Ellen Levy

Ellen K. Levy is an American multimedia artist, writer, curator, and educator whose interdisciplinary work explores the intersections of art, science, technology, and the environment. Since the early 1980s, she has investigated how scientific paradigms, including neuroscience, evolution, and complexity theory, inform visual culture and artistic practice. Levy has exhibited internationally and published widely on the role of visual art in shaping and interpreting scientific knowledge.

Through her evolving career, Levy has examined how art–science collaborations influence social and political movements, environmental activism, and contemporary art’s role in public discourse. Her work emphasizes the interdisciplinarity of design across engineering, art, and technology, informed by emergent scientific ideas. She has engaged with themes such as morphology, systems theory, and eco-catastrophe, positioning her among artists who bridge visual culture and scientific inquiry. Science historian and author Arthur I. Miller has described her more recent work as focusing on "the convergence of biology and information systems and the borders of the animate and inanimate."

She has examined how art-science collaborations have influenced social and political movements, encouraged environmental activism, and shaped contemporary art’s evolving role. Levy has emphasized the interdisciplinarity of design across engineering, art, and technology, often involving practitioners engaged with emerging technologies. Her studies on morphology, systems theory, and eco-catastrophe have positioned her among key figures bridging visual culture and scientific inquiry. She has engaged with the interrelationships among art, science, and technology through exhibitions, educational programs, publications, and curatorial work since the mid-1980s. As artist Leslie Wayne reflected, “one of [Levy’s] signal achievements was the way in which she’s placed art and science in dialogue.” Levy and Philip Galanter have similarly written that “the study of complexity creates bridges across many branches of science and offers a revolutionary intellectual vector that has ramifications for other disciplines, such as art and philosophy.”

Her artwork spans painting, installation, animation, and digital media, frequently engaging archival sources, scientific diagrams, and layered imagery to interrogate systems of knowledge and perception. She has collaborated with institutions such as NASA and Leonardo, the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology. Her research explores form, matter, and ecological crisis, and she has contributed to scholarship morphology, perception, and art-science intersections. Provided by Wikipedia