Natalie Jeremijenko
Categories: People
Natalie Jeremijenko is an artist whose background includes studies in biochemistry, physics, neuroscience and precision engineering. Jeremijenko’s projects—which explore socio-technical change—have been exhibited by several museums and galleries, including the MASSMoCA, the Whitney, Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt. A 1999 Rockefeller Fellow, she was recently named one of the 40 most influential designers by I.D. Magazine. Jeremijenko is the director of the environmental health clinic at NYU, assistant professor in Art, and affiliated with the Computer Science Dept.
Jeremijenko directs the xDesign Environmental Health Clinic [http://www.nyu.edu/projects/xdesign/]. The Environmental Health Clinic develops and prescribes locally optimized and often playful strategies to effect remediation of environmental systems, producing measurable and mediagenic evidence and coordinating diverse projects to effective material change.
Recently, Jeremijenko’s work was included in the 2006 Whitney Biennial of American Art and the Cooper Hewit Smithsonian Design Triennial 2006-7. Jeremjenko’s permanent installation on the roof of Postmasters Gallery in Chelsea Model Urban Development(MUD): provides infrastructure and facilities for high-density bird cohabitation in an environmental experiment in interaction with the New York City bird population.
Her work is described as experimental design, hence xDesign, as it explores opportunities presented by new technologies for non-violent social change. Her research centers on structures of participation in the production of knowledge and information, and the political and social possibilities (and limitations) of information and emerging technologies — mostly through public experiments. In this vein, her work spans a range of media from statistical indices (such as the Despondency Index, which linked the Dow Jones to the suicide rate at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge) to biological substrates (such as the installations of cloned trees in pairs in various urban micro-climates) to robotics (such as the development of feral robotic dog packs to investigate environmental hazards).
Jeremijenko is also a visiting professor at Royal College of Art, in London and an artist not-in-residence at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto. Previously, Jeremijenko was a member of the faculty in the Visual Arts at UCSD and in Engineering at Yale.
November 12th, 2007 at 12:51 am
Greetings Natalie,
I am delighted with your work.
My specialty is in Ethnopharmacology, drug design and botanical research.
As a Naturopathic Doctor, I will like to design medicine which will influence the human to interact with nature as a tool for treating both in sincronicity.
I will love to keep your brain for ideas.
Thank you for your creations to inspire us all.
Seemab
December 18th, 2007 at 7:15 pm
[...] rate off the Golden Gate Bridge and indexes it to the Dow Jones Industrial Average (developed by Natalie Jeremijenko for the Bureau of Inverse Technology). No Comments Leave a Commenttrackback addressThere was [...]
September 5th, 2008 at 11:21 am
I read with interest the article in Science Times regarding Dr. Jeremijenko’s prescription for the phytoremediation of lead contaminated soil. The method described was ingenious and original (commercial environmental companies seem to be sorely lacking in both) but I’d make the following comments:
1) EDTA is not biodegradable, to the best of my knowledge. As someone who has treated electroplating wastes for some 25 years, some of the most challenging wastewaters I’ve encountered have been contaminated with toxic metal/EDTA chelates.
2) EDTA is often used as a preservative because it sequesters trace metal ions required for bacterial and fungal growth. It might have profound unforseen effects upon soil flora and fauna.
I’d have used, instead, an admittedly weaker but biodegradable chelator, such as glycolic, citric, or tartaric acid.
As a resident of the Bronx, I see contaminated sites all the time. Children are being harmed NOW. The environment is being harmed NOW. What’s needed are innovative solutions to these problems. What’s happening is…not much. The remediation projects, when not stalled, are controlled by environmental companies whose solutions all seem to involve digging up the contaminated soil and burying it someplace else. State of the art techniques like phytoremediation and soil washing aren’t even considered.
Does your organization have any ongoing projects up here? If so, I’d be happy to volunteer my services. I’ve treated over a million gallons of wastewater and hazardous wastes.
Hope to hear from you.
September 5th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
Hi Natalie-
We would like to do an article/profile on all the positivity & progrees of you & the Environmental Health Clinic.
I tried the contact page to no avail.
please contact us so we can discuss this exciting initiative further.
Only good & all the best,
Nathaneal Harkham
Greenecco.com
(213)479-2301
October 13th, 2008 at 10:52 pm
[...] Natalie Jerimijenko, homepage * 1996, SuicideBox (Bureau of Inverse Technology), (1:52 begins @:56) * 2007, Fish Sensor (xDesign), (0:11) [...]
February 8th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
[...] on Earth, Natalie Jeremijenko’s Feral Robotic Dogs project embeds cheap environmental sensors in off-the-shelf toys and sends them [...]