From left to right: Brooke Einbender, Esteban Garcia Bravo, Nandi Marocco, Noe Naranjo Arias, and Phin Nguyen.
An Evening Where Light, Play, and Imagination Come Together
Celebrate downtown San José's newest public art installations created for SJ2026 with an illuminating evening featuring artists Brooke Einbender and Esteban Garcia Bravo. Presented in partnership with the Office of Economic Development and Cultural Affairs, the event highlights the power of light, color, and creativity to transform public spaces and inspire new experiences throughout downtown San José.
Explore demonstrations and workshops by Einbender and Garcia Bravo, along with live music by Nandi of Los Ritmos Calientes, a digital projection showcase by San José State University students Noe Naranjo Arias and Phin Nguyen of n@p_t1m:3, and free hands-on activities.
Register in advance for faster check-in at the front desk.
Workshop #1: Kaleidoscope Lab: Light, Color & Reflection
To coincide with the public installation of Gaiascope at Circle of Palms, artist Brooke Einbender will lead a hands-on workshop where participants build and personalize their own handheld kaleidoscopes inspired by the installation.
Brooke Einbender, known as Mindbender, is a multidisciplinary artist and founder of Mindbender Studio. Her practice explores the transformative power of perception through painting, virtual reality, moving image, and public art. Working at the intersection of art, nature, and technology, she creates immersive portals that invite audiences into spaces of wonder, reflection, and expanded possibility. Her interactive public installation, Gaiascope, is currently on view at the Circle of Palms in downtown San José.
Workshop #2: LED Animation and Video Mapping for Public Art
In this welcoming, hands-on demo, participants will get a behind-the-scenes look at the creative and technical process behind a series of public light sculptures created for SJ26 by SJSU Professor Esteban Garcia Bravo in collaboration with his art students. This demonstration explores LED color mixing and video mapping through live demonstrations and interactive activities. Participants will experiment with projecting light and imagery, and learn the fundamentals of video mapping.
The demo will also include a presentation by Nandi Marocco of DJ Ritmos Calientes, featuring LED animated lights synchronized with music.
Esteban Garcia Bravo is a Colombian-American artist and scholar whose work bridges digital media, public art, and technology. He earned an MFA in Electronic and Time-Based Media and a PhD in Computer Graphics Technology from Purdue University, where he taught for over a decade and published Cybernethisms (Purdue Press, 2015), a study of early computer art. His artistic practice centers on large-scale, interactive installations that combine code, light, environmental data, and community participation to transform public spaces into shared experiences. Since his NEA-funded project GEODE (2015), he has developed a body of work focused on placemaking through emerging technologies. Recent projects include Aurora Almanac (2021), Ensemble (2022), PRISMA (2023), and Pearl of the Wabash (2025). His work reimagines technology as a medium for civic engagement, ecological awareness, and collective imagination.
Noe Naranjo Arias is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice engages the computer as speculative consciousness and emotional software. Working within the unstable architectures of the digital, they investigate the “third space” as a metaphysical topology where flesh and pixel collapse, and subjectivity is rendered fluid, recursive, and perpetually unresolved. Currently based in San José, California, and pursuing a BFA in Digital Media Art at San José State University (expected Spring 2027), Arias traces how algorithms, image systems, and networked environments reconfigure identity, collectivity, and presence in a reality that is always rendering, never rendered.
Phin Nguyen (she/he/they) is a multidisciplinary artist from Huế, Việt Nam, currently a Digital Media Art BFA student at San Jose State, California. Their artwork ranges from multimedia traditional to digital, expanding towards zine-making, installation, fabrication, and coding, exploring the topic of growing pains, intergenerational healing, neurological intensities, and empowering younger generations. Heavily favoring storytelling, Phin likes to prove that narratives in art come in yin and yang; they want to open up an opportunity to interpret the multifaceted human experience through the playful, edgy, intricate aesthetics that are the staple of Gen Z innovation in design.
Los Ritmos Calientes is a husband-and-wife DJ collective founded by public artist and creative organizer Esteban Garcia Bravo and hair/makeup designer Nandi Marocco. Rooted in a shared love of vinyl, ancestral rhythms, and cultural storytelling, they curate tropical sets blending rare Colombian records with global classics from the 1950s to today. Drawing from family collections passed down through generations, their growing archive celebrates the sounds of Latin America and beyond. Through performances at community arts and cultural events, Los Ritmos Calientes creates joyful spaces where people of all ages come together through music, memory, and collective celebration.
United in Play: San José is for Everyone
From family-friendly events to inclusive experiences for all ages, San José Museum of Art is joining the City of San José to create spaces where the entire community can come together. Learn more at sj26.sanjose.org.