanic ideology rather than a dry, land-based paradigm.
2020
Site-specific video installation (52 screens) at the Fulton Transit Center, New York
Created in collaboration with Sarah Rothberg
Commissioned by MTA Arts & Design.
Sarah Rothberg and Marina Zurkow’s video project “WHAT IS HAPPENING” at Fulton Center combines site-specific drawings of the transit hub’s architectural elements with text and animated collage. Philosophical queries like “WHAT IS POSSIBLE” or “WHAT IS MOVING” prompt the minds of viewers passing through. These provocations are met with clever visual juxtapositions, such as a doughnut rising…