About
Statement
I play with interactivity and motion in time and space, expressing myself through code and leveraging technology to create installations, audio-visual performances, sculptures and prints. The raw materials of my practice include algorithms, gesture-based inputs, sound, high-dimensional datasets and agent-based simulations. I use techniques of remapping, compression and translation to bring these materials to life, seeking to create work that is highly polished while retaining a sense of playfulness and magic.
My inspirations include mathematics, music, and nature, and I am particularly interested in the relativity of perception and capturing the essence of change over time in complex systems. There are different layers and tempos of change that exist in the world - animal, vegetal, mineral to name a few. To us, plants move slowly; maybe to plants, we move frantically. How might playing with point of view and compression or expansion of time and other dimensions help us see and sense differently, more clearly, more humbly, more empathetically? My work invites viewers to participate and experience a shifting sense of perspective.
When we observe something, we change it. There is no absolute objectivity or passive observation of a system, be it a computer system or a natural system, where the observer doesn’t have some effect on it. As people of all ages interact with my art, they affect the work, and I hope the work affects them, helping them experience the same curiosity and wonder that I do during the creative process.
Biography
Nathan Selikoff’s award-winning artwork has been exhibited and performed in galleries and venues throughout the United States and around the world, including Art Basel in Switzerland; Bridges Math Art Conferences in South Korea, Hungary, Canada and Finland; Snap! Space and Art & History Museums—Maitland in Florida; AXIOM Gallery in Boston; the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art; the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art in California; SIGGRAPH Art Galleries in various US cities, and Maker Faire Orlando.
An avid explorer of the intersection of art and technology, he was one of a small group of developers to launch apps for the Leap Motion Controller, a futuristic 3d motion control technology. His experimental art app, Beautiful Chaos, allows users to explore the curves and ripples of mathematical equations brought to life in vivid color. In more recent collaborations with composers and musicians, Selikoff has created and performed live projected visuals for new music concerts with Wil Smith, Dmitri Tymoczko and the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, and Keith Lay and the Orlando Philharmonic.
Selikoff is a frequent public speaker on the intersection of art and technology at events like SXSW, TEDx Orlando, and Pecha Kucha, and has been a champion of many local arts events and organizations, participating in IMMERSE (The Creative City Project), Art31, Art in Odd Places, The Corridor Project, and the Cardboard Art Festival. As a teaching artist, Selikoff has given STEAM workshops and talks (science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics) for students and adults in Central Florida, New York City, and virtually.
From 2016 to 2020, Selikoff worked with David Thomas Moran on Omnimodal, a social enterprise focused on public transit. Omnimodal grew out of Moran’s and Pat Greene’s participatory art project TrIP (The Transit Interpretation Project), which hosted Selikoff as an artist in residence in 2014, and Selikoff’s art product Local Notebooks, which celebrated public transit in neighborhoods and cities with beautiful laser-etched maps. In 2015, with Michael Forrest, he brought Rafael Rozendaal’s event BYOB (Bring Your Own Beamer) to Orlando. He also founded Processing Orlando, a bi-monthly meetup for artists interested in using technology that ran from 2013-2014. In 2011 he had his first solo and two-person exhibitions in Central and South Florida, and in 2008 Nathan participated in a three week residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, studying under master artist John F. Simon, Jr.
Nathan Selikoff was born in Atlanta in 1980. He received a B.F.A. in Computer Animation and a minor in Computer Science from the University of Central Florida in Orlando, where he has resided since 1997. In addition to being a fine artist, Selikoff is a Data Visualization and User Interface Engineer with Stitch Fix’s Product & Tech team, and a volunteer for The Bridges Organization, which holds an annual conference on connections between mathematics and the arts.
Selikoff is represented by Snap! Space in Florida, Bangkok, and Amsterdam.
Resume
Full artist resume / curriculum vitae with exhibition history, performances, collections, awards & honors, bibliography, lectures & public speaking, education, and professional affiliations.
