Amy M. Youngs creates eco art, interactive sculptures, and digital media works that explore entanglements between technology, plants, and animals. Her interdisciplinary research involves empathy, relationships with non-humans, ecosystem construction, and seeing through the eyes of machines. She has created installations that amplify the sounds of living worms, indoor ecosystems powered by a rocking chair, an interactive museum for live insects, and an augmented reality tour of real nature.
Youngs has exhibited her works nationally and internationally at venues such as the Te Papa Museum in New Zealand, the Trondheim Electronic Arts Centre in Norway, the Biennale of Electronic Arts in Australia, Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo in Spain and the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA. She has earned an Individual Artist Grant from the Ohio Arts Council, contributed writing to interdisciplinary publications such as Leonardo Journal, Robots and Art, and Plants by Numbers. Her work has been profiled in books such as, What’s Next: Eco Materialism & Contemporary Art and Art in Action: Nature, Creativity & our Collective Future. She has lectured at international venues such as the Australian Centre For the Moving Image in Melbourne, Australia and the Central Academy of Fine Arts, in Beijing, China. Born and raised in Chico, California, she moved to San Francisco, where she received a BA in Art from San Francisco State University. On fellowship, she attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and earned an MFA in 1999. In 2001 she joined the faculty at the Ohio State University where she is currently working as an Associate Professor of Art, leading interdisciplinary grant projects and teaching courses in digital media, eco art, and art/science.