This week, we’d like to introduce the producer and creator of Brave New Work, Michael Delgado, who has a history in West Coast contemporary art and moved to Santa Barbara from Los Angeles. Brave New Work is in its second iteration, this year focusing more on the environment. You can catch a sneak peek of the projections on the Odd Fellows Temple, above the Sullivan Goss Gallery on October 1. The rest of the symposium runs from October 6 to October 8, 2026. Find all the details at bravenewworksb.org and get your tickets now at sbindytickets.com.
Where did the idea for Brave New Work come from? What inspired you to start this symposium?
It’s an epic-length story, so I’ll just give you the log lines. (“Log lines” are the old-school term for the descriptions you see ahead of choosing a movie or show on Netflix, Hulu, or whatever.) So here it is: “A desperate man with a history in West Coast contemporary art moves from L.A. to S.B. after his fine art bookstore in Chinatown is shuttered by COVID. Seeking his tribe, he is welcomed into a vibrant and internationally influential group of artists and technologists with whom he hopes to realize a vision of Santa Barbara as a new Renaissance city, an internationally recognized center of cutting-edge art and technological advances.”
In other words, I met Alan Macy. Alan founded Santa Barbara Center for Art, Science and Technology (SBCAST). He supported my initial efforts to create an annual event. I also can’t overstate the support we’ve received from our media partnership with the Independent. From the very start, they have shared the vision for a citywide, international art and technology confab to complement the Film Festival. Now after almost three years of working closely with Alan and his brilliant band of Merry Makers — there is virtually no one in the city he doesn’t know — I was able to worm my way into the hearts of some very prominent cultural and scientific institutions.
Now in our second annual edition, we enjoy the support and participation of the SBMA; MCASB; UCSB’s Media, Arts and Technology program; TransLab, AlloSphere; School of Neurobiology; Amazon AGI/AI; and Google Quantum Lab among many others. Several internationally renowned visual and conceptual artists as well as daring musicians will be presenting art installations and a very special concert at Hahn Hall on the Music Academy of the West.
What are you most excited about for the second year? What are highlights people attending can look forward to?
Honestly, panels on each of the three days are all fascinating and the installation at 410 State Street is spectacular. If you can only attend one panel, I’d slip out of work, skip class, or take a long lunch to catch the panel topic you find most interesting. Of course, the Hahn Hall performances are going to be inspiring, and you can’t miss that on Tuesday evening, the 6th. It breaks down roughly like this: Tuesday the 6th is “Art Day.” The panels are filled with artists represented in the exhibition. Wednesday the 7th is “Tech Day.” Have your mind blown as world leaders in neurobiology and quantum break down “Organoids” and give a brief history of the universe by explaining Quantum theory and its implications for computing in a “post-classical computing” world. Thursday is “Reality Day.” The final panel brings all the future — think home by focusing on the impacts of AI in contemporary life. The best-selling author of Primal Branding, a two-time Oscar-winning production designer (Jurassic Park and Avatar) and the director of AGI/AI at Amazon engage in a lively discussion of how pervasive AI already is and what we can expect in the near term.
Accompanying these fascinating discussions is a massive immersive installation in the 15,000-square-foot former Staples building at 410 State Street. The cavernous and still very raw space will be transformed into a tropical forest with live 10-foot palms, birds of paradise, and a special greenhouse. Architect/artists Nefeli Manoudaki and Iason Paterakis monitor the electrical impulses between the plants and through a generative program, “translate” the plants’ “conversation” into a stunning 150′x14′ live video projection. Then there is an amazing performance by Conceptual artist/musician Beatie Wolfe, who will sync her film L.A. Pipedream live to picture with the Santa Barbara Youth Symphony. The inclusion of youth is core to our mission, and we are thrilled to collaborate with the Santa Barbara Symphony’s amazing youth program. Beastie Boy Money Mark is going to talk about and perform on his “Player Piano,” a device he constructed to replace the fragile pneumatic mechanisms of the antique pianos from the turn of the 20th century. Brave New Work is interested in it because player piano rolls represent the original computer programming “Punch Cards.” Money Mark is just obsessed with scratching over and mixing with “Dead Composers,” as he calls the rolls. Finally closing the night will be pioneering classical musician, Gene Coleman and his star-studded ensemble “Conjure.” Using the same devices as the artists Paterakis and Manoudaki in the plant “conversation,” Gene and his crew use their own bio-data live to inform the music they make. For example, they may sync their heartbeats and use that as a baseline. It’s mesmerizing and beautiful. You’ve really got to see this live.
Why did you want to make Santa Barbara the home for this symposium? What sets our coastal town apart?
I had this Renaissance Center idea that seems to be shared by several civic leaders and the S.B. South Coast Chamber of Commerce. Their promotion of TechTopia is a solid example. After I became more familiar with the art and technology scene here, I was struck by the similarities the area has to the birth of the Florentine Renaissance right now. The reason the Renaissance happened in Florence and not in the seats of power in France or Rome is because Florence was not beholden to the Crown or the Papacy. Of course, the Medici would eventually control the Papacy, but that’s another story. In a beautiful location, with a very affluent population that had its own banking rules, Florence attracted the world’s best scientists and artists, producing some of the most exquisite works of art and architecture as well as some of the most important scientific discoveries in the world.
There are other areas in the world that also experienced a non-Eurocentric upwelling of scientific and artists breakthroughs for similar reasons, but the Florentine Renaissance is probably most familiar. All analogies break down, but it’s not too hard to see parallels in Santa Barbara today. We have the world’s most advanced technologies in Google Quantum Lab, Blue Laser Fusion and Amazon AGI/AI combined with UCSB, a recognized R1 institution and home to some 10 Nobel Laureates! We have a beautiful location that is not beholden to L.A. or New York and a surplus of wealthy citizens that it can be argued to play by their own banking rules.
What originally piqued your interest about the way art and technology are working together? How did you come to find a lot of the new technology explored and used in the symposium?
In following contemporary art as I have been all my life, I have come to be most interested in the artists that harness the power of technology to create fascinating, often abstract imagery to deliver powerful emotional reactions. The artists in the exhibition are exemplary of what I’m talking about. For example, although much of the work is generative, the artists use data sets to inform the AI in real time instead of prompting the AI to scrape the internet’s voluminous collective knowledge — inaccurate or not.
Take Debra Scacco for example, in her video piece “Pendulum,” which is a study of the nature of time. As history repeats itself and time seems to move with increased speed, the work challenges time as a linear construct. The work tracks and layers of light as filmed over a three-hour period in the artist’s studio. This daily dance is the result of three simple elements: an extraction fan, the California sun, and intermittent wind. The light is traced in a forward and backward movement simultaneously, with the same logic applied to the accompanying audio composed and performed by Lori Scacco. Independent moments eventually intersect, creating a documentation of time folding in on itself. It’s not important that you know any of that to be moved by the immersive experience and that’s what I find compelling.
What did you do professionally before you moved to Santa Barbara?
My career, if you can even call it that, careened wildly between fine arts, defense and automotive OEM contracting, commercial production, film production, television production, huge live event production for broadcast, magazine publishing, bookselling, and back to the fine arts. It just means I’m old. Ha! I went to art school at USC to study under Peter Plagens, who at the time was a N.Y. and L.A. Times critic but best known for his pieces in ArtForum, the leading art publication then and now. He is also a very good painter. I wanted to write art reviews, be a critic. Peter and another of my favorite critics, David Hickey, wrote in a style I wanted to emulate. Consequently, while still a senior at USC, I started to write for the L.A. Institute of Contemporary Art “Journal,” whose volumes are now in the Smithsonian Archives as a bit of L.A. art history! I started to write the “Pick of the Week” Column for the L.A. Weekly, a review/ roundup of the L.A. art scene, which in the early ’80s was vibrant. I have lots of fun stories from that time and some that I will take to my grave as I swore not to tell.
While writing, I was enrolled in art school and was making “anti-narrative” films. The idea was to suggest a narrative through methodical editing but ultimately mislead the audience so they left angry and felt cheated. Very punk of me. In those days, the art and cinema schools shared reciprocal privileges, meaning I could get all the equipment I needed to make films without having to enroll in the much more expensive programs as a cinema major. (BTW, I recently ran some of the 8mm films I shot back then, and I have to say one or two actually hold up! The rest are absolutely awful!) What do you do as a fledgling art critic and art film maker? You go to work in the family business, of course! I learned A LOT in my short stint in the family business. It was not a small company and my on-the-job training included dealing with banks, private equity dealers, national marketers, a primer on the military industrial complex and how to work with the staff of the U.S. Congress and Senate members. I learned much more important things too, like what a productive team looks like and why. I just wanted to be in the art world and was not very happy in those years but I’m damned grateful for that education.
What are some of your favorite things to do in Santa Barbara?
Santa Barbara is amazing, not just for its beauty but also because, for a city of only about 100,000 people, it has its own Symphony, Opera, a storied Music Academy, Contemporary Art Museum, and a Fine Art Museum that holds an extensive photography collection and the most Impressionist paintings on the West Coast after the Norton Simon. It has its own international film festival. Thanks to the Bowl, it’s a stop for world-class musicians. There are some fantastic restaurants and food trucks, too! It’s close enough to L.A. but not too close, and a stone’s throw from wine country or an amazing hike. It is home to some fascinating technology and the people that make it. It also has a very tight Hispanic community that brings a lot of fun cultural flavors to the area. My favorite thing to do is an ocean swim, and, living a block off East Beach, I get to swim all the time. This makes me happy.
