Using the medium of animation, Marina Zurkow interprets the short-circuiting, electrical explosions of language and sharp linguistic twists that she has long admired in Dickinson’s writing. In the four animations created for this exhibition, visual rhythms and patterns function a way that is similar to the dashes and shifts of scope in the poems. Zurkow’s characters revel and flirt as Dickinson’s bees do. The poet’s way of using metaphor to create a mental road map of her direct experience of nature informed the entire installation. As a study in contrasts, the barren streambed backdrop sets the experience apart from the domestic interior. Five brugmansia-inspired gray vacuuform plastic fixtures house small screens presenting the animation. Brugmansia is a plant in the nightshade family which for centuries has been tended to for its beauty, hallucinatory and medicinal properties. The experience of peering into the flower known for its intoxicating scent is replaced by engrossing animated images.

Marina Zurkow works with character and narrative in animated cartoons, interactive installations, print and pop objects. She recently created Karaoke Ice, an ice cream truck with a persona that stages karaoke battles introduced at the 2006 San Jose Biennial, San Jose, CA; The Space Invaders, a site-specific single channel video for WNET/PBS in New York; and the seven channel animated installation, Nicking the Never, premiered at FACT, Liverpool, England. Zurkow's work has been exhibited widely at Sundance Film Festival, the Rotterdam Film Festival, Ars Electronica, and in New York at Creative Time, The Kitchen, the Brooklyn Museum, Eyebeam Atelier, and Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery; and has been broadcast on MTV, Fuji TV and PBS. She is a 2005 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow, a 2003 Rockefeller New Media Fellow, and has received grants from the New York State Council on the Arts, Creative Capital, the Jerome Foundation and the Walker Art Center. She teaches at NYU's Interactive Technology Program (ITP) and earned her BFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York, NY. www.o-matic.com