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![The Unwanted Ecology]()
The Unwanted Ecology
Nandita Kumar is a creative/system designer who works at the intersection art, environmental science, technology and community to creates interactive installations. She explores the elemental process through which human beings construct meaning from their experiences, by creating sensory narratives through the usage of sound, video/ animation and performance, smartphone apps, customized motherboards, solar/microwave sensors. Through her installations, interactive sculptures, paintings and animations, which seamlessly integrate new media and materiality, Kumar reflects the striking contradictions within the industrial and natural landscape.
Her process envisions a desirable future state for human societies in which living conditions and resource-use continue to meet human needs without undermining the "integrity, stability and beauty" of natural biotic systems. Nandita explores the impact of innovative technologies on human lives through her practice. She employs technology as though it were a natural element in an extended ecosystem. Her works as a result are hybrids, rooted simultaneously in human nature while a pervasive electronic layer is integrated seamlessly. The projects through their very system design aim to promote community building, critical thinking and reflection, while simultaneously finding solutions to equitable access to information and research, through addressing the digital and educational divide.
Nandita has shown in varied festivals and exhibitions throughout the world including Ars Electronica (Honorary Mention), Pompidou, ZKM, KIASMA, LACMA, REDCAT, ISEA, Jeu de Paume, KNMA, Film Anthology Archive NY, The New Zealand International Film Festival, Rome International Film Festival, Sydney Underground, Indian Art Fair, Rome International Film festival, Stuttgart Animation Festival, The Academy of Television Art and Sciences in Los Angeles. “Ghar Pe/At Home” (2011-2012), a community art project she curated, has been documented online by Asian Art Archive (Hong Kong). She has been the recipient of Asu Leonardo Imagination Fellowship and presented her work at the UNESCO future Literacy. She has also been a speaker at TEDx and MOCA, Sydney. She has completed the DAAD Fellowship Artist in Berlin Program and has been accepted into the S+T+ARTS 4 Water II Residency with TBA21.
She holds a joint Bachelors Degree from MS University, Baroda(India) and Elam School Of the Arts, Auckland University, (New Zealand) and has completed her Masters Degree in Experimental Animation at California Institute of the Arts, Los Angeles(USA).
