Driven Arts Collective is a Bay Area based team of makers, dancers, visual artists, musicians, engineers, and thinkers. We investigate the social implications of technological change through planned and spontaneous performance art, dance, real-time generative music and video, as well as custom-designed wearable instruments and controls. We build performances that play on our different approaches and individual histories, aiming to create works that allow audiences and participants to imagine alternate spaces and realities. drivenartscollective.com
Driven Arts Collective is a member of Intersection for the Arts. Intersection for the Arts is a historic arts nonprofit that provides people working in arts and culture with fiscal sponsorship and resources to grow.
About this Project
Driven Arts Collective builds an immersive performance environment in which multi-sensory alternate realities are realized using a biosensing network and emotion-recognition technologies. Digital Milk: Metaphase 0 prompts perceivers to consider the implications of data privacy and the relationship between personal and collective protection.
About the Artists
Driven Arts Collective is a Bay Area based team of makers, dancers, visual artists, musicians, engineers, and thinkers. We investigate the social implications of technological change through planned and spontaneous performance art, dance, real-time generative music and video, as well as custom-designed wearable instruments and controls. We build performances that play on our different approaches and individual histories, aiming to create works that allow audiences and participants to imagine alternate spaces and realities.
Driven Arts Collective is a member of Intersection for the Arts. Intersection for the Arts is a historic arts nonprofit that provides people working in arts and culture with fiscal sponsorship and resources to grow.
Driven Arts Collective is composed of a rotating cast of characters, and in its present form includes:
Jen Gerry (she/her) is an Oakland-based performer, choreographer/director and teaching artist in dance and mathematics (Mills College and Cal Poly Pomona, MFA, MS). Gerry is the co-founder and co-artistic director for Mechanism Dancetheater Collective and a founding member of Driven Arts Collective. Her interest is in collaborative and experimental creative processes that transcend disciplines and widen experiences among artists in various fields.
Kim Nucci (they/them) is an Oakland/Chicago-based multimedia artist, composer / improviser, and technologist. They perform on saxophones, electronics, voice, and live projection. Nucci’s research interests explore the pedestrian cybernetic body through critically examining our relationship with technology and with our instruments. Their solo performance practice is invested in the exploration of ritualism and trance states in improvisation. They hold an M.F.A. in Electronic Music and Recording Media, and an M.A. in Music Composition from Mills College, and a B.A. in Visual Arts from Bennington College. They are head of A.C.R.E. Residency’s sound department. Their practice is largely collaborative. They are the Technical Director of Driven Arts Collective (DAC), which recently completed the Dresher Ensemble Artist Residency with their projects CELSO: In Utero and CELSO: Digital Milk, a dance/theatre work with live music and interactive technologies. They currently work at Art Institute of Chicago doing installing media artworks as part of the Audio Visual team.
Varsha Iyengar (she/her) is an engineer, dancer and creative technologist based in San Francisco, California. She is a founding member of Driven Arts Collective. She is formally trained in Indian classical dance and was a part-time dancer for Nritarutya, a leading Indian contemporary dance company in Bangalore. Her current work as a creative technologist largely involves creating multifaceted interactive performance environments by blending movement arts and technology.
Lucca Troutman (she/they) is an electro-acoustic composer, director and performer originally from Hartford, Connecticut. She holds a BA in psychology and music from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts and recently graduated with her MA in composition from Mills College, where she refined her compositional and performance techniques under the tutelage of renowned experimental artists. She currently teaches and performs throughout the Bay Area and she enjoys creating in all of its forms and spending quality time with her affable hound dog, Ama.
Christian Conaway (he/they) is first and foremost a musician. Though sometimes found sailing the ocean, programming web-bots, or cultivating his growing arboretum, those who know him understand that all of it connects to the frequencies, rhythms, and patterns that make up his day to day mind. Currently Christian is focused on music production and developing brain-interfacing instruments so keep an open ear for whats to come.
Gabriela Garza-Vazquez (she/they) is a Los Angeles based performer and mental health therapist. She studied Biology, Physiology, and Dance at Cal Poly Pomona for their undergraduate degree and Clinical Mental Health Counseling at Naropa University for their Masters degree. They specialize in Somatic Counseling and Dance/movement therapy and currently provide treatment to teens and adults struggling with Eating Disorders. Gabriela has been a member of Mechanism Dance Theater for over a decade and is a new member of Driven Arts Collective. Her interest is in the intersection of somatic practices, intergenerational trauma/lineage, and spirituality.
Casey Lee Thorne (she/her) is a dance artist, educator, and scholar based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her specialties include strategic development, community engagement, and marketing and communications within public and private dance organizations. Casey is a Fulbright Scholar and an alumna of the Alonzo King LINES Ballet BFA in Dance Program at Dominican University of CA and the Mills College MFA in Dance Studies Program. She has taught at Southern Utah University, Cabrillo College, and currently serves as Adjunct Professor of Dance at Dominican University of CA. She continues to make original work for her company Inside Out Contemporary Ballet. Casey is on the Alumni Board of Directors at Dominican University of CA,and is honored to support the mission of Stapleton School of the Performing Arts.
Anna Rebecca Harris (she/her) is a visual artist and medical research professional. With a BA from Boston University comprising training in painting, video and performance art and literature from The Burren College of Art, Ireland, and the University of Oxford, UK, and a MA in psychology from the University of Chicago, IL, Harris is intrigued by the implications of neuroprocessing on experiential reality and the ways in which technology augments and changes the living, ever-evolving human brain. Trained as an Embodied Movement Facilitator in the tradition of the Deep Body Institute, Anna’s recent work explores gesture in relation to shared space and collective consciousness, where she utilizes the body to describe scientific and poetic truths. Anna is the founder and artistic director of @Driven.Arts.Collective
Header Photo by Kishore Narendran
