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How does our body remember?
ELENA COLGI: "The video VIEWS FROM ABOVE, which was projected from the ceiling onto the floor in the Northumberland Telescope, Cambridge UK in 2012, was part of a larger installation and was a collaborative event organized by Visualise in partnership with Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge and Wysing Arts Centre. Based on Escher's Combination patterns, VIEWS FROM ABOVE includes video footage from my family's Super8 film collection, the first broadcast of BBC Cambridgeshire, and Google Earth images."
ELENA COLGI: "The video VIEWS FROM ABOVE, which was projected from the ceiling onto the floor in the Northumberland Telescope, Cambridge UK in 2012, was part of a larger installation and was a collaborative event organized by Visualise in partnership with Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge and Wysing Arts Centre. Based on Escher's Combination patterns, VIEWS FROM ABOVE includes video footage from my family's Super8 film collection, the first broadcast of BBC Cambridgeshire, and Google Earth images."
What are the bio-geological processes that led to the evolution of humans on Earth?
NANCY VAN WAGONER: "I have a melded art practice that integrates art and geoscience along with my deep concern for the well-being of humanity. My unique perspective comes from a very deep understanding of and connection to Earth garnered through decades of field-based research of modern and ancient volcanoes all over the world, and teaching both art and science internationally and across cultures. As a result, I have come to know Earth, from its origins in the universe, down to its atoms, and through the complex series of processes that eventually led to human life with the all its intellect, emotions, and ability to imagine and create. At the same time, I revel in Earth's obscurities and the art and science of pursuing explanations. The clues to the geologic heritage of humanity are mostly cryptic or hidden from view, lying in the subsurface. As an artist and geoscientist walking the planet or working in the lab, I am a discoverer, collector, sequencer, and interpreter of fragments of Earth and contemporary life. These fragments vary in size from submicroscopic to nebula-sized, from tangible bits of rocks and minerals to geophysical and geochemical signatures, and from the cells of stromatolites to the newspaper clippings. In creating the artwork, I intertwine these fragments, melding scales of size, space and time, into new conceptual landscapes. These montaged landscapes, created in a variety of media, reveal stories of Earth and omens for the future. The objective is to create works that touch home and in doing so engender a sense of urgency about addressing the impacts of humans as geologic agents and acts of inhumanity. The juxtapositions in the montages are used as a way of encouraging visioning beyond the individual and immediate time and space to the global, from one impact to multiple, and from 4.5 billion years ago to now, and from now to then."
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How did the oceans evolve?
LATISHA BRENGMAN: "The skyscrapers of Chicago are built from an extinct rock created in an ancient ocean starved of free oxygen where only microscopic microbial life thrived over 1.8 billion years ago. These extinct rocks are called iron formations. Today, because of plate tectonics, we can study these iron formations - which serve as an archive of the ancient ocean - in the middle of the stable portions of old continents. Though not an obvious place to study ocean history, Minnesota is one such example of well-preserved ancient crust that holds a large reserve of iron formation. Utilizing high-spatial resolution analytical tools, I work to decipher the geochemical evolution of the early ocean in an attempt to better quantify the environmental conditions under which nascent microbial life originated, radiated, and diversified. Because we cannot observe the ancient ocean directly, we must peel back the layers of time by carefully assembling the detailed history of each component of the rocks we investigate. Part of this process includes examining thin slices (30 microns) of rocks using microscopy. The interaction of polarized light with crystalline minerals produces recognizable patterns, which provide information about their present elemental composition. The images sampled here are examples of the exquisite interaction of cross-polarized light with silicon-rich minerals. Elements are transferred to the ocean from two major sources - continents and deep-sea hydrothermal systems. As a result, the history of the ocean is inevitably linked to both the life cycle of the continents - how they are born, how they grow, how they age over time - and the dynamic interaction of the ocean crust with heat stored in earth's deep interior. By investigating the genesis of one of iron formation's main ingredients, silicon, we can reconstruct the delicate balance of major element sources to the ocean during the adolescent stages of earth's crustal growth. Determining how silicon was transported to the ancient oceans and what proportion was derived from the continents versus deep-sea vents forms the basis of my current research question: how did the oceans evolve?"
LATISHA BRENGMAN: "The skyscrapers of Chicago are built from an extinct rock created in an ancient ocean starved of free oxygen where only microscopic microbial life thrived over 1.8 billion years ago. These extinct rocks are called iron formations. Today, because of plate tectonics, we can study these iron formations - which serve as an archive of the ancient ocean - in the middle of the stable portions of old continents. Though not an obvious place to study ocean history, Minnesota is one such example of well-preserved ancient crust that holds a large reserve of iron formation. Utilizing high-spatial resolution analytical tools, I work to decipher the geochemical evolution of the early ocean in an attempt to better quantify the environmental conditions under which nascent microbial life originated, radiated, and diversified. Because we cannot observe the ancient ocean directly, we must peel back the layers of time by carefully assembling the detailed history of each component of the rocks we investigate. Part of this process includes examining thin slices (30 microns) of rocks using microscopy. The interaction of polarized light with crystalline minerals produces recognizable patterns, which provide information about their present elemental composition. The images sampled here are examples of the exquisite interaction of cross-polarized light with silicon-rich minerals. Elements are transferred to the ocean from two major sources - continents and deep-sea hydrothermal systems. As a result, the history of the ocean is inevitably linked to both the life cycle of the continents - how they are born, how they grow, how they age over time - and the dynamic interaction of the ocean crust with heat stored in earth's deep interior. By investigating the genesis of one of iron formation's main ingredients, silicon, we can reconstruct the delicate balance of major element sources to the ocean during the adolescent stages of earth's crustal growth. Determining how silicon was transported to the ancient oceans and what proportion was derived from the continents versus deep-sea vents forms the basis of my current research question: how did the oceans evolve?"
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What is the nature of mind and reality?
EVA LEE: "As a visual artist and experimental filmmaker, my interest in the nature of mind and reality has led me to interact with neuroscientists to visualize their data - such as the brain basis of emotions as three dimensional moving landscapes. My latest work, Dual Brains, is a real-time EEG data-driven performance inspired by neuropsychological studies which demonstrate human neural interdependence. Dual Brains is an artistic expression of humans as fundamentally empathic social beings who help one another."
EVA LEE: "As a visual artist and experimental filmmaker, my interest in the nature of mind and reality has led me to interact with neuroscientists to visualize their data - such as the brain basis of emotions as three dimensional moving landscapes. My latest work, Dual Brains, is a real-time EEG data-driven performance inspired by neuropsychological studies which demonstrate human neural interdependence. Dual Brains is an artistic expression of humans as fundamentally empathic social beings who help one another."
How are matter and galaxies arranged, and where else in nature do we see that arrangement?
MARK NEYRINCK: "I am studying correspondence between the 'cosmic web' of galaxies and matter on large scales, and a structural-engineering network called a "spiderweb" - it turns out to relate to origami! It relates to network theory as well and to how, perhaps, circulatory systems, trees, cities, etc. are arranged. I'd like to solidify these connections rigorously..."
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What is the nature of causality and multidimensional spaces?
DILEK OZGIT: "My series of paintings "Causality: Intersecting Elements" is a reflection on the connectivity of existence between the past, present, and future in space-time. Events rush together along the arrow of time to intersect momentarily in the present before racing apart into the future. I believe that consciousness resides in the interference between parallel universes and I attempt to capture a view of these spaces as interpreted by my own consciousness, like the shadow of a hyperdimensional object projected onto a plane."
DILEK OZGIT: "My series of paintings "Causality: Intersecting Elements" is a reflection on the connectivity of existence between the past, present, and future in space-time. Events rush together along the arrow of time to intersect momentarily in the present before racing apart into the future. I believe that consciousness resides in the interference between parallel universes and I attempt to capture a view of these spaces as interpreted by my own consciousness, like the shadow of a hyperdimensional object projected onto a plane."
How we can change the fear-ridden cultural attitude towards microbes to deep understanding and appreciation?
ELAINE WHITTAKER: "We live in a porous world, in porous bodies. The possibility of being breached, infected, and losing body integrity is always present. My artworks explore this fear by portraying the invisible world of teeming microbial life as luminous beauty but with the terrifying possibility of infection. Considering biology as the basis for my contemporary art practice, I use scientific methods and technologies to create installations, sculpture, photo-based images, and paintings. These works incorporate a range of materials: from the traditional, such as paint, pigment and wax, to the unconventional, such as mosquitoes, salt crystals, and live microorganisms. Through collaborations with scientists, performance artists, and poets I explore the forces that make us human, the foundational processes and materials needed to form an organism, and the microscopic world of cellular ecologies. Situated in the realm of BioArt, my artworks challenge viewers' perceptions about their bodies, as sites that are continually trespassed, tainted, and contaminated by a popular culture that escalates social anxiety and terror of microbes, fueling a sense of bioparanoia.
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How can we make a visual song?
GILBERT HSIAO: "My work has always been optically based, utilizing structures that reflect theme and variation motifs found in music. Music, I think, is the highest form of abstraction; that aural perception can move us in profound ways that visual abstraction cannot. I search for ways to bridge that gap; to bring a musicality to painting that is both optimistic and meditative. Although there are references to art history in my work, an understanding of those references is not imperative to achieve a valid response or reaction to my work; in fact, as in music, it is there to be experienced, not understood."
GILBERT HSIAO: "My work has always been optically based, utilizing structures that reflect theme and variation motifs found in music. Music, I think, is the highest form of abstraction; that aural perception can move us in profound ways that visual abstraction cannot. I search for ways to bridge that gap; to bring a musicality to painting that is both optimistic and meditative. Although there are references to art history in my work, an understanding of those references is not imperative to achieve a valid response or reaction to my work; in fact, as in music, it is there to be experienced, not understood."
What is the place and significance of the human species in the history of life on Earth?
JOYCE YAMADA: "I am planning an installation for a performance by the Edward Morgan Ballet (EMB), inspired by the book A New History of Life by Peter Ward and Joe Kirschvink, which details radical new information about the evolution and history of life. The mass extinctions that define geological eras and which have seen the death of untold numbers of species and ecosystems, may in some cases have been intimately connected with changing levels of oxygen, carbon dioxide, and hydrogen sulfide, some of the changes of which were produced directly by life itself. We humans are now agents of a similar incipient mass extinction. We are the tiniest whisker of life, a new species in a magnificent suite of the most diverse, complex, and beautiful life forms yet evolved, and yet we hold the power to destroy it all. This is the first iteration of a major collaborative art and performance piece. The subtext is love and mindfulness - love of our fellow creatures, of our planet Earth, of the transient glories of life."
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How do we build architectural infrastructures as our climate changes?
LISA REINDORF: "Addressing climate change is vital to our planet's survival. Artists have the ability to bring together scientific and creative disciplines and interpret data and information through creative insight and vision. New England, where I live, has emerged as a hub of climate change research and eco-activism. As an architect I designed science buildings, as an artist I combine art, science, and activism. There is an inherent conflict between nature and building. Much of my work addresses the obliteration of the natural world to make way for cities, and the destruction in cities by the natural world. In aerial view landscapes I create interpretations of coastal ecosystems. The works are created with a personal abstract language of organic shapes in nature, overlaid with a rectilinear geometrical system of infrastructure. There is a deliberate counteraction between the gridded formation and flow of natural systems."
LISA REINDORF: "Addressing climate change is vital to our planet's survival. Artists have the ability to bring together scientific and creative disciplines and interpret data and information through creative insight and vision. New England, where I live, has emerged as a hub of climate change research and eco-activism. As an architect I designed science buildings, as an artist I combine art, science, and activism. There is an inherent conflict between nature and building. Much of my work addresses the obliteration of the natural world to make way for cities, and the destruction in cities by the natural world. In aerial view landscapes I create interpretations of coastal ecosystems. The works are created with a personal abstract language of organic shapes in nature, overlaid with a rectilinear geometrical system of infrastructure. There is a deliberate counteraction between the gridded formation and flow of natural systems."
How can we use mathematical equations to visually describe the world around us?
ALAN SINGER: "I have a thorough knowledge of art and science, but a very basic knowledge of mathematics. Each image I make is a kind of surprising exploration of the power of mathematics to portray a world that really relates to what we see everyday. I have experimented with equations that can render a face or a landscape. Programs such as 3D Xplormath allow one to render an image and explore the potential content from a new perspective. I keep a record of my process, and I also have a result in the form of prints or paintings."