Eyebeam

🎤Today, Umber’s feature continues.
•
The second case study I researched extensively was the Pakistan Pavilion at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. At the New York Public Library, I reviewed archival materials from the World Fair special collections, including photographs, brochures, ephemera, and visitor information records. But there were many gaps in these archives around the international pavilions. I was also interested in examining the idealism of new republics developed by post-colonial nation-states at the time, and the implications of such convictions in our contemporary context.

The installation presented at the Queens Museum, ‘J😊Y TECH,’ for the QM-Jerome Foundation Fellowship showcase, is a speculative counter-archive that offers alternative sources to fill the gaps in institutional archives. Drawing inspiration from the dynamic storefronts and merchandise found in phone repair shops across Queens, static web 1.0 interfaces, and the aesthetics of WhatsApp memes, the project re-creates the Pakistan Pavilion's fictional promotional campaigns and reimagined artifacts. A pivotal aspect of this exhibition that ties everything together through narration is the digital character (っ◔◡◔)っ ♥ i@ppLe♥, a tour guide of Trans-Pakistan Adventure Services. Her voice represents History (with a capital h), and her character politely interrupts and negates South Asian histories with a Western, white-washed narrative.

I am currently expanding ‘Trans-Pakistan’ into a Lecture performance featuring the tour guide, where I will take on a live conversation with a (pre-recorded) animated avatar of (apple), in front of an audience and viewers using their own smartphone to view a collective AR experience. During the residency, I am taking green-screen footage with the actor for the tour guide, editing a bunch of 3D animations, and conducting 3D printing experiments that will lay the foundation for this performance.
•



//////////////////////////////////// captions below.

Slide 1: Close-up installation shot, Umber Majeed: ‘J😊Y TECH’ (March 16, 2025 - October 5, 2025). Photo courtesy Queens Museum, credit Hai Zhang.

Slide 4: Video documentation. Umber Majeed, Zoom In, 2024, mixed media on paper and web-based AR animation. Showcased at the ‘J😊Y TECH’ installation, Queens Museum, QM-Jerome Foundation Fellowship showcase.

Slide 5: Video Documentation. Umber Majeed, Saath Haath, 2024, mixed media on paper and web-based augmented reality animation. Showcased at the J😊Y TECH installation, Queens Museum, QM-Jerome Foundation Fellowship showcase.

Slide 7: Pavilion Map Decal, Umber Majeed in Collaboration with Maureen Catbagan, , 2025, exhibited at the ‘J😊Y TECH’ installation, Queens Museum. Courtesy the artist and Queens Museum, New York, Photo Credit: Hai Zhang.

Slide 9: Umber Majeed, ‘Welcome to the Trans-Pakistan Pavilion!,’ 2025, single-channel animation, 7 minutes and 35 seconds. Featuring: Clara Francesca, Lubna Majeed, Umber Majeed, and Pratt Institute students Valeria Barajas, Anya Gupta, and Shazia Reza. Presented at ‘Joytech’, an installation in the QM-Jerome Foundation Fellowship showcase, organized by Lindsey Berfond, the Assistant Curator and Studio Program Manager at QM. AR production support was provided by Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center, through the Technology Immersion program. Image Courtesy of the artist and Queens Museum, New York; Photo credit: Hai Zhang.

Meet Speculating on Plurality cohort member Umber Majeed, an artist working with speculative fiction, collage, and digital interfaces as tools to examine the Pakistani state, urban, and digital infrastructure through a feminist lens. You can read the rest of her feature at (eyebeam.org/with-umber-majeed).
•
For the Eyebeam residency, I am iterating on ‘Trans-Pakistan Zindabad (Long Live Trans-Pakistan)’. It is an ongoing speculative ‘digital’ revitalization of my maternal uncle’s travel agency “Trans-Pakistan,” which he owned and operated in Islamabad from the 1990s until early 2000s. It closed prematurely due to the US’s War on Terror that devastated and destabilized the SWANA region and the Islamophobic travel policies that resulted.

One of the case studies I researched focused on corrupt housing communities developed by Bahria Town, Pakistan's largest private real estate developer.

In 2020, I developed ‘Fotocopy.net’ during a technology residency at Pioneer Works. I combined familial archives, the digital interface, tourism, and the context of gentrification in South Asia, encouraging viewers to loiter in this kitsch imaginary of corporate culture and critical analysis. I turned my uncle’s failed tourism company, that toured foreigners to various landscapes and treks in Pakistan, into a playful web environment inviting people to draw, listen to music, and peruse.

Another project that came out of this case study was a solo presentation of a large-scale interactive installation at PW, ‘Made in Trans-pakistan,’ 2022. Inspired by the architecture of Bahria Town's developments, aesthetics of shops in Karachi that sell bootleg media, and 13th century Urdu poetry I made two activations, playing with the idea of pirated aesthetics, language, sound, and the subversion of urban planning to hit at the diasporic double consciousness that underlies my practice.
•
Stay tuned for part two!



Image caption, slide 1: Portrait of Eyebeam Speculating on Plurality Resident 2026, Umber Majeed. Image Credit: Adeliia Ishmuratova.

slide 4: Umber Majeed, Trans-Pakistan Zindabad (Long Live Trans-Pakistan), 2019. Courtesy of the artist. Images taken from the Networked Justice exhibition at Trinity Square Video in Toronto. Curated by Karina Iskandarsjah.

slide 6: Umber Majeed, ‘Fotocopy.net,’ 2020, Interactive web environment, video documentation courtesy of the artist, 6 minutes and 50 seconds, supported by Pioneer Works. Animation support from Granville Jones Jr, a creative technologist intern. Coding support and sound design by Tommy Martinez, who was the director of the residency at PW, and now teaches at NYU, and helps run the IDM studio at NYU Tandon at the BK Navy Yard, where Eyebeam’s residency takes place.

slides 8, 9, & 10: Umber Majeed, ‘Made in Trans-Pakistan,’ 2022. Interactive Multimedia Installation: Unity AR Software, Ceramics, Plaster, Wood, Video, and Vinyl. Courtesy of the artist.

More about ‘Made in Trans-Pakistan,’ 2022
Right side of the room: “inspired by the architecture of Bahria Town's real estate developments, I created a distorted ceramic replica of the monumental fountains at the centers of hyper-manicured roundabouts. My version of the Gorah ki chowk (horse roundabout) sits atop a hexagonal column, embedded with ceramic stars, all in pristine white, evoking the image of an ivory tower. I used AR to animate the fountain by scanning plastic bags I found around the development in Lahore to create the texture of water flowing from the QR-code-horse-lined fountain on screen.

This year, at NEW INC’s, DEMO 2026 Total Flow showcase, which is curated by Mindy Seu, and produced by Cody Moy, the horse sculpture component of this installation will be on display. I’ll be exhibiting work alongside 15 members of the NEW INC cohort.

🎤 Meet Speculating on Plurality cohort member Aurora Mititelu, an artist working with computer images, AI, and physical installations to examine how computational media constructs contemporary reality. In an artist feature, “From the Studio,” she shares how her early years formed her artistic practice and ongoing interrogation of reality-manufacturing media. You read the rest at eyebeam.org/with-aurora-mititelu
•
Aurora: I grew up in a post-industrial town in Romania, during the early years of the personal computer and the rise of the internet. This was right after the fall of communism, when the country was in economic ruin and at the same time opened up to western ideals, bringing an influx of capitalist ideology and pop culture.

Coming from a working-class family, I experienced early on how these images shape desire and reality from a position of distance. I yearned deeply for a reality that wasn't my physical reality, which I encountered primarily through a computer. The gap between lived experience and the imaginaries produced at global centers of power continues to inform how I think about representation and the role technology plays in structuring society and lived experience.

I started to experiment with creating artworks in Microsoft Paint in the mid-2000’s, right as I got my first computer, around the age of seven. My imagination was heavily influenced by the aesthetics of the early internet age and the flood of American media. Consuming a lot of American imagery shaped how I thought I should be, feeling disconnected from the local culture and values of my hometown.

As a young adult, I moved to Berlin to immerse myself in the new media art scene and to pursue a career as a 3D artist and art director focused on immersive media… But eventually I became aware of the realities my own work was producing. I couldn't fully articulate it then, but looking back, I realize I was beginning to understand how I was contributing to a world that reinforced the same distance I had felt so acutely growing up.

This inquiry led me to enroll in UCLA's graduate program in Design | Media Arts, where I developed the understanding that images are not a truth-technology but rather socio-political agents. Images that claim reality are produced and circulated in spaces of community with the intentional purpose of shaping those realities.

It’s also where I started building the body of work, [“The Abel Series”], using a masculine agent as a central figure. Through Abel, I interrogate my identity and dive deeper into the investigation of whose interests are served through the use of aesthetics and technology.
•
We will post more about Abel this Thursday.

Image Captions, Slide 3: Photograph of Aurora Mititelu drawing in Microsoft Paint in 2005. Courtesy of the artist; Slide 6: Close-up shot of Abel. Aurora Mititelu, ‘Meta-Mahala’ 2023. Sculptural installation: metal pipes, concrete, photography, Generative AI, CGI, textile print. Photography by Paloma Dooley, ; Slide 7: Aurora Mititelu, ‘Gen/esis’ 2024. Textile Print, Photography, 3D Rendering, and Generative AI. Courtesy of the Artist

🎉Introducing Eyebeam's 2026 residents: Speculating on Plurality

What would it take to build technology that holds our multitudes rather than flattening them? That's the question at the heart of Speculating on Plurality, Eyebeam's 2026 artist residency. This year's cohort—6 NYC–based emerging artists working across disciplines from experimental theater to spatial audio to AI agents—begins their 12-week residency this month.

“We're living in a moment where technology is flattening difference at an extraordinary scale. The six artists we selected bring deep curiosity and real range to how they address [hyper-contemporary] issues—from land-based practices to algorithmic composition to experimental theater. Each of them is modeling what it looks like to insist on plurality in how we design, build, and live with technology.” —Julia Kaganskiy, Executive Director

The artists join Eyebeam’s residency to imagine plural technological futures at NYU Tandon at The Yard, a partner facility for integrative research in AR/VR/XR, virtual production, and experiential computing.
•
🔗 Read more about the artists at eyebeam.org/2026-residents

✨the 2026 residents ✨
Aurora Mititelu
Avery Alex Beige
Chloe Alexandra Thompson
dre r. Jácome
Kira Xonorika
Umber Majeed
•
Eyebeam worked with a diverse jury panel representing the fields of art and technology that helped us select artists who demonstrate a purposeful relationship to technology, social urgency, and impact. We send our thanks to:

✨the 2026 Jury ✨
Bahareh Khoshooee
Mark Ramos
Paul John
Stephanie Dinkins
Julia Kaganskiy

•
🖼️Image Description in alt-text.

Photo Captions: Slide 4 - Portrait of Eyebeam Speculating on Plurality Resident 2026, Avery Alex Beige. Image Credit: The Nonbinary Research Facility; Slide 5 - Portrait of Eyebeam Speculating on Plurality Resident 2026, Aurora Mititelu. IPhoto credit: Garrett Alvarado; Slide 6 - Portrait of Eyebeam Speculating on Plurality Resident 2026, Chloe Alexandra Thompson. Photo credit: Amelie Jackie; Slide 7 - Portrait of Eyebeam Speculating on Plurality Resident 2026, dre jácome. Image Credit: Belen Marco-Crespo; Slide 8 - Portrait of Eyebeam Speculating on Plurality Resident 2026, Kira Xonorika. Image Credit: Katarzyna Marszałek; Slide 9 - Portrait of Eyebeam Speculating on Plurality Resident 2026, Umber Majeed. Image Credit: Adeliia Ishmuratova.

🔊Eyebeam is delighted to announce the appointment of Julia Kaganskiy, as our new Executive Director! She steps into her new role today, April 6, 2026.

As a renowned institution builder, independent curator, and cultural strategist, she brings more than 16 years of experience developing innovative cultural programs bridging arts, science, and technology to Eyebeam. Julia was the founding Director of NEW INC, at the New Museum (2014-2018), and the Global Editor for VICE Media's The Creators Project (2010-2013), a groundbreaking media platform and cultural festival program.

“The art and tech landscape, and our relationship to technology as a whole, look remarkably different from when Eyebeam was first founded more than 25 years ago. Yet the need for an organization that helps us orient and make sense of technology's impact on society, and imagine how it might be otherwise, has never been more urgent. Eyebeam's support of artists who are making bold, challenging work is something I am passionate about continuing. I'd also like to strengthen Eyebeam's community relationships and its role as a convener.”

We are excited to begin building the next chapter of Eyebeam with Julia!

🔗Read a few words from her at the link here: eyebeam.org/message-from-julia-kaganskiy

📸Photo caption: Portrait of Julia Kaganskiy. Image Credit: Nathalie Salazar.

[Image Description: Portrait of Julia Kaganskiy, with medium-length, honeyed brown hair tied back, standing in a light-filled studio space. This picture was taken at Studio Alto, a residency in Costa Rica, nestled on the hilltops of Playa Grande, in a sun-filled room amidst a lush green mountainscape reflected throughout the windows of this space.]