I received my Ph.D. in art history from the University of Chicago in 2023, with a dissertation titled “Vera Molnar’s Programmed Abstraction: Computer Graphics and Geometric Abstract Art in Postwar Europe.” I am currently working on publishing my dissertation as a book.

Square cover of the magazine ARTFORUM International, featuring an image by the artist Vera Molnar. The image is a set of concentric squares, distorted, in two alternating shades of grey.

“Between the Lines: Zsofi Valyi-Nagy on the Art of Vera Molnar” Cover story for Artforum’s May 2024 issue.

Watch my interview for “Under the Cover” here: Zsofi Valyi-Nagy on the legacy of computer artist Vera Molnar.

“Herstory or mine? Writing feminist histories of art with self-mythologies in mind” in Theorising the Artist Interview, edited by Lucia Farinati and Jennifer Thatcher (Routledge, forthcoming September 2024, available for preorder here).

Cover image: Zsofi Valyi-Nagy, Small silences, 2024, Digital photomontage made with text-to-image generator

“Vera Molnar rajzgépei (Vera Molnar’s drawing machines),” invited lecture (in Hungarian) at Ludwig Múzeum, Budapest, on April 4, 2024, in conjunction with the exhibition À la recherche de Vera Molnar.

Photo © Julia Sandor, Artykfilm, 2022.

Media archaeology

While a visiting researcher at Humboldt University’s Signallabor in 2022, I collaborated with Dr. Dr. Stefan Höltgen on an emulation of Vera Molnar’s Lettres de ma mère (1988), written in BASIC on a Tektronix 4052 microcomputer.

Zach Lieberman, Ripple Study (Midnight), 2024, Giclee on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag, hand-signed and numbered by the artist, 90 x 120 cm, Unique Original.

“Screenshots from the 1970s: Vera Molnar’s Experiments in Interactive Computing”

in NEW MEDIA IN ART HIST0RY // TENSIONS, EXCHANGES, SITUATIONS, edited by Melissa Rérat, Régine Bonnefoit, and Samuel Schellenberg. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2023.

Alexander Reben, Synthetic Penmanship, 2017

“Handwriting in the Keyboarding Age”

A short text on asemic, automated handwriting in the work of Vera Molnar, Alexander Reben, and Sasha Stiles for Outland.

Vera Molnar’s 36 carrés, 8928 quadrilètres – Géométries du plaisir (1986), excerpt. Animation by Alexander Scholz for HOLO

Vera Molnar: Weaving Variations

I wrote a series of short, experimental texts to augment Molnar’s first U.S. solo exhibition at the Beall Center for Art + Technology for HOLO : Emerging Trajectories in Art, Science and Technology.

I also interviewed Vera Molnar for Right Click Save, where we discussed the meaning of generative art, her early experiments with computers, and her recent foray into NFTs as a nonagenarian.

Paula Dawson, To Absent Friends, 1989, detail of the five o’clock in the evening hologram, Macquarie University Art Collection, Sydney, Australia (photograph by Effy Alexakis, Photowrite; provided by Macquarie University Art Gallery)

“Feeling Into Paula Dawson’s Holograms”

I wrote about Australian artist Paula Dawson’s large-scale holographic artwork To Absent Friends (1989) for the spring 2022 issue of Art Journal. You can find the PDF here.

Margaret Benyon, Wrapped Flowers, 1991, Two-color reflection hologram, Jonathan Ross Holography Collection

I wrote “Keeping up with Crypto Lingo” for the inaugural issue of Right Click Save, an online magazine for critical conversation about NFTs.

Im November 2019, I participated in a computer plotter workshop with z1 studio at the former MUDA (Museum of Digital Art) in Zürich, where we emulated Vera Molnar’s artworks using Processing.

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In 2018 I co-founded Speaking of Art: Artist Interviews in Scholarship and Practice with colleagues in the departments of Art History and Cinema + Media Studies at the University of Chicago. I am in the process of archiving these conversations with Knowledge@UChicago.