Dr. Elia Vargas is an artist and a scholar working across multiple mediums, ranging from video and sound to writing and performance, focused on naturecultural media practices. His work is critical, speculative, ecological, energetic, and technocultural. It is engaged in an interdisciplinary approach with contemporary and historical experimental media, digital cultural, and feminist science studies. His current work considers the cultural, philosophical, and techno-scientific conditions of the early American oil industry and argues for refiguring crude oil as media to decenter anthropocentric representations of nature.

Towards the pursuit of challenging historical forms of meaning-making, he is interested in concepts that perform change—a multi-species, or posthumanist practice of worlding. His work seeks non-representational ways to trouble the entanglements of nature, culture, and technology. Vargas collaborates widely with artists, musicians, and institutions. He holds a PhD from UC Santa Cruz. He is currently a visiting assistant professor of Media Study at the University at Buffalo, and is commissioned by Goethe Institute to host and produce a monthly podcast on global technocultural exchange. He is the co-founder of the SF Bay Area art and technology organization, the Living Room Light Exchange.