September 5, 2020 at 7:30pm
Rooftop Films Drive-In Pre-Show
animations created with molecular visualization software and SARS-CoV-2 related structures
soundscape collaboration with Frank Masciocchi (heard on FM car radios)
Curated by Elena Soterakis
Laura Splan's "Unraveling" was screened during the Pre-Show at Rooftop Films Drive-In Movie theater on the beautiful Brooklyn Army Terminal waterfront pier. The series of animations was made with molecular visualization software and SARS-CoV-2 related structures in collaboration with Integral Molecular for uCity Science Center's Bioart Residency. Viewers tuned in to the otherworldly soundscape by musician / biotech lab instrumentation engineer, Frank Masciocchi, on their FM car radios. The screening previews animations in Splan's immersive installation Unraveling at nearby BioBAT Art Space.
Laura Splan's "Unraveling" was screened during the Pre-Show at Rooftop Films Drive-In Movie theater on the beautiful Brooklyn Army Terminal waterfront pier. The series of animations was made with molecular visualization software and SARS-CoV-2 related structures in collaboration with Integral Molecular for uCity Science Center's Bioart Residency. Viewers tuned in to the otherworldly soundscape by musician / biotech lab instrumentation engineer, Frank Masciocchi, on their FM car radios. The screening previews animations in Splan's immersive installation Unraveling at nearby BioBAT Art Space.
BioBAT Art Space
August 15, 2020–March 2021
Laura Splan’s solo exhibition is running in conjunction with the start of her 9-month artist residency at BioBAT Art Space. Unraveling includes a series of new animations created with molecular visualization software using SARS-CoV-2 related protein structures. The series was developed in remote collaboration with biotech company Integral Molecular for her uCity Science Center Bioart Residency while “sheltering in place” for COVID-19. The videos are part of a developing body of work that explores the interconnectedness of cultural and biological systems during the coronavirus pandemic. Splan’s interdisciplinary studio practice often uses textiles materialities and gestures such as unraveling and weaving to understand the structures that form our entangled precarity. Unraveling is the first installment of a series of programming that will be presented both online and at BioBAT Art Space during Splan’s residency to engage audiences in discussion of the complex underpinnings of this global health crisis.
...Laura Splan spent three months in 2020 collaborating with Integral Molecular scientists Dr. Benjamin Doranz and Dr. Edgar Davidson over Zoom to produce her series...created using Pymol to visualize intricate molecular models of SARS-CoV-2. Splan explains that “by using the specialized features of the software in unconventional ways, I unravel and distort the folded structure of the coronavirus spike protein. I playfully manipulate the folded forms...
...Interdisciplinarity is the foundation on which artist Laura Splan conceives her work...Through her practice, science is moved out of the laboratories while keeping its axioms and experiments present...A number of its mechanisms are paralleled with the cultural dynamics that inhabit our everyday lives, putting a magnifying glass on the interconnections that exist between diverse fields of knowledge...
…While the complex, and often alienating science behind the pandemic has inundated the globe over the past year, artist laura splan dove into the study of virus structures to explore the interconnectedness between cultural and biological systems…
…Laura Splan’s "Unraveling"...is another animation, using molecular visualization software and SARS-CoV-2 structures to present mobile fractals that made me want to learn more about COVID’s biological formation...
...Looking at these hypnotizing structures is a moment of ephemeral divinity; a tiny glimpse into the dangerous beauty of the world of the virus...
...surprisingly beautiful...That Splan’s erudite aestheticization of COVID-19 can enchant as much as it does is baffling...
...With the coronavirus outbreak, people worldwide have become preoccupied with a threat so physically small that it can’t be seen. The invisible world of viruses has long fascinated multi-media artist Laura Splan, who is artist in residence at a biotech lab...
Project support provided by The uCity Science Center, Integral Molecular, and The Dolfinger-McMahon Foundation. Additional exhibition support provided by Esther Klein Gallery.
