Mona Kasra is an Iranian American new media artist, interdisciplinary scholar, and associate professor of digital media design at the University of Virginia. Her practice-based research questions, critiques, and experiments with the affordances of media technologies within artistic forms and in a variety of improvisational framings. She frequently collaborates with artists, musicians, choreographers, and theater-makers to explore the confluence between performance and new media, particularly the emerging aesthetic possibilities for enriching narrative and enhancing audience immersion in live events. Kasra’s artwork has been exhibited widely in galleries and film festivals across the United States and worldwide, and she has juried, curated, and programmed for many exhibitions, film festivals, and conferences. Her recent virtual reality piece Dwelling in the Enfolding, in collaboration with composer Matthew Burtner, was exhibited at Anchorage Museum of Art and ACM SIGGRAPH Digital Arts Community (DAC) exhibition The Earth, Our Home: Art, Technology, and Critical Action. This interactive, immersive experience alludes to the complex relationship between humans and nature/environment, problematizing the possessive notion of the earth as ‘our’ home.  

Kasra’s publications can be found in journals including New Media & Society, The Communication Review, Journal of Dance Education, and Media and Communication. At the University of Virginia, she lectures and teaches courses on new media art, projection design, integrated interactive media, and immersive media. Kasra serves on the board of ACM SIGGRAPH and New Media Caucus. She holds an MFA in video art from the University of Texas-Dallas, an M.F.A. in video/digital art from California State University Northridge, and a B.A. in graphic design and visual communication from the Art University of Tehran.