Don't reduce yourself to a single function

Zeynep Nal is a computer engineer and new media artist based in Istanbul. Since 2012 she has been building interfaces beyond the screen, keyboard and mouse — systems that talk with the body, voice, movement, touch, stress, warmth and colour — and giving machines characters, feelings and stories of their own.

Childhood

Born in Aydın in 1984, she grew up between maths problems and books. Her mother was an art teacher, so the house was full of art books, sketches and paintings; she compared Monet, Renoir and Degas and drew constantly. At Aydın Science High School the teachers expected students to edit magazines, read poetry and go on stage as much as to solve physics problems. She loved computer games — living in another world through a character's eyes — and so chose computer engineering.

A small part of a big machine

At Istanbul Technical University she also did theatre, worked in the cinema club and learned Italian, Spanish and German alongside English. She then spent five years at Siemens in Istanbul and Karlsruhe, writing embedded software for factory-automation devices. It went well — but she felt like a tiny part of a huge machine, and to escape she began writing a novel, Gurultu, about a corporation-like system with little ghosts in its walls who keep the world turning.

New media

She resigned, and in 2010 began studying Visual Communication Design, intending never to write code again. There she met Bager Akbay, who showed her a field where art, design, science and technology meet. In 2012 she joined the team that created the opening gala performance of Ars Electronica in Linz — and decided this was what she wanted to do. In 2013 she founded the interactive studio monolab, and in 2014 co-founded İskele47 in Yeldeğirmeni, which became an unexpected meeting point of Istanbul's digital art scene.

Practice

She usually begins by writing a story and a character, then asks which technology, material and interaction could bring it to life: a mime that photographs you back, a typewriter that writes petitions in Turkish, jewellery that only speaks to those who come close, a dress that wants to become someone. Behind them all are two questions — how mechanical have we become, and how human can machines be? With monolab she has carried the same thinking into more than twenty museum installations and many brand experiences.

Now

Her works have been shown at Ars Electronica, Contemporary Istanbul, Mamut Art Project, the Istanbul Digital Art Festival, Istanbul Design Week, the Tüyap Art Fair and the Istanbul Design Biennial, and have received awards including Kristal Elma, Felis and Mixx Awards Europe. After years of working mostly in quiet, the rise of AI and digital art brought her themes into a wider conversation: TRT 2 filmed a documentary in her studio in 2023, and she later appeared on TRT Genç's Dijitalist. Since 2025 she has been part of the Paribu Studio team, developing content for the digital surfaces of Paribu Art in Kadıköy — where the thing she gives a character to is now a whole building. In October 2026 she gave the TEDxAFLYouth talk “Don't Reduce Yourself to a Single Function”.