localStyle was founded in Amsterdam by Marlena Novak and Jay Alan Yim as a collaborative platform whose goal is to use the senses to trigger reassessment of existing situations, beginning in 2003 to address issues of climate change and resource extraction, and expanding since 2006 to focus on non-human others via themes as varied as the mating behavior of hermaphroditic marine flatworms, the sonification of electric fish from the Amazon, experimental Eurasian blackbird grammar, and the presumptive logic underlying human taxonomic systems. These intermedia works—video, sound installation, interactive installations, live performance with electronics, and audience participation—have been presented in museums, galleries, and alternative venues in more than forty cities worldwide (a.o. Albuquerque, Amsterdam, Amersfoort, Barcelona, Beijing, Belgrade, Berlin, Boston, Brussels, Budapest, Camden, Chicago, Cologne, Copenhagen, Duluth, Eindhoven, Den Haag, Huddersfield, Jerusalem, Kansas City, Korcula, Linz, London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Münich, New York, the Orkney Islands, Richmond, Santa Barbara, Santa Fe, São Paolo, Sarasota, Shanghai, Sittard, Sydney, Szczecin, Taipei, Tel Aviv, Torino, Toronto, Valencia, Warsaw and Wrexham). Festival presentations have included the National Art Museum of China's (NAMOC) TransLife Triennial, STRP Festival, Visioni dal Futuro, Taipei Digital Art Festival, Ear Taxi Festival, estacion ARTE, The Wrong Biennial and others.
Marlena Novak is an Adjunct Associate Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, in the Department of Film, Video, New Media, and Animation. Prior to that, she served as Associate Director of Northwestern's Animate Arts Program, and has been a faculty member at the University of Illinois Chicago and visiting professor at the University of New Mexico. She has been a visiting artist at the University of Chicago, Cleveland Institute of Art, Amsterdams Instituut voor Schilderkunst, Pädagogische Hochschule (St. Gallen, CH), and a resident at the Creativity and Cognition Research Studios (Loughborough, UK); in 2018 she will be artist in residence in Krems, Austria. She has received grants from the Arts Council of Great Britain, Illinois Arts Council, Center for Interdisciplinary Research in the Arts, and the City of Chicago's Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events. Her work is included in public (a.o. the Corcoran in Washington, DC and the Mondriaanhuis in Amersfoort, NL) and private collections in Europe and the USA, and has been presented in solo and group exhibitions in more than forty cities worldwide. •>•>•[Novak_CV]
Jay Alan Yim is a sound designer and composer who teaches at Northwestern University where he is Coordinator for the Composition and Music Technology program. He earned degrees from UC Santa Barbara, the Royal College of Music, and Harvard, and studied computer music at Stanford and MIT. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, Illinois Arts Council (three times), Tanglewood, Aspen, and many other awards. His music has been featured at international festivals (Darmstadt, Ars Musica, Huddersfield, Wien-Modern, Gaudeamus, Almeida, Tanglewood, ISCM World Music Days) and has been performed by artists such as the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, l’Orchestre National de Lyon, Nederlands Radio Filharmonisch Orkest, Residentie Orkest Den Haag, Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group, London Sinfonietta, Ensemble SurPlus, Nieuw Ensemble, ICE, Dal Niente, the Arditti, JACK, and Spektral Quartets, Gareth Davis, and Frances-Marie Uitti. •>•>•[Yim_CV]