Digital Art, Dolphins and Dance Music: Pérez Art Museum Makes Miami a Living, Breathing Canvas

MIAMI – Vibrant electronic music thumped as a cool spring breeze blew off Biscayne Bay at the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM). 

To premier Interdial 2025, PAMM held a block party on April 17 celebrating South Florida’s contributions to contemporary media art.

With a combination of video works from five different artists, Interdial 2025 was presented on a floating billboard screen in the bay, touching on themes of cultural convergence, identity and transformation, and innovative technology.  

“Together, they reimagine loss, language, and selfhood in Miami’s intertidal space—where cultures merge, histories shift, and the digital and physical coalesce,” PAMM said in a press release. 

Queer feminist reggaeton and artist duo, LIZN’BOW, whose single-channel video of a virtual reality experience titled “Niñalandia Skycoaster” was featured in Interdial 2025, spoke with MediaLab@FAU at the premier. 

“We met 10 years ago, and our work is kind of inseparable from our partnership, our relationship, our friendship,” said one of the pair, who goes by Bow Ty. 

Their work spans across filmmaking, music, video and performance art. 

“It means a lot to be here at PAMM, it’s one of our bigger museums down here, so it’s pretty cool to be invited. There’s not much visibility yet for new media works, so it’s cool that they have this program too,” said Liz Ferrer, the other half of LIZN’BOW.  

The two talked about the unique nature of using new media – contemporary artwork that includes technology like virtual reality and the online world – as a medium for art, and how its rarity resonates with them. 

“It’s different in the sense that it’s more ephemeral in some ways, you can’t exactly point to an object,” said Bow Ty. 

“People are doing it, but because it’s new, I feel like there’s a lot of freedom to just create whatever you want. People are like, ‘Yeah, tech, whatever,’ but for us, it’s just us,” said Ferrer.  

LIZN’BOW blends a colorful imagination with real-life experiences, curating new worlds through their art that take viewers on a lively and thought-provoking journey.

“Niñalandia Skycoaster” invites viewers on a vivid and unusual rollercoaster ride through a post-apocalyptic Miami. From the perspective of a roller-coaster cart, audiences fly past pastelitos de guayaba (Cuban pastries), unicorn cows on jet skis, flying dolphins, mountains of burning money, and monumental milk jugs (a nod to their song “Dame Leche”), against a backdrop of neon rainbows. 

The visuals present nostalgic, early-internet aesthetics while blending Latin pop culture with queer-inspired imagery. According to Bow Ty, “Niñalandia Skycoaster” was a gift to Ferrer for her birthday. 

“In this world we’ve been building, it’s both kind of fantasy and real at the same time,” said Bow Ty. 

“Yeah, we're kind of merging both of them,” said Ferrer. 

Beyond LIZN’BOW’s “Niñalandia Skycoaster,” four other video works were shown. 

Yucef Merhi’s “SORRY,” a computer-generated video documenting the birth and death of the work’s title through cells, explores the relationship between electronic and natural language. 

Jacolby Satterwhite’s “En Plein Air: Diamond Princess” (2015), co-commissioned by PAMM, shows 3D-scanned performances by Miami hip-hop artist Trina and aspects of the artist’s life and upbringing. 

Keisha Rae Witherspoon’s “T” is an Afro-futurist video work that follows three grieving participants of Miami’s annual T Ball, where people assemble to model rest-in-peace T-shirts and innovative costumes designed in honor of their dead. 

Domingo Castillo Flores’ “Surface Image: Epilogue” sources footage from South Florida luxury real estate promotions, examining how computer-generated imagery shapes the region’s perception and future. 

Activations from local media art organizations presented interactive art, immersive virtual reality simulations, AI-powered figure drawing, while others tabled to spread the word about local digital media events and organizations. 

“I think that’s the goal of the collective, is to find different means through which you can communicate, whether that be cinema, or music, we incorporate a lot of live performance into our events,” said Angela Rio, who was tabling for Masisi, a Black queer music collective that celebrates the cultural lineage across the Afro-Caribbean diasporas through events and programming. 

“We like to bridge mediums together and we like to see how mediums that would sometimes be presented individually can exist in unison, and how they can bring a different experience out of that combination.” 

Masisi was founded by Miami-based transdisciplinary artist Akia Dorsainvil, also known as DJ Pressure Point, who was behind the booth during the opening of the event, giving a high-energy performance that got the early crowd grooving. 

Some attendees highlighted cultural convergence and celebration of art as to why this event was special. 

Some enthusiasts in the crowd said the most inspiring thing was to watch and feel part of a public celebration of art.

“Miami is such a diverse, cultural city. There’s actually a lot of siloed cultural celebrations,” said Melissa Gomez, 34, a Miami resident. “That’s what I love about being here on a night like this, is that there’s people from just different perspectives who are culturally celebrating each other and their art form that they specialize in.” 

Others pointed to the blend of technology, art and Miami’s natural landscape to describe how this experience was one to remember. 

“All of Biscayne Bay has been such a fertile place for history and culture for centuries,” said Kelsey Flitter, 33, who lives in Miami and specializes in cross-cultural communication. “Being able to come today to the PAMM, that’s on the bay, and interact with and engage with the water and local artists in this way is this next chapter of art and history that we’re experiencing, that we as the city of Miami are experiencing, and I am so happy to be here and to be apart of that.” 

A night filled with celebration of cultural convergence and new media art closed with a performance from LIZN’BOW’s reggaeton music project, called Niña, and then a set from DJ Niña (Liz Ferrer).  

Jay Mollica, the senior director of digital engagement at PAMM, said the event was a successful celebration of contemporary art in digital space. Over 1,000 people attended, he said, making it one of PAMM's biggest nights of the year. 

“Each of our community partners brought something special to the event, from holograms, to VR, to video games to documentary and film, a wide range of media art was represented,” said Mollica. “The big takeaway for me was the confirmation that digital and physical spaces are part of the same continuum. As museums navigate 21st century modes of expression these hybrid, community-centered efforts will be increasingly important to their success.”