Misha Rabinovich

Misha Rabinovich is investigating the idea of Waste as a cultural construct and is interested in making ecology legible through multi-player gaming. He was recently growing plants using only the dynamic light and sound of projected YouTube videos to create a web-enabled alchemical installation that transmutes cultural waste into fertilizer. He co-founded an international artistic think tank called the DS Institute which built a mobile sauna and took it on a tour throughout New York State starting at the Everson Museum in Syracuse and culminating at the New Museum’s Ideas City Festival in NYC. Sauna bathers were invited to donate their sweat as the active ingredient in an electrical battery created on the spot to charge cell phones and symbolize collective energy.

Misha was an artist in residence at McGill’s Centre for Intelligent Machines in Montreal where he staged ordering interventions in a dataset of 100 top movies using AI software originally developed for robotic anomaly detection. He has collaborated with NYU on a massive motion-capture game for SIGGRAPH, collaborated on an audio-visual interactive installation at the Prague Biennale, created a public aquaponics shipping container installation as part of the TONY 2012, and was the recipient of the 2013-14 Ginsburg Klaus Fellowship. Misha teaches digital media and freelances as a designer and developer. Misha was born in Moscow, lived in New York, and is currently based in Los Angeles.