HWS News
15 November 2016 • Arts • Faculty Eat and Run with Laura Nova
The Hobart and William Smith community welcomed multidisciplinary artist Laura Nova for a guest lecture, "Eat and Run," designed to introduce students to the ways they can apply multidisciplinary art to real-world problems, particularly through the lenses of consumption, cardio and comedy.
An associate professor of expanded media in the creative art and technology program at Bloomfield College in Bloomfield, N.J., Nova is an artist who combines text, image, video, sound, sculpture and performance to explore how language and technology mediate social interaction. Hosted by the Department of Art and Architecture, the event was held on Thursday, Oct. 27, in Houghton House, room 112. The event was been made possible by the generosity of the Termuhlen P'09-Rauck '09 Family Endowed Lecture Fund in Architecture, established in honor of Professor of Architecture Stan Mathews P'14.
Through her work, Nova applies different lenses to facilitate projects such as, Feed Me a Story, which focuses on the memory, identity and immigration of senior citizens through sharing secret family recipes. Technology enters the equation as Nova presents the information in a documentary-style video cookbook, engaging the audience through video.
Some of her other programs include, Limited Run, which features a 20-meter indoor running track; The Crescendo Project, which utilizes radio-frequency identification technology to create an automated praise-singing machine for disabled athletes; On the Spot, an interactive video that employs a stage similar to one-liner karaoke; and Moving Stories: a senior-led walking tour, which combines physical movement and memory.
Nova's unique programs have resulted in her work being published in both national and international exhibitions. The most notable are the Independent Curators International exhibition, Situation Comedy: Humor in Recent Art, and Limited Run at Real Art Ways for which she received a National Performance Network Grant. The Fund for Creative Communities and the Manhattan Community Arts Fund Grant enabled The Crescendo Project.
Nova has participated in several artist residencies including the Artist in the Marketplace at the Bronx Museum of Art, the Henry Street Settlement, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace, Visual Studies Workshop and Vermont Studio Center. She received a bachelor of fine arts and a bachelor of arts in art and history from Cornell University and a master of arts from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
