Dr. Zhenzhen Qi 漆贞贞 (b. 1983, Ürümqi, China) is an artist, educator, and researcher based in Brooklyn, New York. She is an assistant professor at the Digital Media Design (DMD) program at the University of Connecticut, researching software simulation as a mode of collective re-making and un-looping. Since 2014, she has taught courses on theory and practice of interactive media, web, and game development at Cooper Union, Teachers College at Columbia University, City University of New York (CUNY), and the University of Connecticut, among others. She has been invited to speak at public events including the College Art Association Annual Conference, Electronic Literature Organization, mAI dAI Conference, K11 Kulture Academy, International Studio and Curatorial Program, New York Creative Tech Week, and Museum 2050. She is the recipient of the Creative Technology Fellowship and Macy Research Fellowship at Columbia University, and the Humanities Institute AI Seed Grant at the University of Connecticut.
Qi co-founded zzyw, an artist and research collective which produces software applications, installations, and texts as instruments to critically examine the cultural, political, and educational effects of computation. Her computational art has been curated by leading cultural institutions around the world, including the New Museum/Rhizome (New York), Ars Electronica (Linz), Haus der Elektronischen Künste (Basel), Elektra (Montreal), Power Station of Art (Shanghai), National Museum of China (Beijing), Times Museum (Guangzhou), Today Art Museum (Beijing), Museum MACAN (Jakarta), HOW Art Museum (Shanghai), and Museum of Art Pudong (Shanghai), among others. She has held residencies at Eyebeam, Pioneer Works, BabyCastles, NEW INC, the New Museum’s art-and-technology incubator, and the Counterstructural Commons Residency, organized by Rhizome and the Mozilla Foundation, and was a research artist at co-matter’s Networked World program in Berlin. Her writing has appeared in Rhizome, BLINK Magazine, and ESP Cultural Magazine, and has been published in Art School Critique 2.0 (Ragged Sky Press), Chimeras: Inventory of Synthetic Cognition (Onassis Foundation), and Digital Transformation in Design (Independent Academic Publishing). She is the co-founder and director of PowerNap Studio, a New York-based experiential production lab.
Zhenzhen holds a BS from the University of California, Berkeley, a Master’s degree from New York University, and a doctorate from Columbia University.