Holly Veselka is a new media artist and educator. Her practice incorporates emerging technologies as both medium and subject to address issues of culture, climate, and biodiversity. Her work has been presented in group and solo exhibitions, including the Torrance Art Museum (Los Angeles, CA), Fotofest (Houston, TX), Wave Hill (Bronx, NY), Artpace (San Antonio, TX), Lage Egal (Berlin, Germany), and the NARS Foundation (Brooklyn, NY).
fried eggs and rockets
Fried Eggs and Rockets, 2025, 6:45 minutes, HD video, courtesy the artist
Working from a home office, a woman is programmed to either talk to an AI about eggs and rockets, or look out the window where she sees a deer dying in childbirth in a hot landscape. So, she talks to the AI. She says…
Fried Eggs and Rockets was inspired by a news article about a SpaceX rocket launch and developed over the course of a year. The dialog is an edited version of a long-term conversation Veselka had with ChatGPT 4. In this work, AI is not only a tool of production—generating materials, avatars, voices, and imagery—but also a concept: What myths form behind the screen as AI is cast as both egg and rocket—potential and propulsion, care and violence, vulnerability and thrust? The woman, in turn, becomes both puppeteer and puppet, caught between tending to fragile lives and submitting to the machine’s authority. In these frictions, Fried Eggs and Rockets reflects on the futures we are programming into being, and the fragile lives—human and not—that hang in the balance.
Fried Eggs and Rockets was inspired by a news article about a SpaceX rocket launch and developed over the course of a year. The dialog is an edited version of a long-term conversation Veselka had with ChatGPT 4. In this work, AI is not only a tool of production—generating materials, avatars, voices, and imagery—but also a concept: What myths form behind the screen as AI is cast as both egg and rocket—potential and propulsion, care and violence, vulnerability and thrust? The woman, in turn, becomes both puppeteer and puppet, caught between tending to fragile lives and submitting to the machine’s authority. In these frictions, Fried Eggs and Rockets reflects on the futures we are programming into being, and the fragile lives—human and not—that hang in the balance.
selkie
Exhibition
Apeirophobia
Apeirophobia
Fotofest, Houston, TX, October 5-November 17, 2024
Selkie, 2024, 4:00 minutes, UHD video (web version 1080p), courtesy the artist
Selkie, a short video created with AI generated text to video and AI generated speech, considers themes of identity, interspecies friendships, objecthood, and creative acts. In the video, an artist uses AI to digitize herself into an avatar that can create the AI into the image of a seal. Through iterative design, the artist attempts to breach the confines of corporeal identity.
Selkie was included in the exhibition Apeirophobia, an exhibition of the artist collective Omnigenesis at Fotofest in Houston, TX. Omnigenesis is a self-identified network of artists, educators, writers, and practitioners invested in research and practice surrounding artificial intelligence in the arts. The group was established in 2024 through the organizational efforts of Christopher Meerdo.
Selkie was selected by Prospect Art for the upcoming exhibition Affective Territories, Alternate Belongings in Los Angeles, CA and Lisbon, Portugal.
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Selkie was included in the exhibition Apeirophobia, an exhibition of the artist collective Omnigenesis at Fotofest in Houston, TX. Omnigenesis is a self-identified network of artists, educators, writers, and practitioners invested in research and practice surrounding artificial intelligence in the arts. The group was established in 2024 through the organizational efforts of Christopher Meerdo.
Selkie was selected by Prospect Art for the upcoming exhibition Affective Territories, Alternate Belongings in Los Angeles, CA and Lisbon, Portugal.
Selkie installation shots, 2024, images courtesy of FotoFest.
rocky futures
Artist Performance
Karst: A Landscape of Mineral and Water
Centre for Mobilities Research, Lancaster University, Cremore, UK and T2M, Seoul, Korea, 2023
This video was created for and presented as part of Veselka’s artist performance during Rocky Futures, a collaboration between the Rocky Climates collective and the Centre for Mobilities Research at Lancaster University (Cemore).
“More substantive, machine-driven mobilities are part of the immense operations to extract lithic matter that were supercharged during the industrial revolution. Such extractions are now recognised as fundamental to the climate crisis that we confront. Holly Veselka deploys virtual mapping, 3-D modeling and simulated aerial photography to explore how the spectacular Karst limestone landscape at San Marcos, Texas, is being devastated by extensive mining for lime for concrete production, erasing its distinctive features and effacing the rich myths that focus upon this poetic and mysterious permeable realm, with its underworlds and channels. Veselka seeks to reintroduce a sense of mystery through the glitches and absences generated through photogrammetry.” — Tim Edensor, Moving Rocks, Rocks on the Move, 2024
Rocky Climates is an artists’ network formed by Rebecca Birch, Sarah Casey, and Jen Southern that brings together artists and researchers who are concerned with mobilities and instabilities (temporal, spatial, cultural, environmental) of rocky landscapes in uncertain times.
Rocky Futures presented the work of 14 artists in a series of 9 live Zoom events at the 2023 Global Humanities Conference (GMHC) and the Annual Conference of the International Association of The History of Transport, Traffic and Mobility (T2M) in Seoul, Korea on October 26th and 27th, 2023.
“More substantive, machine-driven mobilities are part of the immense operations to extract lithic matter that were supercharged during the industrial revolution. Such extractions are now recognised as fundamental to the climate crisis that we confront. Holly Veselka deploys virtual mapping, 3-D modeling and simulated aerial photography to explore how the spectacular Karst limestone landscape at San Marcos, Texas, is being devastated by extensive mining for lime for concrete production, erasing its distinctive features and effacing the rich myths that focus upon this poetic and mysterious permeable realm, with its underworlds and channels. Veselka seeks to reintroduce a sense of mystery through the glitches and absences generated through photogrammetry.” — Tim Edensor, Moving Rocks, Rocks on the Move, 2024
Rocky Climates is an artists’ network formed by Rebecca Birch, Sarah Casey, and Jen Southern that brings together artists and researchers who are concerned with mobilities and instabilities (temporal, spatial, cultural, environmental) of rocky landscapes in uncertain times.
Rocky Futures presented the work of 14 artists in a series of 9 live Zoom events at the 2023 Global Humanities Conference (GMHC) and the Annual Conference of the International Association of The History of Transport, Traffic and Mobility (T2M) in Seoul, Korea on October 26th and 27th, 2023.
Still from Quarries: San Antonio to Austin, 2023, 6:52, HD video, courtesy Google Earth Studio and the artist
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Still from Swallow Hole, 2023, 3:00, HD video created though photogrammetry, courtesy of the artist
Still from Swallow Hole, 2023, 3:00, HD video created though photogrammetry, courtesy of the artist
the rig
Exhibiton
Mareel Feature Space
Mareel Feature Space
Shetland Arts, Lerwick, Scotland, May 1–June 30, 2023
The Rig, 2023, 5:37 minutes, 4K video (web version 1080p), courtesy the artist
Veselka visited Shetland in May 2022 and became interested in the decommissioning of the Ninian Northern offshore platform at Dales Voe and the tremendous amount of marine life that had grown on the rig during its forty years of operation. In decommissioning process, this life had been killed, and the site was a graveyard. But the fact of life on these structures was also a symbol of hope. Visually, petrochemical infrastructure is often used as a symbol of climate change and environmental disaster. But the ecosystem living on the rig before it was decommissioned became a different type of symbol—one that represents life’s resilience.
Thinking about the opposing themes of energy, environmental destruction, and resilience, Veselka created this 3D animated video to experimentally represent what would happen to a rig if it outlived its petrochemical purpose and was allowed to remain in the sea as a sanctuary for living creatures.
This video was exhibited in a solo exhibition at Shetland Arts in Lerwick, Scotland.
To hear more about the artist's experience in Shetland, please listen to her interview with Chris Bonfiglioli on the Coastal Knowledge Podcast of the Young Academy of Scotland: https://www.youngacademyofscotland.org.uk/news/podcast-episode-9-coastal-climate-change-art/
More information on the project: X-CHANGE: Artist Residency & Exchange | Shetland Arts
Thinking about the opposing themes of energy, environmental destruction, and resilience, Veselka created this 3D animated video to experimentally represent what would happen to a rig if it outlived its petrochemical purpose and was allowed to remain in the sea as a sanctuary for living creatures.
This video was exhibited in a solo exhibition at Shetland Arts in Lerwick, Scotland.
To hear more about the artist's experience in Shetland, please listen to her interview with Chris Bonfiglioli on the Coastal Knowledge Podcast of the Young Academy of Scotland: https://www.youngacademyofscotland.org.uk/news/podcast-episode-9-coastal-climate-change-art/
More information on the project: X-CHANGE: Artist Residency & Exchange | Shetland Arts