elizabeth henaff

This year I was the Mentor-in-Residence for the Y11 @newinc Creative Science cohort. In addition to ALL the creative outcomes they pulled off this year, they deserve mad congrats for publishing their work in the scientific journal Biotechnology Design! Publishing creative work in a scientific journal is a radical act. The NEW INC Year 11 collection of extended abstracts presents work by people defining their own creative science: adopting, augmenting, and subverting technological frameworks to pay very close attention to humans and more-than-humans in creative and important ways. Alvaro Azcárraga (Azcárraga, 2025) queers tools of genetic engineering to return evolutionary agency to crop plants. EcoRove (Abou Gaida et al, 2025) uses place-making documentary to narrate biodiversity loss in critical zones, combining speculative fictions and qualitative methods. Cy X (X et al, 2025) investigates pleasure and ceremony through sensation and speculation, grounded in neuroscience. Ishraki Kazi (Ishraki at al, 2025) explores the poetics of molecular self-assembly through embodied experience design. Kinda Studios (Landau et al, 2025) applies understandings from neuroscience and interoception to design aesthetic interventions for human well-being. MORAKANA (Morales et al, 2025) imagines technology as a symbiotic partner for interspecies evolution in altered ecologies. Iz Nettere (Nettere et al, 2025) investigates the shape of memory through interactions with non-neural organisms. Spolia (Vercoe et al, 2025) uses large language models and speculative design research to give voice to ecosystems under pressure. Jo Valdés (Valdés et al, 2025) investigates psychosocial impacts in the kink community using novel applications of methods from the field of neuroplasticity. @alvaro.azcarraga @eco__rove @monkiwarrior @kinda.studios @mora.kana Iz Nettere @tell_you_what @spolialab @cyberwitch666 Big thanks to @cambridgeuniversitypress for supporting this collection, @pjpjpjpjpjpjpjpjpjpjpjpj for stewarding the print version of the Abstracts, @kurtwoerpel for the expert and efficient design and the whole NEW INC leadership crew for mentoring me in mentoring the cohort.

🧬 We are excited to welcome @ehenaff , artist and professor at NYU Tandon School of Engineering, to Currents of Change: Water Stories Symposium! 🌊✨ Blending data, design, and living systems, Dr. Hénaff’s work uncovers the hidden microbial worlds that shape our cities. As head of the Laboratory for Living Interfaces, she explores how human activity transforms ecosystems at the microscopic level. Don’t miss her conversation with @alvaro.azcarraga on Spore Magazine, where she brings a unique perspective at the intersection of science, sustainability, and imagination. 🌿🧫 📅 Thursday, April 24 | 6:30–7:30 PM 📍 BioBAT Art Space 🎟️ Tickets (link in Bio) #ElizabethHénaff #SporeMagazine #LivingInterfaces #WaterStories #CurrentsOfChange #ArtAndScience #UrbanEcology #Biodesign #MicrobialFutures #BioBATArtSpace #NYCEvents

Tori Lawrence + Co. x Scope Collective LIVE! April 18th, 2025 7pm-10:30pm @biobat.artspace Join @torilawrenceco , Scope Collective, and Friends at BioBAT ArtSpace for an evening of Site Specific Dance, Film, and Live Performance. More details below, buy tickets / RSVP with QR code or at link in bio. >>> Junkspace <<< 7-8pm [Ticketed Performance - Limited Availability - Sliding Scale $25-75] > Doors open: 7pm > Performance starts: 7:15pm. Tickets for this event are tiered as a way to help support the production of this event. Please give what you are able! >>> A Day is a Minute <<< 8-9pm [Free Performance - Please RSVP] > Doors open: 8:00 pm (free snacks! Beer, wine and seltzer available!) > Live Scored Film Screenings: 8:15-8:45pm. Scope invites their friends to contribute Live Creative Non-Fiction, Instrumental, and Vocal Accompaniment set to timelapse footage captured over the last 10 months of CHANNEL's installation. @helenbetya @joseph_brock @juliestheory @emmamooma @crispyc @koos_miller @followme_swallowme @leo.nerd [This RSVP excludes access to the Junkspace performance] >>> Scope CHANNEL Reception <<< > 9-10:30pm [Party! - Please RSVP] Please join us for an afterparty reception to enjoy the larger Water Stories exhibit. Music, socializing, and general merriment in the striking BioBAT ArtSpace dark space. ~ Special thanks to @alvaro.azcarraga and @elenasoterakis for support in producing this event. ~

🚇🐝 The hidden ecosystems of our cities are alive—and they’re telling us fascinating stories! On this week's Grow Everything podcast, we chat with Elizabeth Henaff, Ph.D. @ehenaff about the urban microbiome, the tiny organisms shaping everything from subway stations to waterways. 🌱✨ Learn how microbes are connected to urban health, sustainability, and even art! Plus, hear how honeybees are helping us map microbial diversity across cities worldwide. 🐝🌍 🎧 Listen now and discover how biology is revolutionizing how we design and live in our built environments. Apple: /mt2t5464 Spotify: /5a5d25aa YouTube:/5y7t87hu #microbiomes #urbanecosystems #urbanmicrobiology #builtenvironment #microbialdiversity

This new immersive art installation CHANNEL is the culmination of environmental sampling, bioinformatic analysis, field recording, multi-scale media generation, and waiting for things to grow. Multiple channels of media and materials are imagined around, and accompanied by water and living sediment harvested from the tidal system defined by the ebullient Gowanus Canal as it merges with the Bay Ridge Channel. At @biobat_artspace with the Scope Collective: @hparrishstudio @leo.nerd @koos_miller

Opening Reception - June 8th 2024 - 5-8pm - @biobat_artspace

Scope Collective’s production of CHANNEL is brought to you by Elizabeth Hénaff, Heather Parrish @hparrishstudio , Léonard Roussel @leo.nerd , and Seth Wenger @koos_miller . CHANNEL is the culmination of environmental sampling, bioinformatic analysis, field recording, multi-scale media generation, and waiting for things to grow. Scope aspires to construct spaces of close observation that challenge the incumbent hierarchical relationships of nature and culture.

Upcoming show @biobat_artspace June 8th, 2024 - May 3rd 2025 Opening Reception: June 8th, 5-8 pm This year's Scope Collective production - CHANNEL - is brought to you by @ehenaff , @hparrishstudio , @leo.nerd , and @koos_miller . CHANNEL is the culmination of environmental sampling, bioinformatic analysis, field recording, multi-scale media generation, and waiting for things to grow. This show builds on work commissioned by @opensourcegallery last summer and has grown into the expansive space offered by @biobat_artspace . Special thanks to @xenaxenaxena for lighting design; @seba.archive for print design, @karolinasays and @caroachou for sludge support; @nyutandon , @uiowa for financial support and of course @elenasoterakis for curating this show: WATER STORIES is a collaboration between the IEC, EPA, U Tokyo, NYU and BioBAT Inc. --- images 2,3,4: prior work installed at @opensourcegallery in 2023 --- This work emerges from the remarkable microbiome inhabiting the Gowanus Canal’s contaminated sediment. Over many decades of deposited manufacturing waste, these microorganisms have evolved to remediate our toxic trace. The federally subsidized cleanup plan currently underway is to dredge what toxic sediment can be removed and cap the rest with concrete. This intervention will suddenly disrupt the long evolved metabolisms which led to the microbial remediation. This piece offers egress from our anthropocentric perspective of contaminated vs. natural environments, a human exercise in channeling microbial life. How might we develop unexpected sensitivities and responsibilities towards the often overlooked actors and agents of our intersecting environments – the microscopic, the nonhuman, the nonliving? Here we construct a space for contemplation of these hard to see but vibrant cohabitants, through slow growth and high-resolution documentation. Multiple channels of media and materials are imagined around, and accompanied by water and living sediment harvested from the tidal system defined by the ebullient Gowanus Canal as it merges with the Bay Ridge Channel.

Has it been almost a month already since the opening?! Come hang for Precipitate Live! our closing event: Performance & Artists Conversation, followed by a micro-party. Friday July 28, 7-9PM @opensourcegallery Scope invites movement artist @spornographer to join live music composed of elements from the exhibit’s soundscape and performed by Scope’s @leo.nerd and @koos_miller . The performance will be followed by a conversation with Scope’s four collaborators. Smith’s movement improvisation interacts with the live sound score, as well as the gallery environment and offerings of the exhibit; and from a place of personal history. Growing up just a few blocks from Open Source’s location, Smith would often explore around the Gowanus Canal, escaping to its less-populated banks and taking photographs of the toxic shimmers on the water's surface. These layers of present, future and past to which PRECIPITATE draws our attention will manifest on a personal scale, through the movement of one body in the space. 📸 credit: flyer image @spornographer , all others Stefan Hagen

New work around the Gowanus Canal microbiome: a collaborative installation with @hparrishstudio and @leo.nerd and @koos_miller opening tonight at @opensourcegallery . This work emerges from the remarkable microbiome inhabiting the Gowanus Canal’s contaminated sediment. Over many decades of deposited manufacturing waste, these microorganisms have evolved to remediate our toxic trace. The current plans for federally subsidized cleanup of the site is to dredge what toxic sediment can be removed and cap the rest with concrete. This intervention will suddenly end the long evolutionary process which led to the complex microbial remediation metabolisms. Open Source Gallery has become a portal where human and microbial environments come into relative focus. Welcome to a space for contemplation of these fragile but persistent cohabitants. How does the future unfold when we de-center the human while envisioning its promise, and considering risk? How might we develop unexpected sensitivities and responsibilities towards the oft-overlooked actors and agents of our host environments – the microscopic, the nonhuman, the nonliving? Photographic inkjet prints, salvaged architectural iron, steel, concrete, harvested live Gowanus Canal sediment, glass containers, time-lapse video, quadraphonic audio.

We’re back at school! @idmnyu @idmnyu

Setting up sampling with Ralph @mizzbeehavinapiary last week. We installed stainless steel bottom boards to collect debris brought back by the bees for metagenomic analysis. Way back, these were the first hives that @devnajj visited working with @slavin_public .