DESERT ECH0000000

Zen Cohen

FILE SÃO PAULO 2026: Inter-creativity – Art and Technology – VIDEO ART SHORT
Electronic Language International Festival

Desert ECH0000000 – United States

Desert ECH0000000 is a site-specific video performance recorded during an artist residency at High Desert Test Sites in Joshua Tree, California. This work emerged from an immersive engagement with the landscape, where movements through the desert were captured and mediated using a camera and customized software. It invokes the concept of quantum branching—the idea that every event with multiple possible outcomes gives rise to parallel universes.

BIO

Zen Cohen’s exhibition credits include the deYoung Museum, SFMOMA, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Vanity Projects, Museo de Arte Moderno (CDMX), Ex Teresa Arte Actual (CDMX), and Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno (Canary Islands). She is the founding director of Open Air Media Festival which received an NEA in 2024.

FRAGILE
Fragile is an audio-visual installation that aims to investigate the relationship between stressful human experience and the transformations that occur in our brain. Recent scientific research has shown that neurons belonging to different areas of our brain are affected by stress. In particular stress causes changes in neuron circuitry, impacting their plasticity, the ability to change through growth and reorganization.
Our process exploits the scientific data provided by the Society for Neuroscience and elaborates this information trying to show the effect of external interactions on our nervous system and ultimately on our relationship with the outside world. In order to achieve this we developed an artwork composed of different digital representations following one another, branching into 5 screen projections.

Beetle in Undergrowth
“I have a strong background in zoology and botany. When I’m rendering realistic or fanciful depictions of flora and fauna, I constantly fall back on my studies and research. Since all of my artwork involves 3D computer imaging, I rely heavily on organic geometry and algorithms that govern natural branching and growth patterns. My art mimics nature in more ways than one.” Michael Frank

روكسي باين
רוקסי פיין
ロキシー·パイネ
록시 페인
inversion
Paine calls the series “Dendroids,” a name that combines dendron, Greek for “tree”, and “oid,” a suffix meaning “form.” But the title is more nuanced. Other words derived from dendron refer to branching systems, and in zoology “oid” denotes a creature belonging to a higher level of taxonomy. So “Dendroids” aren’t just tree forms, but allusions to branching structures from neurons to rivers to genealogical charts. And a viewer may be moved to consider the congruencies among such disparate but related systems.