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Science New Wave
Works-in-progress
NYU Production Lab | Saturday, October 15 @ 7:30pm
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Join us for an evening where we celebrate the art/science collaborative process in the making of a cinematic organism.
Check-in on the ground floor of
16 Washington Pl, New York, NY 10003
Proof of Vaccination + Booster + ID required

Meet Our Presenters!
The 6 art/science hybrids will present works-in-progress and how they are riding the Science New Wave. We will also present a video introducing our 2022 Science New Wave Recipients + HABITAT Reception.
  • Pedro Márquez-Zacarías
    Biologist, Science Communicator
    PROJECT: Life Beyond
    I am a Purépecha biologist from Michoacán, México. Awed at the emergence and evolution of life, and how life becomes more intertwined over time. I'm also a science communicator, and have directed/produced interviews with interesting scientists:
  • Mark Levinson
    Filmmaker
    PROJECT: The Universe in a Grain of Sand
    As a filmmaker who began by getting a doctorate in physics, I am interested in exploring the overlaps between science and art in both fiction and non-fiction formats.
  • Arianna Zuanazzi
    Neuroscientist
    PROJECT: The Hidden Story
    I am a postdoctoral researcher at New York University. I investigate how the brain makes sense of language and music, using neuroimaging techniques such as Magnetoencephalography. I am also involved in several initiatives that aim to make science accessible to the general public and to use science to create positive social change.
  • Sean Hanley
    Filmmaker
    PROJECT: The Gossamer Thread
    I'm a New York City based filmmaker making short-form work that navigates the construction of Nature through studies of landscape, place-making, and the experience of the non-human.
  • Heather Dewey-Hagborg
    Artist & Biohacker
    PROJECT: Hybrid: An Interspecies Opera
    I am artist and biohacker who is interested in art as research and technological critique. My controversial biopolitical art practice includes the project Stranger Visions in which she created portrait sculptures from analyses of genetic material (hair, cigarette butts, chewed up gum) collected in public places.
  • Zahra Al-Madhi
    Artist, Writer, Filmmaker.
    PROJECT: Bird Watch
    My work reveals the unintended impacts humans have on their societies and ecosystems. She is known for collage work using ink sketches layered over photographs, animation on live action and installations that deal with dissected anatomical figures that probe themes in science fiction, post-colonialism and post-structuralism.
+ Science New Wave Exclusive Video Presentations
Momoko Seto (Planets), Fradique (Hold the Time For Me), Still / Moving (When the Land Becomes Earth), Mike Maryniuk (Mussel Beach)
Meet Our Science New Wave
Award Recipients
The Science New Wave celebrates scientific storytelling, exploring the gray zone between science and film.

Science New Wave Development Fund

presented by OneFifty | Warner Bros. Discovery

Check out our 5 winners in our Press Release + Info below on their projects.
Fradique is an Angola filmmaker, born in Luanda in 1986. He is notable as the director of the critically acclaimed films "Independência" and "Air Conditioner." As a filmmaker and one of founders of the Angola collective Geração 80 is an advocate of global south cinema.

He has received a Development Grant for his feature film "Hold the Time For Me."

"This film is a road trip of collective change and confrontation with the pain of loss, that is still sought in the forgotten utopias of an abandoned country. This is a film that is trying to push the boundaries in filmmaking in Angola and bring the conversation about the future of our country." - F.
HABITAT
Momoko / Planets
Momoko Seto was born in Tokyo and lives in France. She studied at the École supérieure des beaux-arts de Marseille, and then at Le Fresnoy. She works as a director at CNRS where she makes scientific documentaries with researchers in the human and social sciences. At the same time, she makes more personal, experimental or documentary films. The short films of her series PLANET have been presented and awarded in many festivals and artistic events around the world, including Berlinale.

Momoko has received a Production Grant for her magical realist feature "Planets."

The film tells the story of Dendelion, Baraban, Léonto and Taraxa, four dandelion achenes rescued from nuclear explosions that destroyed the Earth, find themselves projected into the cosmos. After landing on an unknown planet, they start searching for a suitable soil to perpetuate their species. But they will have to overcome the elements, the fauna, the flora and the changing climate. With this feature film, I want to further develop this universe, by showing plants and living beings as we have never seen them. - M.S.
HABITAT
Still/Moving is composed of three artists, Laura Hopes, Martin Hampton and Léonie Hampton. Living in Devon, UK, their collective practice aims to create social and ecological change through questioning established modes of thinking and behaviour.

Still/Moving has received a Research/Development Grant for their project 'When the Land Becomes Earth."

This project aims to utilise the idea of a teaspoon of soil as a metaphor for community: full of diversity and defined by the land it inhabits. Made up of fungi, plants, animals, humans and rocks, soil is a symbol or barometer of our planet's habitability. We find beauty in testing and error, explore the edges of our unknowing and strongly believe in the power of combinatorial approaches. - S|M
HABITAT
Sean Hanley / The Gossamer Thread
Sean Hanley is a director and cinematographer working primarily in documentary and artist moving image. His films navigate our precarious relationship with the natural world. His most recent film, The Whelming Sea (2020) screened at the 13th Annual Imagine Science Film Festival, the Mimesis Documentary Festival, and the Environmental Film Festival in the Nation's Capitol, among others.

Sean has received a Production Grant for his medium-length documentary 'The Gossamer Thread.'

The film's narrative is built around a series of vignettes that are each threads on a metaphoric spider's web spiraling out from the central agent: the genetic mechanisms of a golden silk orb-weaver, a large spider common to the southeastern United States. The film eschews traditional exposition, imparting context through immersive cinematography, observational scenes, and in-situ interviews with researchers. In it's heart, the film is a road movie, taking audiences across the United States, through suburban woodlands, university labs, and natural history museums. - S.H.
HABITAT
Heather Dewey-Hagborg / Hybrid: An Interspecies Opera
Heather Dewey-Hagborg is an artist and biohacker who is interested in art as research and technological critique. Heather has shown work internationally at events and venues including the World Economic Forum, the Daejeon Biennale, the Guangzhou Triennial, and the Shenzhen Urbanism and Architecture Biennale, Transmediale, the Walker Center for Contemporary Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and PS1 MOMA. Her work is held in public collections of the Centre Pompidou, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Wellcome Collection, the Exploratorium, and the New York Historical Society, among others, and has been widely discussed in the media, from the New York Times and the BBC to Art Forum and Wired.

Heather has received a Distribution Grant for the release of her art film/opera "Hybrid: An Interspecies Opera."

Hybrid: an Interspecies Opera is a short documentary opera investigating xenotransplantation—the genetic engineering of pigs for human organs. The opera's libretto is a poetic assemblage of transcriptions from original interviews conducted by the artist with key scientists and archaeologists engaged in this research. - H.D-H
HABITAT
We also want to congratulate the Science New Wave finalists:

Yashaswini Raghunandan & Arianna Zuanazzi
The Hidden Story

Pedro Márquez-Zacarías
Life Beyond

Agne Dovydaityte
Baltic UXO

Melissa Ferrari & Meilín Fernández García
Where Science becomes Medicine

Mike Maryniuk
Mussel Beach
How are artists, scientists, and educators working together to create singular narratives? The boundaries between scientific data and cinema magic are dissolving. Similar to developing organisms, science films are emerging with new traits and new forms. The Science New Wave is born.
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