Victoria Vesna

Victoria Vesna, Ph.D., is an Artist and Professor at the UCLA Department of Design Media Arts and Director of the Art|Sci center at the School of the Arts and California Nanosystems Institute (CNSI). Although she was trained early on as a painter (Academy of Fine arts, Belgrade, 1984), her curious mind took her on an exploratory path that resulted in work can be defined as experimental creative research residing between disciplines and technologies. With her installations she investigates how communication technologies affect collective behavior and perceptions of identity shift in relation to scientific innovation (PhD, University of Wales, 2000). Her work involves long-term collaborations with composers, nano-scientists, neuroscientists, evolutionary biologists and she brings this experience to students. To date, she has had 30+ solo art exhibitions, 100+ group shows, published 30 + papers, 10+ book chapters,100+ invited talks. She is the North American editor of AI & Society, Springer-Verlag and published edited volumes. Currently, she serves on the jury of hybrid and interactive arts at Ars Electronica and is working on a series of books dealing with Art, Science &Technology. Her positions and accolades in academia include: Chair, Department of Design Media Arts (1999-2006); Visiting Professor and Director of Research, Parsons the New School of Design (2009-2013); Visiting Professor, School of Creative Media, Hong Kong (2012); Director, UC Digital Arts Research Network (2000-03), Director and founder, UCLA Art | Science center (2005-present); Visiting Professor, Empowerment Informatics Program, University of Tsukuba (2014-present).