I am honored to have been invited to participate in an exhibition (opening next week) about art and science and technology... and taking place in Dublin's very cool Blue Leaf Gallery... below is an essay about it by Dr. Deirdre Mulrooney...
Eureka!Meditations on the light and dark sides of
discovery in science and technology as explored through the eyes of three
Irish, and ten American contemporary and
emerging artists.
We this people
On this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing,
Irresistible tenderness,
That the haltered neck is happy to bow,
And the proud back is glad to bend.
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines…
-- From “Space Junk” by Maya Angelou
Exploratorium Founder Frank Oppenheimer called artists
and scientists “the official ‘noticers’ of society,” adding that “they notice
things that other people either have
never learned to see or have learned to ignore,
and communicate those ‘noticings’ to others. Eureka! Is a term generally referring to discovery. But,
discovery and awareness is not always beneficial. It can, in fact, be
lethal. Science and Technology has its
dark side. J. Robert Oppenheimer
invented the atomic bomb, and his first revelation was from the Hindu text,
"I have become death, a destroyer of worlds".
Anxiety underlies much of the American artists’ work in
Eureka! – from Rick Newton’s spitfires and Dali-esque sci-fi lobster pincers
emerging out of a clear blue sky; to Kirsten Deirup’s mounds of
non-biodegradable rubbish, to the spray-paint feel of Jean-Pierre Roy’s
apocalyptic atomic mushroom cloud paintings, and the polish of Bethany Krull’s
porcelain pets (which might be in conversation with Damian Hirst’s sharks and calves
preserved in formaldehyde).
But the world of science and technology can also be a
fun, affirmative, and playful one, as in Kyle Trowbridge’s ‘paintings that
text’, Allison Schullnik’s retro stop-motion claymation music videos and
Catherine Owens’ sidereal wonder.
If “Science” is “the intellectual and practical activity
encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the
physical and natural world through observation and experiment” (OED) and
Technology, from the ancient Greek Tekhne, which incidentally means ‘art,
craft’, is defined as ‘the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes’
(OED), then Artists are naturally to be found at that intersection, performing
their own alchemy on the edges between humanity, technology, and science. That is where the cutting edge of science has
lived since time immemorial, pushing the limits, dreaming, imagining the
previously unimaginable – and sometimes bringing it into being, for better or
for worse.
Similarly, the artist as explorer/ searcher/
expeditionist is constantly striving towards that Damascene moment, where like
Saul, the scales fall from their eyes and new visions are beheld, new
connections, opening a door to transformation, and maybe even enlightenment
(Pauline or not).
That’s the point where the scientist exclaims Eureka! “A
cry of joy or satisfaction when one finds or discovers something: from Gk
Heureka ‘I have found it’, said to have been uttered by Archimedes when he hit
upon a method of determining the purity of gold (OED).
Equally, each artist has their own Epiphany “a moment of
sudden and great revelation”, which, most crucially they communicate to us via their
work – whatever form that may take. In
this exhibition the forms are myriad.
Across the planet, from mobile phone charging huts in
African villages to technology super-stores in downtown New York, everybody
knows that our love affair with pervasive technology ‘the application of
scientific knowledge for practical purposes’ is at an all-time high. Inextricable to what sociologist Raymond
Williams calls the ‘structure of feeling’ of our society, we can’t leave home
without it - there it is, in our pockets, subtly, and sometimes insidiously
embedded into the fibre of our very existence. Like a Trojan Horse, ubiquitous
technology has infiltrated into the very matrix of our human “being”, as we
mediate the world through smart phones, communicating through truncated text messages,
cartoon-esque emoticons, relying on this intangible, virtual world for intimacy
through disembodied skype on lap-tops, desk-tops, tablets and i-pads. This, too, can be both good and bad.
Have you ever stopped to think how (say, compared to
previous generations, who had nothing mediating between themselves and their “”live
experience”), we negotiate and navigate the world mostly through small
rectangular screens? In Eureka!, artist
Patrick Jacobs playfully subverts and interrogates this with his quaint,
circular, 18th century Claude Frames. Think how anthropologically fascinating
it must be to an onlooker, how we tap, gaze into, and even pet our rectangular
screens like we might a beloved dog or a
cat. Which brings me to Bethany Krull’s
exquisite, yet somehow disquieting porcelain pets.
These days, going outside the front door sans mobile
phone can produce separation anxiety of a most intense nature. Without the
mobile phone, though we may actually be in the outside world, we feel cut off
from it. In a variation on this theme, in her “Frankenstein’s monster” type oeuvre
artist Bethany Krull raises the issue of how warm, cuddly – and terrifying -
technology has become. She puts this to
us in her polished, porcelain current series called “Dominance and Affection”, revealing
how we have tamed wild nature, and genetically modified it to suit our inner
control freak. ‘In today’s nature-deprived society, our most intimate
connection tends to be with plants and animals that we have drastically altered
through the process of domestication.
Instead of us succumbing to our role as part of nature, nature must bend
to our will, and it is science and technology that makes this happen”. Far beyond Stanley Kubrik’s prophetic Hal in
“2001: A Space Odyssey” - have we finally lost our last shred of humility where
nature is concerned? What ever happened
to mystery?
“We have turned wild animals into companions, genetically
sculpting them into sweeter, cuter, less dangerous versions of themselves”,
says Krull. “We shower our pets with love at the same time we cage and contain
them and it is this affection contradicting complete control that I am
interested in illustrating in my work. For no amount of love lavished upon
these creatures will erase the fact that the success of the relationship lies
in our complete domination over all aspects of their existence.”
“Zoology (the study of animals) and Ethology (a more
specific study of animal behavior) play quite significant roles in my work as I
am constantly exploring the ways in which the human animal interacts with other
species (which is often informed by the psychological sciences as well as
ethics) and how wild species come to be domesticated. I am interested in the
complicated and often contradictory attitudes our society often maintains with
other species as well as the human species propensity to dominate.”
Meanwhile, in her Claymation music videos, artist Allison
Schulnik brings us back to the earth Patrick Kavanagh deifies in his 1942 poem “The
Great Hunger”, with his opening gambit “Clay is the Word, and Clay is the
flesh”. Schulnik’s “Mound”, “Hobo” and “Forest”, bring us back to the joy of
primordial goo. Abandoning the blatantly hi-tech because it is disconnected
from the physical aspects of what makes a sculptural artist a creator, her
paradoxically luddite claymations, are populated with Apichatong Weerasethakul
type creatures, UFO’s, primordial slime, hobos, clowns, and the occasional
extra-terrestrial. Her stop-motion animation,
with plasticine clay, where objects are constantly adjusted by hand and
photographed to create movement on film - are striking for their gloopy
colour-burst painterly quality, going back to child-like basics and wonder of
squeezing raw colour out of a tube of paint, and mushing it around on the
palette.
This is where she introduces the elemental science of
dancing: spellbinding Martha-Graham esque choreography is conjured out of this colourburst
slime to mesmeric effect. Schulnik’s
sculptural claymation music videos – with the occasional UFO – bring us back to
a reassuringly earthy world of yore.
In “Metathesiophobia I Irish Sculptor Margaret O’Brien’s
gorgeous, part unctuous, part crystalline “Gallium” plunges us into the
old-fashioned science of Mechanical Engineering, and the feel of being back in
school science lab. Developing her own alchemy of slow and repetitive changes in
temperature, O’Brien allows various forms of the metal Gallium, whose state and
form is constantly in flux to invite metaphorical exploration of the
relationship and boundaries between the physical and the psychological.
“Metathesiophobia I uses the physical properties of the
metal gallium to explore the relationship and boundaries between the physical
and the psychological, with particular regard to the experience of objects and conditions
of space” shares O’Brien. “Gallium is one of five metals whose physical state
is unstable at or near room temperature and, due to its physical properties, it
does not solidify into the same physical form twice but reforms with each
change in state. With the changing nature of the material, the relationship of
the viewer to the ‘object’ is destabilized as familiarity with its form is
continually undermined.”
Constantly in a kind of Heraclitean flux - due to the
changing nature of the material, the relationship of the viewer to the ‘object’
is destabilized as familiarity with its form is continually undermined. This
results in the viewer’s referencing through association being constantly
challenged and redressed.
“I use science or technology to introduce the possibility
of malfunction or technical failure into the work, as a formal condition of the
work that informs and renegotiates shifting boundaries between the physical and
psychological. The language of the works is anchored on the interstice between
operational and breakdown so that the work embodies a condition of
impossibility within the threat of technical failure, and endless conditions of
possibility or potentiality within the realm of its functioning or
semi-functioning capacity. In doing this, the experience of the physical and
psychological is interweaved within the experience of the work. “
From there to the playful science of games: have you ever
wondered, if abstract painting could text, what it might say? Wave your mobile
phone in front of Kyle Trowbridge’s Piet Mondriaan Style painting and find out!
Like a Trojan horse, Kyle Trowbridge has embedded messages into his scannable
painting, so the viewer experiences this oxymoron of literal text emanating out
of abstraction. “Much of my work in the past has been based on buried subtext…
It’s the idea that things are never what they appear to be that I am truly in
love with. So when you pick up your phone
and scan my paintings, you can see the literal message it conveys.” This work
could trace its lineage to morse code, which, in its day was high technology
indeed.
“I think at its root, the idea of using codes can cloak
meaning in such interesting ways. Leaving my art to perform like a wolf in
sheep’s clothing or is it a sheep in wolf’s clothing!”
“I do not believe these to be a far stretch from the
literal definitions of the terms science and technology” he elaborates. “These are
technologically based because the very foundation of these paintings relies on
the structuring of the QR code. but it does not end with the painting itself.
To unlock the full potential of these paintings one must again rely on their
smart phones to decipher the code/painting. Technology by way of the computer
is used to convert my text and generate a coded version. It is then technology
once again that is used to translate this digital language. Technology itself
mirrors current social trends greatly. It is the computer and its heavy
interrelation with life, society, and our environment, that further increases
the drawing upon such subjects as computer science, engineering, and applied science.
The Quick Response code is one more excuse to pull out our phones and justify
their existence!”
“Colour theory and the science of colour plays a great
part in the creation of these works as QR codes are designed to be mono
chromatic. This of course is because there are inherent limitations in the smartphone
camera lens that is to act as a scanner for these codes. Believe me I have
spent many hours struggling with certain colours to keep these paintings
scannable. There are so many variables (hue, chroma, saturation, intensity,
value, clash, simultaneous contrast, etc. etc.) that only the breaking down of
colour to a science can help overcome / manage them.”
Meanwhile, in another scientific realm, at the forefront
of experimental film and media since the 1980’s, Leslie Thornton’s kaleidoscopic
Ant Video, Bluebird, Fish, and zebra lure us into a hyper National Geographic
type of environment.
Deconstructing the ubiquitous rectangular screen our 2012
world is framed in, we see Patrick Jacobs’ hallucinatory mushrooms emerge in trippy
perspective through an anachronistic Claude glass – a circular optical device
popular in the 18th century used to frame the picturesque. The quaint yet disorienting combination of
the pretty frame –– coupled with Jacobs’ negative focal length of the concave lenses
and sculptural foreshortening all combine to create an illusion of infinite
depth within a narrow space.
Ingeniously, the artist has made you a magic mushroom, and a teeny fairy
ring, reveling in the beauty and pharmacology of the nature his art mimics.
“A kind of pseudoscience often characterizes my work in
which the everyday conspires to transcend to the supernatural”, he says. “We have always attempted to understand the
world around us through a mixture of scientific fact and cultural assumptions,
wishful thinking or even magic. The
fairy ring fungus series centers on a folk-tale which held that dark grass and
mushrooms growing in a circle followed the path made by fairies dancing in a
ring. An ordinary natural phenomenon -
the bane of lawn owners and gardeners - thus becomes the object of wonder. Each work consists of a constructed,
three-dimensional diorama lighted from within and viewed through a circular
window of glass lenses. Recalling the
Claude glass, an optical device popular in the 18th century used to frame the
picturesque, and Chevron's Ortho home and garden brochures, the lenses also
invoke the invisible eye of the wary homeowner searching a landscape for
imagined interlopers. Installed within
the wall, the physical diorama vanishes and we struggle to ascertain an image
which can only exist within our mind.
The combination of the negative focal length of the concave lenses and
sculptural foreshortening creates the illusion of infinite depth within a
narrow space. Blurring boundaries between
painting, sculpture and photography the works present the viewer with a spatial
and perceptual conundrum; we are drawn
into a space at once determinate and infinite, natural and contrived, prosaic
and otherworldly. In the foreground, we
behold a detail of a cluster of mushrooms tenderly recreated with a degree of
botanical accuracy. Then, our gaze is
drawn deeper into a space with an impossible bird's eye view of a distant,
fantastical landscape. The unwanted, or
mundane become synonymous with a disorienting even hallucinatory experience”.
The Salvador Dali-esque, anxious world of Rick Newton,
where spitfire planes and lobster pincers emerge out of the sky rhymes with the
age-old Shakespearean sentiment ‘like fies to wanton boys are we to the gods, they
kill us for their sport”. Inspired by
scientific textbook illustrations, and incorporating Cold War imagery, Newton
has created a personal mythology concerning the future of the planet – with a
generous dollop of post 9-11 angst.
As regards how science informs his work, Newton offers:
“If the applied science of technology is perceived as an icon for the modern
desire to provide for human growth, then my work is informed by this ideal trajectory. For me, technological innovations signify
change and the climate of opinion from the various epochs artificially imposed
by scientific inquiry. For the modern
period, change over time can be traced via technological innovations”.
Delving into environmental science, the ecology and
anatomy of our world, Kirsten Deirup’s paintings suggest how biodegradable
human beings have a short “shelf life” in contrast to the synthetic rubbish we produce
– residue which persists indestructibly into the future for generations to
come. Deirup approaches the ecology and anatomy of the contemporary world to
create scenes that remind viewers of the fragility of what is misperceived as
stability and balance in our world.
Bio-ethics also features on Deirup’s somewhat anxious
palette. Her concerns about the current
scientific penchant for genetic tinkering manifests in Hieronymous Bosch-style
nightmares in paint – scary possible outcomes not conceptualised by evolution
or nature.
Science has become the beacon for ‘Revelation’ in
Jean-Pierre Roy’s painterly, post-divine, materialist world. “Classical Western
Art traditions often have at their core a desire for "Revelation", he
offers. “As the material and existential
unknowns formally relegated to the realm of the "divine" give up
their secrets to the small, unwavering and clarifying lens of rational investigation,
"Science" has become the beacon for this act of
"Revelation" for a post-divine, materialist world-view.”
“The day to day evolution of the state of the scientific
conversation makes it's way into my work- from Geology and Meteorology, to Thermodynamics
and Particle Physics. On a macro-level,
my work seeks to evoke a place for the viewer to contemplate the act of
discovery itself. The Enlightenment gave rise to schools of sculptors and
painters that sought to codify the "old world-view" shattering ideas
of Christiaan Huygens, Galileo and Tycho Brahe.
Artists like Casper Davide Friedrich and painters from the American
Luminist Tradition sought to move the sublime mysteries of the world out of the
damp confines of the cloisters and pews of the church and out into the light of
the now Sun-Centric planetary system and the dappled star light of a much
larger cosmos”.
“Drawing on these traditions of light as a metaphor for
the rational mind, my work continues to explore the luminous boundaries between
the known and the unknown, or as 19th century mathematician Georg Cantor put it
"the chasm between what he had seen and what he knew must be there, but
could never reach." Lenny Campello gives us a virtual wink as he brings us
back to the retro technology of Tube TV and old soap operas in his
installation. Featuring 1950’s couple
Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz in a classic bedroom farce moment from iconic
series “I Love Lucy”, Desi walks in and catches Lucy in the arms of his fellow
Cuban – Fidel Castro. Storytelling and narrative
will always be part of the fabric of what it is to be human, and Campello
reminds us that technology, is often but a tool to plug in to this innate and
ancient human need.
“My work has always been about the narrative and/or
storytelling”, he says. “My marriage of
a traditional and well-established genre of art (such as drawing has been for
centuries), with a modern form of technology is an attempt on my part to extend
the narrative of the artwork via embedded videos or powerpoint presentations.
The digital technology thus expands what the visual imagery offers via drawing
and it adds more information, more clues, a deeper agenda.”
Finally, out of all the sidereal, technological and
scientific wonder in this exhibition, and on this ‘small and lonely planet,
travelling through casual space, past aloof stars, across the way of
indifferent suns’ in “Space Junk”, U2 collaborator, and 3D pioneer Catherine
Owens invites us to consider Maya Angelou’s heartening assertion:
When we come to it, we must confess
That we are the possible,
We are the miraculous,
We are the true wonder of this world.
So go on, put your miraculous self in the vortex of the
organic conversation that emerges between these eclectic art works, and perhaps
experience your own epiphany. Claim your
own Eureka! Moment.
