Critical Currents: Art at the Edge of War and Water | New Date - April 3rd, 2026

This event will now be held on April 3rd, 2026, from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. (same time).

A Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous (LASER)

Critical Currents: Art at the Edge of War and Water brings together two visually striking, research-driven art projects that explore emerging technologies and environmental futures through storytelling, symbolism, and immersive media.

Artist and researcher Zeina Barakeh presents work from CYBOTAGE, a multi-component project combining original art installations, participatory art-workshops, surveys, interviews, and expert webinars. The project explores military brain–computer interfaces and their impacts on warfighters, society, and warfare. Drawing on research in neuroscience, defense, and digital systems, Barakeh creates monumental “digital colossi”—guardians of cyberspace that visualize protection, vulnerability, and the human presence within technological networks.

Art historian and curator Chelsea Haines shares excerpts from her ongoing collaborative project with artist Tali Keren, Reservoirs for Water Futures, which reflects on water development, desalination, and speculative infrastructure in the Arizona region and beyond. Through poetic imagery and cinematic pacing, the resulting film, Water/Power, directed by Keren, and related programs explores humanity’s enduring impulse to extract abundance from arid landscapes, and the hopes, tensions, and contradictions embedded in desert water futures.

The event will feature a live conversation with Chelsea and Zeina, a short excerpt of Water/Power, and an immersive visual experience of CYBOTAGE at the ASU MIX Center. Together, these works invite audiences to engage with complex systems not through alarm, but through art, making space for reflection, imagination, and new ways of seeing.