X Lisa Jevbratt
jevbratt@arts.ucsb.edu



I am an artist, professor of art, and the chair of the department of art at University of California Santa Barbara.

Although I have a traditional art education from my homeland Sweden, the medium that clicked, the one that made me an artist, is computer programming. It allowed me to make visualizations of huge data sets, revealing patterns far beyond what my mind could imagine. I hope to create systems that teaches us, you and me, something, systems that reveal truths my own mind could not imagine. Programming also makes it possible to make work that is intimate in the sense that it creates a personal point of entry, and a way to act, to make a shift, for the person interacting with it. I look at my work as collaborative systems where the audience and I become citizen scientist, making discoveries together. I have made software visualizing the structure of the internet and the web, image processing programs revealing ghost activity, and an app that helps us see how other animals see color.

There are many threads that lead to my current interest in fiber arts. On an aesthetic level my data visualization work connects strongly with various textile techniques such as weaving and knitting (as confirmed by the inclusion of my internet visualization work in the textile art exhibition Miniart Textile in Como, Italy in 2006.) The aesthetic similarities are an indication of deeper process-related and historical connections between computers and weaving. On a personal level programming and textile techniques both appeal to my affinity for mathematical and process-oriented thinking. Another entry point was my interest in the perceptions of non-human animals and our relationships with them. Over the years, in parallel with my programming classes, I have been investigating human animal relationships with my students in a class I call Interspecies Collaboration. This interest brought me to sheep and my fiber of choice – wool. (I have since become a certified sheep shearer and a certified wool classer, and I take herding lessons with my aussie).

My projects muddle accepted epistemologies with alternative ways of knowing. I see the plant dye art project I currently work on, "Invasive Species / Endemic Breeds – A Sensorial Mapping of Santa Cruz Island" as a data mapping of invasive species, investigating color and plants on a chemical level. My projects often have a scientific component, which in this project gets juxtaposed with alchemy and witchcraft, as the plants involved have a rich history of magical and medicinal use.

My work has been exhibited internationally in venues such as The Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), Banff Centre for the Arts (Canada), The New Museum (New York), The Swedish National Public Art Council (Stockholm, Sweden), Centro Colombo Americano (Bogota), Somerset House (London), Miniart Textile - International Fibre Art Exhibition (Como, Italy) and the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York). It is discussed in numerous books, for example "Internet Art" by Rachel Greene, "Digital Art" by Christiane Paul and “Art + Science Now” by Stephen Wilson. I have also published texts about issues related to my practice, for example “Inquiries in Infomics”, a chapter in the anthology "Network Art - Practices and Positions" ed. Tom Corby (Routledge) and “Interspecies Collaboration, Making Art Together with Nonhuman Animals” in Tierstudien [Animal Studies] Issue 1 (Neofelis Verlag, Berlin, Germany). My animal vision simulation app Zoomorph ¬was created with the support of a Creative Capital grant.

Lisa Jevbratt 2021