Ellen Pearlman
Ellen Pearlman is a New York based media artist, curator, writer and critic. She is a Visiting Research Scholar at the New York University Tandon School of Engineering and a New Works Artist Grantee at Harvestworks in New York City, a peer-reviewed presenter at Expanded Animation, Ars Electronica, a Senior Research Assistant Professor at RISEBA University in Riga, Latvia and a Contributing Editor to Performance Arts Journal (PAJ) MIT Press. A Luman Prize selection in AI Moving Images, Ellen served as the Director and co-founder of ThoughtWorks Arts, a global research and innovation lab that includes the well regarded ThoughtWorks ArtsResidency. She was also a Research Fellow at MIT, A Fulbright Scholar to the Department of Mathematics and Informatics at The University of Warsaw, Poland, a two-time Fulbright World Learning Specialist in Art, New Media and Technology, an EU Vertigo STARTS Laureate (Horizon 2020), a Zero1 American Arts Incubator/U.S. State Department cultural envoy to Kyiv, Ukraine, and a Fulbright Alumni Ties grantee. Ellen received her Ph.D. in Digital Media from the School of Creative Media at Hong Kong City University where two out of three years she was awarded the department's outstanding academic achievement award. She premiered her brain opera "Noor", a fully immersive interactive brainwave opera at ISEA Hong Kong and the Microwave International Festival, HK. Her PhD thesis, "Is There A Place In Human Consciousness Where Surveillance Cannot Go?" was awarded highest global ranking from Leonardo LABS abstracts. "AIBO", her second new media opera was an emotionally intelligent artificial intelligent brainwave opera premiered at the Estonian Music Academy's state of the art black box theater, and was presented at Vertigo STARTS Days in Paris, France one week before the pandemic lockdown. She premiered her third new media opera, "Language Is Leaving Me - An AI Cinematic Opera Of The Skin" at the Copernicus Science Center in Warsaw, Poland on October 7, 2023, one of the three top art/science centers in Europe.
Ellen is also Founder and President of Art-A-Hack(TM), and Director and Curator of the New York Volumetric Society. During her doctoral studies she was a Visiting Scholar at Parsons/New School University in New York. Previously she co-founded the first Summer Institute in Telematic Art with the University of Calgary, Hong Kong Polytechnic University and Videotage HK to create an internationally linked global interactive telematic performance while FUSE Digital Artist in Residence at Videotage. Ellen has lectured on the future of opera at the MetaLAB at Harvard University and on new media at both the Hermitage Museum and ITMO University (the MIT of Russia) in St. Petersburg, Russia as part of Cyberfest. She curated and has shown work at SPRING/BREAK Independent Projects (part of Armory Week), ISEA, the Microwave Festival, The RIXC Festival, Harvestworks Electronic Arts Festival, and collaborated on digital projects with the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Media Lab. She was on the Art Panel Review Board for SIGGRAPH ASIA in Yokohama, Japan, a panel judge for ISEA New Mexico, Columbia, and Hong Kong, and presented her work at ISEA Istanbul, New Mexico, Dubai, Vancouver, Korea, Montreal, Transmediale Berlin and the Sounds, Image and Data Conference at NYUSteinhardt/Goldsmiths/ Leonardo, the 3rd Global Conference on Posthuman Ethics at NYU, and at conferences in Latvia, Finland, Ireland, Estonia, Italy, China, Japan and the Netherlands.
Ellen has also lectured on New Media at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), and the Communications and Animation University in Beijing, the Songzhuang Art Center, and universities in Wuhan and Tianjin, China. She participated in the first Beijing International Conference on Art Theory and Criticism at CAFA. the first Conference on Interactive Design, and the first conference on New Media Research, both at Tsinghua University. She travelled to Ulan Bator, Mongolia to work on presentation and curatorial practices with the Blue Sun arts group and lectured at the Mongolian Fine Arts Academy at the behest of the Open Academy project, supported by the Prince Claus Fund of the Netherlands. An Asian Cultural Council Grantee she was also awarded a Canadian Banff Mountain Culture Grant to film sacred monastic dance in nomadic Tibet. Ellen has been both a Banff Non Fiction and a Banff Digital Media Research Residency Fellow.
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Her book, "Nothing and Everything, the Influence of Buddhism on the American Avant Garde, 1942-1962" was published by North Atlantic Books as part of its Evolver imprint . She has been a five-time Vermont Studio Center Special President's Fellow, a resident at the Great River Arts Colony in Patzcuaro, Mexico, the Repino Arts Colony, and QuatRiatia New Media art residency in St. Petersburg, Russia, and the Red Gate Artist Colony in Beijing, China. Ellen was awarded two ACO Artist Residencies in Hong Kong, and was a research resident at Signal Culture in upstate NY. She presented papers at the Taiwanese Photographer's International Symposium, and Hong Kong City University's "Extraordinary Dress Code" Conference and has been an arts contributor to Time Out Beijing in English, Yishu Magazine of Contemporary Asian Art, Art Asia Pacific, Sculpture Magazine, Hyperallergic (winner of International Art Critics Association Best Blog Award), Leonardo Magazine, Performance Art Journal (PAJ), Furtherfield.org, the International Journal of Digital Performance, the Journal of Problem Based Learning, and Acoustic Space. She is also a peer reviewer for Leonardo Magazine.
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A two-time finalist for the Andy Warhol/Creative Capital Arts Writers Grant, for 18 years she was an editor-at-large for The Brooklyn Rail which won the Andy Warhol/Creative Capital Publishing Grant, and a writer for 9 years at Hyperallergic. A Breadloaf Writer's Conference Scholar recommended by the late poet Allen Ginsberg, she attended The Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center and The Iowa Writer's Workshop. Ellen studied at The School of The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, The International Center of Photography (ICP), Telematic Art at the University of Calgary, Canada, and anthropological film at Harvard University before receiving her doctorate at The School of Creative Media, Hong Kong City University under Ars Electronica Golden Nica winners Maurice Benayoun and Jeffrey Shaw, as well as Jane Prophet of Goldsmiths/Penny Stamps School, U of Michigan. She was the photographer for Harvard Medical School as part of an American Institute of Indian Studies grant researching Tibetan Tumo or heat yogis.
Ellen has a black belt in Taijitsu (Ninja) under the auspices of Black Belt Hall of Fame Ninja Master Shidoshi Steven Hayes. She is a member of The International Association of Art Critics and listed in the current edition of Who's Who in America and Who's Who In the World, receiving the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award.​ She was on faculty at Columbia University's Computer Technology and Applications Program for 13 years and on faculty at Parsons/New School University, CUNY, New York, Hong Kong City University, and lectured at universities around the world.