Harvestworks Art and Technology Program presents The Pond, a 2- channel video, 4-channel audio installation by artists Meredith Leich, Stephen Vitiello, and Ash Eliza Williams, in the exhibition A Sense of Time in Art and Tech.
The Pond was conceived and produced at the Mountain Lake Biological Station, by artists Meredith Leich, Stephen Vitiello, and Ash Eliza Williams aka “The Sensing Lab”. Drawn by mysterious lights moving along the perimeter of Riopel Pond, the Lab set up camp at the water’s edge for four nights to sense the pond’s activities and sounds, both human and animal, beneath the stars. The emerging project is a quiet witness to and performance of the slow process of gathering scientific knowledge. It is also a record of our attempts to experience the inscrutable sensory world of a frog: a habitat which is becoming ever more rare.
📢 “The Pond” by Meredith Leich, Stephen Vitiello, and Ash Eliza Williams.
🗓 DATE & TIME: May 17 – Aug 24, 2025. Open to the public: 11 am to 5 pm on Sat and Sun. Opening: Saturday May 17, 2025 from 3 – 5 pm. Artist Talk on May 17, 2025.
📍 LOCATION: Harvestworks Art and Technology Program Building 10a, Nolan Park, Governors Island
Meredith Leich is an animator, painter, and video-artist. Meredith’s films have screened at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, Athens International Film + Video Festival, and Chicagoland Shorts, among others, and she has shown her work at venues nationally and abroad. Her environmental-based work has taken her to residencies in Alaska (Wrangell Mountain Center) and Iceland (Nes), among many others. Her collaboration with glaciologist Andrew Malone was awarded an Arts, Science & Culture Initiative Grant from the University of Chicago and an Individual Artist Grant from Chicago’s DCASE. She currently serves as the Co-Director of the Cuttyhunk Island Artists’ Residency.
Stephen Vitiello is a sound and media artist. His works are included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, NY, the Whitney Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Lyon. Stephen has a long history of collaboration, working with such artists as Ryuichi Sakamoto, Pauline Oliveros, Scanner, Taylor Deupree, Brendan Canty (of Fugazi), Joan Jonas, Julie Mehretu and more. Stephen is a Guggenheim Fellow in Fine Arts and the recipient of a Creative Capital Award in Emerging Fields, and an Alpert/Ucross Award in Music. Originally from New York, now based in Virginia, Stephen is a professor of Kinetic Imaging at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Ash Eliza Williams is a painter and interdisciplinary artist making work about interspecies
communication, non-human language, and vibrant methods of connection. Ash has exhibited widely including at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Chautauqua Institute, Kunstmuseum Hersbruck in Germany, and The New York Hall of Science. In 2025 – 2026, Ash will be an artist-in-residence at the Roswell Foundation (RAiR). Ash often works with scientists including collaborations and research projects at Shoals Marine Laboratory, The Museum of Comparative Zoology, Mountain Lake Biological Station, Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, and McDonald Observatory.
🌐 WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS
Website – Meredith Leich
Website – Stephen Vitiello
Website – Ash Eliza Williams
🎬 Press Quotes for Stephen Vitiello
“What more can you ask of a work of art than that it alter your breath — that it first make you
aware of your own breathing and then slow it, shape it, sculpt it?
Stephen Vitiello’s show at MC is revelatory in that most visceral way. It doesn’t just appear
before you but instead engenders a kind of reciprocal occupation: You enter its realm and, in
turn, the work makes its way into both body and mind.” “Rattle and hum: Stephen Vitiello’s
‘duets’” Leah Ollman, Los Angeles Times
“Electronic musician and sound artist Stephen Vitiello transforms incidental
atmospheric noises into mesmerizing soundscapes that alter our perception of the surrounding
environment.” Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain catalog for the exhibition Ce qui
arrive/Unknown Quantity
🎬 Press Quotes for Meredith Leich
“The most ethereal works are Meredith Leich’s videos, filmed on sea- and ice-forged
locations in Iceland, Alaska and a small Massachusetts island that may be submerged by a
rising ocean. […] Leich’s creations are delicately beautiful, but they warn of such perils as the
slowing of the Gulf Stream and the disappearance of glaciers.” Mark Jenkins, Washington Post
🎬 Press Quotes for Ash Williams
“Willams’ works do explain natural phenomena but they go beyond fact and into a
dream-like place that suggests a larger web of dialogue exists among natural objects, and
between non-human objects and humans. Can a snake chat with a flower? Can a seed pod
correspond with a volcano? How do boulders express their autobiographies to geologists?”
Ray Mark Rinaldi, Denver Post.
Collaborators
Audio spatialization developed with Paul Geluso at Harvestworks
Project developed at Mountain Lake Biological Station as part of ArtLab
🎬 Past Interviews
