MARINA ZURKOW
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
Digital collage on archival Hahnemühle Bamboo
10 x 50 in / 25.4 x 127 cm
What really goes on in murky streams? An image request of “Japanese scroll painting 1930’s agitprop of a frog eating a man’s foot” would only yield a side-by-side depiction of frog and foot, but not devouring. Zurkow thinks that request must violate the terms of DALL·E 2.
2022
Digital collage on archival Hahnemühle Bamboo
10 x 50 in / 25.4 x 127 cm
In a tribute to Caryl Churchill’s 2000 play “Far Away,” this AI collaboration imagines a world where animals, humans, and machines rise up to battle for an equitable planetary present.
2022
Digital collage on archival Hahnemühle Bamboo
10 x 50 in / 25.4 x 127 cm
This 48” image, influenced by Japanese ink brush scroll paintings, was made using DALL·E 2 to generate a database of unique source material—much like a stack of Life Magazines painstakingly cut and assembled into complex collages. Text requests include calls for 1930’s Japanese scroll paintings and agitprop of “a frog tasting a man’s foot with…
2022
A Questionable Tale (#1)
Digital image
3840 x 2160 px
The process of creating this digital collage with DALL·E , an AI system that generates imagery from language, entails my operating as an Art Director with an aleatory AI system. I direct and push the flow of chance to create surprising outcomes I never could make by hand. Then I act as my own cleanup…
2022
Digital collage on archival Hahnemühle Bamboo
18 x 60 in / 45.7 x 152.4 cm
NFT registration included
Closer is inspired by the play “Far Away” (2000) by Caryl Churchill in which animalarmies have teamed up with human factions. The process of creating this digital collage with DALL·E , an AI system that generates imagery from language, entails my operating as an Art Director with an aleatory AI system. I direct and push…
2022
80″ x 80″ wallpaper mural, edition of 6
World Wind is a mural made in collaboration with Midjourney, an artificial intelligence software that creates images from textual descriptions. Through a prompt by the artist to the software—”World War II agitprop map of pollution and climate change”—World Wind incorporates AI’s perception of climate change with the artist’s guidance, editing, and direction.
2022
Cardboard, paint
In collaboration with Abigail Simon
Presented at the Woodstock Farm Festival, New York
A fun, non-didactic participatory engagement “where nobody wins.”
2022
Essay with illustrations and artwork
https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/lyotard-and-critical-practice-9781350192027/
Co-authored by Margret Grebowicz and Marina Zurkow for the book Lyotard and Critical Practice, Kiff Bamford and Margret Grebowicz, editors. Bloomsbury, 2022
2022
Sound, 28 minutes
Written and Performed by Anna Rose Hopkins and Marina Zurkow
Editing, production, and sound design: Pejk Malinovski
Original sound contributions: Scott Reitherman
Additional vocal performances: Kenneth Bailey, Aaron Burns, Una Chaudhuri, El Glasberg, Aria Michener, Ava Michener, Justin Michener, Liam Michener
ASL interpretation: Darius Doe
Special thanks to Stacy Alaimo, Lindsey Allen, Imani Black, Elizabeth Bishop, Una Chaudhuri, Jon Cohrs, Becca Franks, Christopher Hibma, Henry Fischer, Miles Freeman, Dylan Gauthier, Jennifer Jacquet, Kwonyin, Steve Mentz, Katie Pearl, Jose Rosero, Carrie Roble, Lauren Ruffin, Abigail Simon, Nancy Sowinski, Suzanne Thorpe, and Paola Zanzo
Found sources: Gravity Music, Lao Tzu, Alphonso Lingis, Ennio Morricone, Lalo Schifrin, WeTM, Heathcote Williams
Originally commissioned by the FoodxFilm Festival and the Guild of Future Architects, in support of Good Food For All and the United Nations Food Systems Summit
This work is part of the project:
“A Liquid Wanting” is a 28 minute audio theater work exploring the lives of ocean beings and the ocean itself as a planetary force, prompting listeners to dissolve, mutate and transform as they are led through imagined embodiments—from human to sea cucumber to marine snow to whale.
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.
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…
2022
Eight Archival prints on Tesuki-Washi Echizen
38 x 26 in / 96.5 x 66 cm
Edition of 3 plus 1 AP
The Crucible series urges a conversation between individual and global moments, touching on intimate aspects of this relationship. The porous connection between a lived experience to the far-reaching environment is portrayed through domestic, material manifestations. The artist’s own souvenirs, inherited objects, and hand-built ceramics interface with instances of environmental disaster and geo-planetary disruption.
2021
Marine debris, plastic bags, metal signs, CNC cut wood, mini-golf turf
In collaboration with Blake Goble, B-Space
Documentation: Jakob Dahlin
Commissioned by Putting Green, NY
https://dearclimate.net/installations/whale-fall-feast
This work is part of the project:
When a whale dies and sinks, its carcass creates an entire ecosystem on the ocean floor, nourishing thousands of organisms. Ocean pollution affects this process and disrupts the food chain, impacting species from krill to whales. Whales are some of the longest living mammals on the planet, with lifespans from 10 to 200 years. When…
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…
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…
2020
Food, ASMR, mixer and speakers, lighting, slide show
Led by Hank and Bean
Sound: Yotam Mann and Sarah Rothberg
Thanks to Sunview luncheonette and Dylan Gauthier
Presented at Sunview Luncheonette, Brooklyn, NY
This work is part of the project:
Soupy Salty Sonic, an edible exploration of fluid ocean spaces was a beta dinner and an aural/oral experiment, in conjunction with the exhibition “Wet Logic” at bitforms gallery.