Seeing science, technology, and entrepreneurship through an artist’s eyes

At its best, creativity looks effortless — like something that simply happens in the spur of the moment. But in reality, it’s a complicated cognitive process that brings seemingly random ideas together to form something innovative that solves a problem or makes us see the world in a new way.

This is the intersection between art and entrepreneurship. Both require bringing ideas together from across disciplines and using various media or technologies to make something from nothing that challenges the status quo.

For multimedia artist Marina Zurkow, this kind of multi-disciplinary thinking is essential to her work, which explores humans’ relationships to their environment. This is particularly evident in Event Horizon, her first solo show in San Francisco focusing on themes of climate change and collective responsibility. (The show opens on Thursday, December 3rd at the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center and is co-presented by Eyebeam, a non-profit artist colony and R&D lab dedicated to experimental interdisciplinary work.)

Zurkow, who also teaches at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, sat down with the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center to explain why these interdisciplinary intersections are so important.

Your work explores the intersections between art and technology. How do you think these two fields of thought are inherently related?

Every form of art requires tools to communicate, from fire to clay to mycelium to software. I use technologies of various sorts to explore our relationships with the world. Sometimes software and animation seem like the best means — it’s a seductive, recombinant, refined, candy-like tool set. Other times, serving a handcrafted dinner that explores ecology and millions of years of geologic time is the best means. These things — the concept and its mode of transmission — should be integrated and well-considered. But no content and its technological pairing necessarily go hand-in-hand.

Your upcoming show at the Center features works that address climate change. What is the role of an artist in shaping public thought and opinion?

Art has an important place in the conversation about climate change, as it has a role in fostering more complex, emotional dialogues about all forms of justice and equity without being didactic. Art insinuates itself on an emotional level, rather than presenting “the facts,” the “shoulds,” or asserting a political position. Art connects dots — it can point out relationships on a systems level, folding science, social science, psychology, aesthetics, and poetics into its orbit.

I can’t generalize about art’s role in environmental discourse because there are so many registers at work. There’s activist work, geared towards enacting local or policy change. There’s the work of bringing communities together to rise up against environmental and social injustice. There are people working in mindfulness, or what some of my collaborators and I call “inner climate change,” which addresses the role of the imagination in rethinking our relationships on this earth. There are people attending to policy. And a lot of work being done currently on the falsely perceived division between what we call “nature” and what we call “culture.” And so on.

I’m personally interested in creating new poetics — a multimedia language that makes climate change interesting, that sparks curiosity, and embraces the unstable or insecure aspects of living on earth.

Do you see yourself as an entrepreneur?

I see myself as an entrepreneur, but not necessarily or solely in the interest of money. Money is of course part of it — getting adequate funding, having reach, supporting my studio and collaborations. I’m not as interested in scaling up as in extending this work’s lateral reach.

I’ve been thinking about generosity models. Sharing, having room for many, and even fostering competition are all good things. Scarcity is unfortunately the model that artists and the institutional structure of art cultivated in the 20th century. The 21st century recognizes more alternatives — what constitutes creativity and for whom. There are a lot of other ways to make art and to form communities — to innovate and have influence. Those include collectives, teaching, interdisciplinary research, and new distributed production models.

What do you hope viewers will take away from this exhibit?

There’s no single message that I want people to walk away with from this work. The pieces in this exhibit are not message-driven, but rather ask questions about how we organize the world into our mental models. In these particular works, I was interested in challenging certain divides — between nature and culture, and between above/below ground or inside/outside constructed boundaries of ecology, time, and emptiness.

I hope people will want to spend time connecting some dots to see themselves inside of problems that are as much conceptual as they are physical.

Join us for our inaugural Art Night– featuring an opening night reception for Marina Zurkow’s Event Horizon, followed by a talk with the artist — at the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center on Thursday, December 3rd at 5:30pm. We look forward to seeing you @theCenter.

Eyebeam is a nonprofit artist colony and R&D lab that supports dynamic and risk-taking work at the intersection of art and technology. Eyebeam is dedicated to educating and exposing audiences to experimental and interdisciplinary work, providing an environment for dialogue, collaboration, and discovery.

The Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center is a San Francisco-based non-profit that educates, innovates, and connects current and aspiring entrepreneurs. We provide access to quality resources, including mentors, training, and networking.