It's no secret a lot of new, cutting edge technology went into producing "Unfolding the Universe: First Light". Here is your chance to meet the teams that made it happen. Hosted by our partner Mozilla!

Panel includes:

John Shaughnessy - Mozilla Hubs

Manager, Engineering & Ecosystem Strategy (Hubs)

Mozilla Hubs is a virtual collaboration platform that runs in your browser. With Hubs you can create your own 3D spaces with a single click. Invite others to join using a URL. No installation or app store required.

Hubs is for anyone who wants to connect with others remotely! It's a great way to bring communities together in a shared virtual space.

Host a conference, teach a class, showcase art, or just hang out with friends. Hubs makes it easy to connect & share images, videos, 3D models, & more. With Hubs' spatialized audio you can have conversations with everyone together or break out into smaller groups - just like you can in person.

Hubs works across platforms. Got a VR headset? Awesome! If not, you can use your desktop computer, laptop, tablet, or mobile devices to explore in 2D

Mozilla's mission is to ensure the Internet is a global public resource, open & accessible to all. An Internet that truly puts people first, where individuals can shape their own experience & are empowered, safe & independent.

At Mozilla, we're a global community of technologists, thinkers & builders working together to keep the Internet alive & accessible, so people worldwide can be informed contributors & creators of the Web. We believe this act of human collaboration across an open platform is essential to individual growth & our collective future.

Pierre-Francois Gerard - Metaxu Studio

Pierre-Francois Gerard (PhD) is the founder & Director at Metaxu Studio, a VR design practice dedicate to bring together the best practice from architecture, 3d visualisation & immersive web.

We ran a monthly event using the most accessible Web-based platform in 2020, Hubs, to test our virtual world live with an audience. We started collaborating with various artist, photographs, architects to design the event, invite their followers & friends. Their feedback was then taken into account to update the environment as well as the design of the event as a whole.

We firmly believe that an iterative process & human centered design is key to create quality VR experiences.

https://metaxu.studio/

Arturo J. Real - Looking Glass Factory

Arturo J. Real is the Community Manager at Looking Glass Factory.

Looking Glass is building the first great hologram company of the 21st century, charting a course out of flatland for all.

Founded in 2014, we're headquartered in Brooklyn, NY with additional operations in Hong Kong. Back in 2018, we launched the world's first desktop holographic dev kit. In 2020, we launched Looking Glass Portrait, the first personal holographic display. And during the summer of 2022 we announced the world's largest holographic display, the Looking Glass 65" & the first way to share holograms on the internet on our Looking Glass Blocks platform. Yeah, we really love holograms.

About Unfolding the Universe:

ONX Studio in partnership with The Onassis Foundation, NEW INC, & Mozilla Hubs, is pleased to present Unfolding the Universe: First Light. This is a solo exhibition of work by conceptual artist Ashley Zelinskie, curated by Maggie Masetti in cooperation with the James Webb Space Telescope team of scientists & engineers.

Vallejo Gantner, ONX's Director of Creative Partnerships said, ONX is honored to host Ashley's sculptural & immersive video works, which come to us after her years in cooperation with NASA's James Webb Space Telescope team. ONX is a studio searching out & exploring new forms of artistic expression, finding inspiration from the unknown. As a product of the most exciting leap forward in our capacity to understand the universe in decades, this exhibition is a perfect expression of that quest.

The exhibition features Zelinskie's first VR artwork Unfolding the Universe: A NASA Webb VR Experience which includes animated sculpture & interactive portraiture of Webb team members. This work was created to commemorate the launch of Webb in December 2021 & has since been updated to include new elements reflecting the telescope's First Images data released on July 12th.

Unfolding the Universe: First Light will also feature sculpture & installation inspired by Webb's first images & created with the guidance of expert scientists in the corresponding fields. The work will reflect everything from exoplanet spectroscopy & infrared image processing to Webb's signature six-pointed stars.

Ashley Zelinskie said, The output of the Webb telescope is already awe-inspiring. It's a huge artistic challenge to make beautiful work out of photos & data that are already beautiful in their own right. To me, the work must add to, & try to transcend, already extraordinary scientific work, inviting a viewer to tap into something universal in both a scientific & artistic sense.

Zelinskie has been working with NASA for seven years on various projects & artworks, including works for the ongoing Osiris-Rex Mission & a collaboration with retired astronaut Mike Massimino on his Hubble mission. Her work with the James Webb Space Telescope team has led to artworks shown at the NASA visitor centers & internationally at art galleries.

To have artists translate science & technology into something people can connect with is so important, said Curator Maggie Masetti. As a science communicator for the James Webb Space Telescope, it's my job to share the wonder of what we are building & learning with the public. Art can make math, science, & technology accessible, & Ashley's work both interprets technical concepts & incorporates elements of the science into the art itself.

Exploration, a piece created by Zelinskie for the JWST Art + Science exhibit at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in 2017-and now coming to ONX-used scans of the arms of scientists (as well as her own) reaching for the cosmos, all delicately rendered in the equations that describe relativity & telescopes.

Zelinskie's understanding & passion for science, along with her traditional & hi-tech skills, put her in a unique position to make such art. This has led to collaborations with other institutes such as the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute & a growing reputation as a scientific translator,' able to convey scientific concepts not only accurately but beautifully.

Amber Straughn, astrophysicist & Deputy Project Scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope said, "People sometimes think of art & science as separate endeavors, but I think they're intricately related - often, one informs & inspires the other. It's a beautiful interplay in both realms."

Holograms on display at Unfolding the Universe: First Light have been generously made possible by Looking Glass's innovative 3D holographic display technology.

About Ashley Zelinskie

Ashley Zelinskie is Brooklyn-based conceptual artist utilizing a post-New Media approach, wherein the media employed are merely vehicles in service of underlying concepts, she is attempting the process of translating our vast history into an eternal & universal language, while focusing a lens on our place as a small part of a larger whole. Her works span a variety of media, from large- & small-scale sculpture to canvas & print works, each created using cutting edge technology such as 3D printing, computer-guided laser cutting, & satellite plating technology. Her work focuses on visualizing data in abstract forms & finding new & interesting ways to describe complex ideas.

Ashley's work has been featured in Vice, Brooklyn Magazine, The New York Times, & Hyperallergic. Her work forms part of the permanent collection of the US Department of State Art in Embassies Program, has been exhibited at Sotheby's New York & most recently the ArtScience Museum in Singapore. Ashley is a former resident of New-the New Museum's Art & Technology Incubator-and the Shapeways x Museum of Art & Design's Out of Hand exhibition residency. She is the director of The Active Space studios & gallery in Bushwick, Brooklyn, a founding member of the Lady Tech Guild-a collective supporting women in STEAM-and a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design.

About ONX Studio

ONX is both an extension of Onassis Athens' Digital & Innovation Program & a structure that supports New York & the international digital & artistic ecosystem. ONX exists as a hybrid production & exhibition space for XR artists-artists working to extend reality, not just in extended reality. ONX acts as a hub within a dynamic global ecosystem of new practices & ideas-supporting the development, execution & mobility of new work in the digital arena. In particular, ONX acts as an active bridge between NYC & Athens in the area of digital & XR practice. ONX focuses on supporting the work of artists, & their trajectories-with production support, presentation opportunity, & promotion in NYC & globally.

Unfolding the Universe: First Light

ONX Studio, Gallery Level, Olympic Tower, 645 5th Ave, NY, NY. Oct 6-24, admission free. Studio Hours 12-6pm daily (closed on Mondays).