Code as Witness: Marina Zurkow on Software, Ecology, and the Future of Art

What happens when an artist thinks like an ecologist, and software becomes a tool for witnessing planetary change?

Join media artist Marina Zurkow and Whitney curator Christiane Paul for an intimate conversation about Parting Worlds, Zurkow's landmark exhibition, and her Hyundai Terrace Commission at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Complete your FREE RSVP here:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1976492177308

In collaboration with the National Arts Club and its Art and Technology Committee, this is a rare opportunity to hear directly from an artist whose work sits at the intersection of environmental urgency, computational beauty, and speculative futures — and from the curator who shapes how institutions understand and present art made with code, data, and systems thinking.

Zurkow's practice is simple: she takes wicked problems (things like invasive species, resource extraction, the Hudson River's relationship with a city) and translates them into immersive digital experiences that make the invisible visible.

Three software-driven animations anchor this conversation: Mesocosm (Wink, TX) (2012), The Earth Eaters (2025), and The River is a Circle (2025).

But beyond the screen, Zurkow's toolkit spans animation, generative code, participatory dinners, and bio-based projects — each chosen to deepen our understanding of how humans entangle with ecological systems across geological and human timescales.

Complete your FREE RSVP here:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1976492177308

What makes this conversation essential is the meeting of two distinct forms of expertise.

• Zurkow will walk through her process: how she collaborates with climate scientists, how she builds software to animate temporal cycles and tipping points, and why she moves between digital and tangible media.
• Paul, who has spent two decades mapping digital art's evolution from net art to AI and immersive environments, will contextualize Zurkow's work within broader conversations about artistic agency, technological infrastructure, and the museum's role in addressing planetary futures.

This dialogue will probe the boundaries of what art can say about ecological interdependence, as well as how institutions collect, present, and preserve work that speaks to our moment.

The room will include artists, technologists, environmental thinkers, and curious minds hungry to understand how creative practice engages with real-world complexity.

Reserve your spot and arrive early. Space is limited.

Complete your FREE RSVP here:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1976492177308
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Founded in 1898, the National Arts Club is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit with a mission to stimulate, foster, and promote public interest in the arts and to educate the American people in the fine arts.

Annually, the Club offers more than 150 free programs—both in-person and virtually—to the public, including exhibitions, theatrical and musical performances, lectures, and readings, attracting an audience of over 30,000 in-person visitors and thousands more online.