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Kate Parsons

Assistant Professor of Digital Art
Fine Art, Communication Studies, Seaver College
CAC 206, CCB 400

Biography

Kate is a video artist and educator living in Los Angeles. She obtained her MFA in media arts from UCLA and an MA in digital art and video from CSU-N. She is the co-founder of FLOAT, a VR/AR art studio, and founder of Femmebit, a video art festival celebrating Los Angeles female artists working in video and new media. Much of Kate's practice surrounds human connection, meaning-making, and our relationships to the biological and environmental systems we inhabit. Her graduate studies involved research into the myriad ways humans mourn and express grief. She has participated in solo and group residencies at Stanford University, Signal Culture, The Media Archaeology Lab at the University of Colorado, Coaxial Arts Foundation (courtesy of the Pasadena Arts Council) and Dublab. She is a visiting assistant professor in digital arts and communications studies at Pepperdine University in Malibu, CA.

Her company FLOAT has shown with Vulcan Inc., Marina Abramovic's Acute Art VR Platform, and at prestigious locations such as SFMOMA, Art Toronto, Sundance Film Festival, SXSW, and TIFF. FLOAT's work has been featured in Art News, the LA Times, CBC, BBC News, Flaunt, Hyperallergic, and more. Collaborators and clients include Petra Cortright, United Nude, GitHub, and Tony Hawk. FLOAT's latest work, Screensavers, can be found on internet gaming platforms Steam, Oculus, Itch.io, and Viveport.

Education

  • MFA, UCLA, 2015
  • MA, CSU-Northridge, 2013
  • BFA, Montana State University, 2005

 

  • DeMaterializing The Art Experience, New Media Caucus, CAA 2020 (Chicago, IL)
  • XR and Human Connection, SXSW 2020 (Austin, TX)
  • Screensavers, Not A Cult Press, Spring 2021 (forthcoming)
  • Big Data: Selected Datavisualization, Coming to the Aid of the Elderly, UCLA Luskin Center Sept. 2015.
  • Deans Council, School of Art and Architecture, UCLA.
  • 160/90 Scholarship, UCLA, Spring 2015.
  • CFPRT Scholar, Young Research Library Special Collections, UCLA. Nov. 2013-15.
  • ADDY Awards, State-Level: One Gold, two Silver, and four Bronze for art direction, design, and copywriting, 2005.
  • "XR & Human Connection," SXSW, Austin, TX (Mar. 2020)
  • Dematerializing The Art Experience Panel, New Media Caucus/College Arts Association, Chicago, IL (Feb. 2020)
  • Guest Speaker, w/Ali Momeni, Brown University, Providence, RI (Nov. 2019)
  • Guest Speaker and Demo Night, Payson Library, Pepperdine University, Malibu, CA (Nov. 2019)
  • Guest Speaker, w/Holly Willis, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA (Sept. 2019)
  • Panelist, Women At The Forefront of Creative Technology, w/Samantha Gorman, Phazero. STACKED Expo, Glendale Tech Week, Glendale, CA (Sept. 2019)
  • A Piece of Something Bigger: Faculty Work in Progress Show + Q&A, Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA (Mar. 2019)
  • Panelist, DesignCon, Future of VR + AR Art, with Nancy Baker Cahill, Anaheim, CA (Nov. 2018)
  • Guest Speaker, Media Design Practice MFA Final, Art Center College of Design, Los Angeles, CA, (Mar. 2018)
  • Guest Speaker, USC, Los Angeles, CA, (Nov. 2017)
  • Guest Panelist, AIGA Converge Conference: "Real Knowledges, Virtual Designs: A Roundtable on Conducting Practice-Based Research in Virtual Reality," with Adam Sulzdorf-Liszkiewicz, Kate Parsons, Samantha Gorman, Luis Blackaller, Tonia Beglari, USC, Los Angeles, CA (June 2017)
  • Guest Speaker, "Meaningful Media", Visual Realities at VRLA (May 2017)
  • Unity Vision Summit Panelist, "Art and XR," Los Angeles, CA (May 2017)
  • Guest Speaker, UCLA DMA Senior Projects, Los Angeles, CA (Mar. 2017)
  • Panelist, TIFFxPOP02, VR, Empathy + Real World Storytelling, w/Adi Robertson and Patrick Osborne, Toronto, Canada (July 2016)
  • Featured Speaker, Collaborative Art Practices, Next Art Night, Culver City, CA (Sept. 2016)
  • Keynote Speaker: Presenting Conceptual & Meaningful Explorations in Interdisciplinary Art Tech Performances, IndieCade East, Museum of The Moving Image, NYC (May 2016)
  • Digital Humanities Unconference, Mapping Los Angeles Necrogeography, Los Angeles (Mar. 2014)
  • AYURI Research Grant for Undergraduate Mentors, Winter 2020.
  • Media The Foundation Grant, (as FEMMEBIT), Winter 2020.
  • Art Center Faculty Project Grant, Pasadena, CA Winter 2020.

Areas of Expertise

  • VR
  • AR
  • XR
  • Art
  • Spatial Computing
  • Digital Art
  • Video Art

Topics

  • Media Art
  • Digital Art
  • Video Art
  • Film and Film Studies
  • Media History
  • Art and Religion
  • Art and Film
  • Grief and Mourning
  • Media Art and Meaningful Practice
  • Virtual Reality
  • Augmented Reality

Courses

  • Digital Foundations
  • Video Art
  • Animation and VR
  • Graphic Communications

Links