Holly Veselka

a portfolio site 
My research-based creative practice examines how ecological systems are shaped by both human and nonhuman forces. Across video, installation, and interactive media, I use tools such as photogrammetry, game engines, and machine learning to engage the past, present, and future of the more-than-human world, exploring narratives of reciprocity and care amid systems of extraction, climate change, and land development. 

Upcoming projects focus on fragile and often overlooked ecosystems. In these works, I am developing responsive environments that model ecological tipping points, inviting viewers to engage with systems that require balance, restraint, and collective action.

While my practice incorporates computational and generative processes, I am increasingly attentive to the material and environmental costs of these technologies. I approach digital tools critically, working to minimize resource use, extend the lifespan of materials, and prioritize low-impact methods where possible.

This portfolio features a selection of works created since 2021.


Fried Eggs and Rockets, 2025



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
reflects on the futures we are programming into being and the fragile lives caught in that trajectory. Inspired by a SpaceX rocket launch, the dialogue is drawn from an extended conversation I recorded with ChatGPT. Using 3D modeling, CGI, and generative AI tools, I explore fragile ecologies, technological mythologies, and the uneasy relationship between care and destruction.

Lost Thicket, 2025



Lost Thicket, 2025, 15:30 minutes, multichannel HD video installation, 3D-printed bioplastic sculptural relief on birch panels, 162 × 192 in. and 111 × 168 in., found rocks; Commissioned by San Antonio Botanical Garden for the exhibition Reflections in Nature

Lost Thicket (detail), 2025, birch panel with 3D-printed bioplastic relief, 162 × 192 in.
Installed inside a preserved nineteenth-century log cabin, Lost Thicket reflects on the incompleteness of ecological archives. In the southern pine forests, industrial logging erased millennia of biodiversity in mere decades. In this installation, I reference sacred architecture, meditative practices, ecological loss, and digital artifice to create a subtly unsettling environment that asks how digital technologies echo extractive industries and reshape ecological memory.

Inside the cabin, I use projectors to cast video onto suspended panel walls with 3D-printed relief. A meditative surround-sound composition, built from field recordings and solfeggio frequencies, enhances the immersive environment. The relief imagery and animation originate from a photographic archive I created at the Big Thicket National Preserve and developed through an experimental workflow involving AI and 3D modeling.


Lost Thicket (detail), 2025, installation at the San Antonio Botanical Garden’s East Texas log cabin

u/digital_smarthome, 2025 



u/digital_smarthome, 2025, 5:38 minutes, 4K video (web 1080p), courtesy the artist
u/digital_smarthome, 2025 traces the extractive reshaping of America's southern pine forests, considering how extractive systems continue into digital technoscapes. Working with AI-altered archival images, Smart Home reveals continuities between ecological erasure and contemporary digital realities. By animating and distorting historical photographs, the archive becomes destabilized, allowing the video work to move between documentation and speculative fiction.


Earlier iterations of this project appeared as edited stills on the cover and in a multi-page spread in Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature & Fine Arts, Vol. 37.2 (Summer/Fall 2025).

Portfolio for Gulf Coast:
1. Logging Train 1888, 2024
2. Logging 1907, 2024
3. Tracks 1939, 2024
4. Divining Rod #1 1939, 2024
5. Divining Rod #2 1939, 2024
6. Prairie 1900, 2024