ZOE MIYAKO LEE
zoemiyako@gmail.comare.nainstagram
Zoe Lee is a designer, entreprenuer, researcher, and filmmaker based in the United States. After receiving a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), she co-founded BEAM, a research-led creative studio and public imagination engine for people & planet.
She is also a Research Affiliate at the MIT Media Lab’s Community Biotechnology Initiative and a member of NEW INC, the New Museum’s design, culture, and tech incubator, in the Year 12 Creative Science cohort.
Her work focuses on how climate technologies and interventions operate once they move into real places—shaped by ecological conditions, governance, culture, and lived relationships to land and water. Her practice blends research, design, and storytelling to make complex socio-ecological systems legible and negotiable.
Her work has been published and presented internationally, and has appeared in Vox, MIT Technology Review, ArtNews, The Today Show, O! Magazine, Stereo Saints, and Barley Field Magazine.
CV
BEACONS
BEACONS
Collaborator, DEMO Festival
NEW MUSEUM
DEMO
180 MAIDEN LN, NYC
Jun 02—Jun 27, 2025
Partners: SPOLIA Lab,BEAM
Paper Fabrication: Luke Henderson
Curator: Remina Greenfield
Production Director: Tony Tirador
Comissioned by: NEW INC
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DESCRIPTION
In 2025, SPOLIA and BEAM started a collaboration drawn together by a mutual interest in the deep-sea and the current geopolitical focus in its exploitation for critical minerals.
The result of this partnership is Beacons, an environmental installation exhibited at the New Museum’s DEMO festival.
The work translates remote environmental data from the deep sea into immersive sound and light. A set of custom, hanging 3D-printed speakers emit frequencies tied to more than 26 ecological readings, allowing audiences in New York City to experience the fragile underwater ecosystem normally inaccessible to human senses.