Parker is a Professor and founding Director of the OpenLab Collaborative Research Center at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

As a media artist, Parker is recognized for her innovative work investigating issues of biology and technology, combining art, ecology, and design. Through multi-sensory and interdisciplinary collaborations, she engages scientific and creative practices to explore the sensorial world of humans and the more than-human world of species living on the planet.

As an educator, Parker carves sites for collective engagement between disciplines. Facilitating, identifying, and determining the boundaries of complex, multi-dimensional space to develop (a sense of) community to encourage learning and inform and develop the practice of its members. Her methods of inquiry build on lab and studio visits, literature reviews, and conversations with faculty and students across disciplines, triggering a heuristic learning process to pursue creative research for exhibitions and publications.

Jennifer Parker’s website: https://www.jenniferparker.net

Harrower is both a research ecologist and artist, and uses fibers and oils from her study organisms to manipulate the physical properties of her paints and tell the story of climate change and species loss. In her series Fungal Soil Mutualisms, she explores how the changing climate may alter symbiotic interactions between soil fungi and Joshua trees and how that could impact tree survival.

See Juniper’s website.

Years, 2011, Galerie Lisa Ruyter Vienna, Photo: Andreas Fleckl

Bartholomäus Traubeck builds equipment to translate the information contained in tree rings into music.

Years, 2011

Tree rings can provide information regarding the age of a tree, as well as different environmental conditions that the tree experienced throughout its life time. This can allow researchers to understand ecological conditions such as droughts, floods, temperature extremes, fires and disease. Traubeck’s equipment translates the rings on a turntable, using sensors rather than a needle, that gathers information about the wood’s color, patterns, and texture, and uses an algorithm to translate that into piano music.

See Traubeck’s website