From Merce Cunningham to Creative Computation: Media Artist Sarah Bennett-Davidson Shares Her Journey
Sarah Bennet-Davidson is a media-based artist in New Mexico. She is currently a graduate student here at The University of New Mexico, enrolled in the MFA program in Electronic Art & Technology, and has been taking vvvv classes with The NODE Institute since 2022. vvvvv is a visual-first live programming environment for the .NET ecosystems. Bennet-Davidson was a recipient of a Summer Season ’24 scholarship with the NODE Institute for the vvvv Intermediates classes. Its language, VL, combines metaphors known from dataflow, functional and object-oriented programming.
Bennet-Davidson is teaching Electronic Art to students and working at UNM ARTSLab, which focuses on art/tech research. She started out being interested in experimental dance and choreography. The concepts behind algorithmic body movements captivated her, and after she saw a pieced by Merce Cunningham called “Biped” (1999), at Lincoln Center in New York City, which sparked her interest in generative large-scale projects.
She said she is excited to be at UNM and has also recently been selected to participate this spring as an artist in a competitive collaborative lithography course at Tamarind Institute. There she will be collaborating with Tamarind printmakers-in-training to create three print editions and using vvvv to create imagery for it.
We are excited to see what Sarah Bennet-Davidson does next!
LEARN MORE about Electronic Art & Technology courses offered during the Spring 2025 semester by visiting https://art.unm.edu/
LEARN MORE about UNM ARTSLab by visiting https://artslab.unm.edu
UNM Artists Take the Spotlight in Southwest Contemporary Vol. 12: Obsession
Southwest Contemporary Vol. 12: Obsession features some incredible work from several of the amazing people who comprise the Art Department. Current second-year MFA students Luka Berkley and Justine Kablack, recent MFA graduate Taylor Engel, and instructor Jessamyn Lovell all have work featured in this most recent issue of Southwest Contemporary.
Spotlight on Art Studio & Art History Faculty: Featured Exhibitions
Art History Professor Ray Hernández-Durán was recently featured in two articles and interviewed by the Latin American and Iberian Institute. UNM News published “UNM Professors Create Exhibition, First-Ever Scholarship of Local Chicano Artists’ Work” by Anna Padilla, highlighting an exhibition curated by Hernández-Durán and Dr. Irene Vásquez. The show, now on view at the National Hispanic Cultural Center, features six talented New Mexican Chicano artists whose work has been historically underrepresented in academic scholarship.
Art Faculty: Awards, Residencies & Revisited Projects
Distinguished Professor Jim Stone is an exhibiting artist who uses photography. His photographs have been published in three monographs and exhibited internationally; they are represented in the permanent collections of over 30 major museums and public archives.