Online Artist Talks Presented by ecoart TECH
Dr. Nigel Meredith, Diana Scarborough, Patricia Olynyk, Laura Splan, Grace Grothaus
November 12, 2020 at 1:00pm ET
New media artists are experiencing a boom during the Pandemic. The opportunities to share and engage digital works are expanding daily. For this dialogue we will hear from four ecoartspace members who are engaged in exciting projects, collaborating with scientists, and "redesigning the social psyche." Special guest speaker will be Dr. Nigel Meredith who collaborated with Diana Scarborough to create a sound work included in the fall show ecoconsciousness. We will also hear from Patricia Olynyk who works across disciplines to create third culture projects. Laura Splan will share her recent work featuring animations created with molecular visualization software and SARS-CoV-2. And, Grace Grothaus, a graduate student at UC San Diego, who creates through physical computing immersive indoor and outdoor installations and performances.
Dr. Nigel Meredith is a space weather research scientist at the British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge. He uses satellite data to develop global models of plasma waves in near Earth space for input into radiation belt codes and, ultimately, to forecast space weather and has recently applied extreme value analysis to long-term satellite datasets to determine the 1 in 10, 1 in 50 and 1 in 100 year space weather events. This is important for assessing the impact of extreme events on the world’s satellite fleet. He enjoys exploring how to make scientific data more accessible and is currently involved in an art-science collaboration with ecoartspace member Diana Scarborough for their project titled Sounds of Space. Meredith has published 119 papers in peer-reviewed journals covering a wide range of topics in space plasma physics. britishantarcticsurvey
Diana Scarborough is an artist and engineer whose multimedia practice is cross-discipline and collaborative. She takes inspiration from research that embraces concepts of data, code, sound, archival history, technology and environmental concerns and rephrases them from an art perspective. She uses film, animation, soundscapes, light, technology, dancers and musicians as a palette to translate data into an immersive experience that is tangible, surprising, relevant and inclusive. Since 2016 she has collaborated with Dr. Nigel Meredith on the Sounds of Space Project which has received much interest in the art and science fields. Short films inspired by this collaboration were shown at the Venice Biennale, as well as at festivals, lectures, theatre and performance spaces internationally. Their collaborative work Aurora Musicalis, A Compilation is included in the fall online ecoartspace exhibition, ecoconsciousness. dianascarborough.co.uk
Laura Splan connects the material artifacts of science to poetic subjectivities of the everyday. Her transdisciplinary projects destabilize notions of the presence and absence of bodies evoking the systems that determine their status. Splan’s multimedia studio practice often uses textiles artifacts and gestures to understand the structures that form entangled precarity. Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Arts & Design and Beall Center for Art + Technology and is included in the collections of the Thoma Art Foundation and NYU Langone Collection. She has been a visiting lecturer at Stanford University teaching courses including “Embodied Interfaces” and “Data as Material.” Splan is a Creative Science member at NEW INC, the New Museum’s cultural incubator. Her recent exhibition, “Unraveling” at BioBAT Art Space at the Brooklyn Army Terminal featured animations created with molecular visualization software and SARS-CoV-2 protein structures projected in BioBAT’s 15,000 square foot “Dark Space.” laurasplan.com
Grace Grothaus is a transdisciplinary artist interested in generating space for future-facing reflection regarding human agency enacted through the constructed world. Through her research driven installations, sculptures, photographs, videos and performances, she explores the complex web of ideas relating to the pressing ecological crisis of biodiversity loss resulting from climate change. She hopes to address questions such as how can we reshape our relationships with each other and collectively awaken to a role of intra and inter-species respect, mutualism, and stewardship? Grothaus interrogates both the troubled present through projects such as The Promise of Progress and Against our Better Nature, and speculative futures with projects such as Rise, Symbiocities and Sunlit. Previously her artworks were among those representing the United States in the 2012 World Creativity Biennale and has been exhibited and/or collected nationwide and abroad on five continents. She is California-based with her dog and numerous plants. redesigningthesocialpsyche
Patricia Jean Olynyk investigates science and technology related themes and the ways in which social systems and institutional structures shape our understanding of human life and the natural world. Her prints, photographs, and video installations engage the history of science to explore the dialectics of mind and body, human and artificial, and cognition and affect. Working across disciplines to develop “third culture” projects, she frequently collaborates with research scientists, humanists, cinematographers, and industry specialists. Many of her multimedia environments call upon the viewer to expand their awareness of the worlds they inhabit—whether those worlds are their own bodies or the spaces that surround them. Olynyk is former Chair of the Leonardo Education and Art Forum, a branch of the International Society for the Arts, Science, and Technology (Leonardo/ISAST). She co-directs the Leonardo/ISAST NY LASER program in New York, which promotes cross-disciplinary exchange between artists, scientists, and scholars. patriciaolynyk.com
