“Every bit of matter and energy exists in a state of blurry flux, allowing it to occupy not just two locations but an infinite number of them simultaneously.” (Roger Penrose)
This exhibition will be located at two distinct and distant geographical locations at the same time – one in Singapore and one in LA. For this occasion, a wide compendium of diverse art works will be focusing at the experimental animated artworks by Mark Chavez done in collaboration with Ina Conradi at the emergence of Media Art Nexus at the Nanyang Technological University Singapore. The future goal of the exhibition is reinforcing a holistic approach to issues of arts education and art production within Singapore and internationally.
Coyotes in Two Directions is a new body of works by Sarah Rosalena Brady. Coyotes in Two Directions examines the signifier of the trickster and shapeshifter as a symbolic metaphor to create techno-hybrid forms. Coyotes are symbolic in mythology and present in Western urban landscapes as one of the most successful animals surviving the Anthropocene. Emergent forms are employed through sculpture, automata, and 3D scans.
"Sonata Machine, Sewnata Machine, I will be the Maestro of my own fate” is a live concert performance by Nicole Cooke. Performing in drag as a classical musician, Cooke will “play” a converted Singer sewing machine as the principle musical instrument.
Presented by Building Bridges Art Exchange
By Victoria Vesna in collaboration with neuroscientist Siddharth Ramakrishnan
Curated by Marisa Caichiolo
May 27 - July 9
Opening Reception May 26, 2018, 7-9pm
Building Bridges Art Exchange
Bergamot Station Arts Center
2525 Michigan Ave., Unit F2
Santa Monica, CA 90404
When we look around us both as humans and as a species in a multi-organismal world, we tend to focus on our differences. However, underneath all of us are a set of genes called HOX genes that define the basic body plan of all animals – that makes you have a head, two hands and feet, a long body like a snake or a tail like a monkey. These genes are the same in all of us and have been conserved across evolution.
HOX ZODIAC is a collaborative project between an artist and neuroscientist since 2008. Based on the Chinese animal zodiac and the Hox gene, it has evolved into a “dinner” that addresses through experience and dialogue our deep relationship with animals as companions, food and lab experiments. The artist and scientist seek to bring into the public this relationship in a way that expands the idea of the zodiac and puts the humans into the role of an animal that they have been assigned culturally. The project brings up issues of GMO and food in a very personal way and also points to the growing influence of Chinese culture in the West.
Food shapes our cultures, individual bodies and even genes within us. Research has found that environmental factors such as food availability, nutrients and diet can turn or off genes, thereby affecting us for generations to come. With this project, the art sci team create a performative exhibition that brings together people to a dinner table to taste, smell and talk about food, its sources, how it affects the body, our relation to animals and plants and our genes.
HOX ZODIAC project has evolved into a dinner table with humans sitting as animals of the Chinese zodiac as a representation of the myriad of shapes that Hox genes can produce. Herbs and foods associated with each animal, which also cure ailments of specific organs, will be presented to the guests. Dinners served are based on food associated with each zodiac animal based on Chinese and Western medicine and Ayurveda and recipes keep evolving. To date, dinners were hosted in Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Taiwan, New York, Vienna, Linz, Tsukuba, the Museum of Natural History in Tacoma and most recently at the UCLA Fowler museum.
The reception will be a tasting event that all are invited to, and during the duration of the exhibition, there will be private and pop up dinners in which the audience performs. Participants will don lab coats and bring their food offerings signifying them as the resident expert/scientist – which we all were with regards to food before it became an industrial commodity. Guests will also be encouraged to share menu ideas based on the ingredients associated with each animal, which will serve as another way to share ideas over food.
Conversations, stories, recipes and ideas that emerge become integrated into the project as it keeps evolving. The exhibition will include many collaborative artifacts and an artsci (cook)book about the project.
5-8 PM Reception
CNSI Building at UCLA
Art | Sci Center Gallery, 5th Floor
HYPNAGOGIA is the liminal state between consciousness and dream, a transitional flow that occurs in the mind. This installation and video piece illustrates the hypnagogic duality with lights orchestrated by her consciousness, using brainwave sensors, as the artist reveals her subconsciousness, by reading aloud the dreams she's written down from the past six years.
CNSI Building at UCLA
Art | Sci Center Gallery, 5th Floor
THE ACT OF FORGETTING
The video installation, "The Act of Forgetting", is an exploration of stream of consciousness. The intent is to forget all learned rules and move freely through the environment between us. Through this method, Friend discovered a strong correlation between abstraction of reality and human connection. The absence of detail allows for more assimilation between the various states of being.
CNSI Building at UCLA
Art | Sci Center Gallery, 5th Floor
570 Westwood Plaza
Los Angeles, CA 90095
“Vivarium: A Place Of Life” is an installation that studies the interactions within an ecosystem, from the movement of matter and energy, to the community created by the living and nonliving organisms. This network of interactions is captured in the macroscopic and microscopic level through time, as an attempt to scale what it means to be part of a larger ecosystem: the Earth. The exhibition will be followed by the UCLA Art | Sci Center's monthly Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous (LASER).
Maru García is a Mexican multidisciplinary artist whose work is inspired to capture, understand, and express the relationship and interaction between humans and Nature. Through the intersection between art, science, and technology, her work seeks to address environmental and social issues, particularly the protection of the world’s biodiversity and ecosystems.
Location: UCLA CNSI | Art | Sci Center Gallery (Fifth Floor)
Drawing on the commonly unnoticed value of bread, and the everlasting impregnable imprint it has always had on revolutions throughout history, Collective Bread Diaries: A Taste of Protest is an interactive art project in which participants are granted the opportunity to draw and share their personal visual representations of bread, eventually forming an array of visual diaries, each peculiar to its creator. The results are exceptionally reproduced by a machine, which although possesses no threads to culture, tradition, or history, emphasizes the conscious perception of one’s distinct identity.
UCLA Art | Sci Center Artist In Residence and Fulbright Scholar Haytham Nawar is an artist, designer, and researcher who currently lives and works in Cairo. He is Assistant Professor and Director of the Graphic Design program, Department of the Arts at the American University in Cairo. He is the founder and director of the Cairotronica, Cairo Electronic, and New Media Arts Festival.
UCLA Art | Sci Center Gallery CNSI Building
5th Floor
5-7pm
Opening simultaneously with our LASER talk on International Women's Day, we are proud to present the work of Mary Flanagan,Jane Chang Mi and Elí Joteva .
VICTORIA VESNA + CHUCK TAYLOR + TAKASHI IKEGAMI + REIJI SUZUKI + ITSUKI DOI
Beall Center for Art + Technology
712 Arts Plaza
University of California, Irvine
Irvine, CA 92697-2775
(949) 824-6206
Art | Sci Director Victoria Vesna's collaborative work, Bird Song Diamond, will be shown as part of It Passes Like a Thought, an upcoming exhibition on artists' interactions with birds at the Beall Center for Art + Technology at UC Irvine.
