Sholeh Asgary | Patricia Cadavid | Bill Fontana | Katie Grinnan | Yolande Harris | Rachel Mayeri | Christina McPhee | Anna Nacher | Joel Ong | Iman Person | Robertina Sebjanic | Amber Stucke | Nina Waisman
UCLA Art|Sci Center Presents Atmosphere of Sound: Sonic Art in Times of Climate Disruption | Part of Getty’s PST ART: Art & Science Collide initiative, related programs and exhibitions will run Sept 14, 2024, through June 7, 2025, launching with 'Silent Echoes: Notre-Dame and the Dachstein Glacier,' a sound exhibition by Bill Fontana–read more: http://artsci.ucla.edu/node/1745
Immersive, interactive installations, artist lectures, walkthroughs, and live performances and videos by 13 artists—including Bill Fontana’s site-specific installation Silent Echoes: Notre-Dame and the Dachstein Glacier; Katie Grinnan’s sound sculptures The Sensitives; Anna Nacher’s soundwalks; and performances by artists such as Patricia Cadavid, Amber Stucke, and Sholeh Asgary—will activate the UCLA campus to engage audiences in deep reflection on the climate crisis. Organized by co-curators Victoria Vesna, Art|Sci Center Director, and Anuradha Vikram, Atmosphere of Sound: Sonic Art in Times of Climate Disruption includes seven sequential exhibitions presented between September 14, 2024, and June 7, 2025, as part of Getty’s PST ART: Art & Science Collide.
The exhibition and related public programs will be held in multiple campus venues, including the Art|Sci Gallery in the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) building on UCLA’s South Campus; the EDA in the Broad Art Center on North Campus; Sage Hill Native Plants & Wildlife Habitat; the Mildred E. Mathias Botanical Garden; Royce Hall; and the UCLA Nimoy Theater operated by UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance.
Atmosphere of Sound: Sonic Art in Times of Climate Disruption builds from four years of research by eight artists-in-residence at the UCLA Art|Sci Center: Sholeh Asgary, Patricia Cadavid, Bill Fontana, Yolande Harris, Anna Nacher, Joel Ong, Iman Person, and Robertina Šebjanič. Their projects will be joined by installations and performances by local artists Katie Grinnan, Rachel Mayeri, Christina McPhee, Amber Stucke, and Nina Waisman.
“Our goal is to highlight artists and scientists who have developed long-term collaborative relationships with one another,” says co-curator Victoria Vesna. “In this exhibition, we use sound to join the disciplines of art and science and to foster a deeper understanding of our many interconnected environments and cultures.”
PST ART, formerly Pacific Standard Time, is the largest art event in the United States. This year’s iteration will engage audiences throughout Southern California in the theme Art & Science Collide. With the support of nearly $20 million in grants from Getty, dozens of cultural, scientific, and community organizations will present more than 80 exhibitions and a wide spectrum of programs, traversing such topics as climate change, Indigenous knowledge, artificial intelligence, the burgeoning field of eco-acoustic art, and more.
Through Atmosphere of Sound, participating artists and scientists propose to engage human bodies through vibration and exploratory learning as a means of achieving deeper empathy with the environment and with other species.
“Our approach to this project is informed by the work of feminist scientific philosophers including Jane Bennett and Donna Haraway,” Vesna said. “We seek to connect artists and art lovers, scientists, students, performing arts patrons and local families with concepts of vibrant matter and intercellular communication on a global scale.”
Atmosphere of Sound kicks off with Bill Fontana’s outdoor sound sculpture, Silent Echoes: Notre-Dame and the Dachstein Glacier, which will be amplified from UCLA’s Royce Hall from September 14 to October 5, 2024. This work threads audio feeds from Notre-Dame’s dormant bells and the Dachstein Cave in Austria, layering these soundscapes into a poetic statement on climate disruption and the fragility of human culture. Fontana is an American composer and media artist who has developed an international reputation for his pioneering experiments in sound.
Following Fontana’s exhibition are six sequential exhibitions in the Art|Sci Center’s gallery, located on the fifth floor of UCLA’s CNSI building.
October 4 to November 2, 2024: Katie Grinnan’s The Sensitives and Amber Stucke’s Talking to Plants
November 15 to December 14, 2024: Robertina Šebjanič’s CO_SONIC 1884 km2
January 10 to February 1, 2025: Yolande Harris’s How You Shimmer: Sound Portal for Whale Bubbles
February 14 to March 15, 2025: Iman Person’s Memory Garden and Patricia Cadavid’s Kanchay_Yupana// and Electronic_Khipu
April 4 to April 26, 2025: Joel Ong’s In Silence . . .
May 9 to June 7, 2025: Sholeh Asgary’s Qanat, Ghatel, and Sholeh Asgary + the Ad Hoc Collective for Improvising Mourning Technologies for Future Griefs
All exhibitions are viewable by appointment between 2-5pm on Thursdays and Fridays and 12-3pm on Saturdays. Entry is free to the public.
Visitors are encouraged to visit the Atmosphere of Sound website and download the project app to assist in navigating between venues. The app includes wayfinding tools with parking and metro information; meditative soundwalks recorded by Atmosphere of Sound artist Anna Nacher; access to the Atmosphere of Sound radio station, which will stream sonic artworks and interviews with artists and scientists; and detailed exhibition and program information.
“Atmosphere of Sound provokes the central question: ‘If the scale and complexity of climate change exceeds the limits of human perception, how can artists represent it?” said co-curator Anuradha Vikram. “The project examines how sound-based artists, responding to the climate crisis, have found a unique point of entry to this representational challenge. Sound art, as a medium, evades and challenges the certainty often associated with the sense of sight. The inherent ambiguities of sound can help audiences understand the rapidly shifting state of the climate and its effects on the physical world.”
The Atmosphere of Sound: Sonic Art in Times of Climate Disruption exhibition and program of artist lectures, symposia, and performances, as well as a 250-page full color publication featuring seven original essays (est. print date September 2024), has been generously supported by the Getty PST ART initiative.
About PST ART: Southern California’s landmark arts event, PST ART, returns in September 2024, presenting more than 70 exhibitions from organizations across the region exploring the intersections of art and science, both past and present. PST ART is presented by Getty. For more information about PST ART: Art & Science Collide, please visit pst.art.
About UCLA and PST ART: With seven granted projects, UCLA’s expansive presence in this year’s PST Art demonstrates the university’s unique strengths as a research institution and the far-reaching impact of its research and creative endeavors. UCLA's involvement underscores its commitment to fostering artistic innovation and interdisciplinary collaboration, showcasing what is possible when the worlds of art and science combine. Other UCLA-affiliated projects include exhibitions and events at the Fowler Museum, the Hammer Museum at UCLA, a film series from UCLA’s Film & Television Archive; a downtown arts exhibition commissioned and curated by UCLA Arts Conditional Studio and a live dance/multimedia event presented by UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance (CAP UCLA).
The Hox Zodiac allows the human-audience to experience the shared history and potential of genetic diversity among animals. Here, the idea of the Hox gene as a binding element is introduced and the Chinese animal zodiac and dinner table as the structure / space for discussion is employed, allowing the format to build based on the audience interaction. In neuroscience this is the emergent property of network connections, where a simple array of neurons can give rise to complex behaviors through interactions and adaptations.
The Hox Zodiac Dinner is a performative culinary event. There will be 12 small courses served to the participants. The event draws parallels to universally shared genetics and the Chines Zodiac symbols. It is quiet and meditative. There will be participants in the performance, and the event is open to all viewers to share the experience.
This is the final event of the ART AS SOCIAL PRACTICE: Technologies for Change exhibition.
Marco Pinter creates artwork and performances which fuse physical kinetic form with live visualizations. He has a PhD in Media Arts and Technology from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an undergraduate degree from Cornell University. His work integrating graphics with robotic sculpture is supported by grants from the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, the Santa Barbara Arts Collaborative, and the UC Institute for Research in the Arts. He has exhibited artwork and performances at cities around the world, including Dubai, New York, Montreal, Tehran, Hong Kong, Anaheim, San Diego and Santa Barbara. Wired magazine’s online UK site published a feature on Pinter’s work that explores perception through kinetic sculpture and graphics. Pinter is a contributing author to The McGraw Hill Multimedia Handbook and The Ultimate Multimedia Handbook. He is an inventor on over 70 patents, issued and pending, in the areas of live video technology, robotics, interactivity and telepresence.
A native Minnesotan, Jamie fell in love with nonprofits at a young age through volunteer work. She continued to cultivate this passion in her role as Director of Service Learning Camps for Augustana, partnering with over ten nonprofits in the Twin Cities. In 2010 Jamie moved to Santa Barbara and worked in programs and development for the Turner Foundation. In her spare time, she volunteers at the Village after school program, the Fund for Santa Barbara's Youth Making Change Program, and Partners in Education. Jamie received her BA in studio art from Gustavus Adolphus and is currently pursuing her MBA at Antioch University while working at the Hudson Institute of Coaching. Jamie is also an active artist in Santa Barbara and enjoys working with mixed media and printmaking. She is excited to combine her passion for the arts and give back to the community through her board membership at The Arts Fund.
COLOR, LIGHT, MOTION is an online series featuring media artists and scholars in dialogue about artworks from the Bermant Collection of media and kinetic arts. Each featured presenter will discuss selected artworks in history and context and in relation to their own work and connections. This series is produced in collaboration with Harvestworks NY and the David Bermant Foundation.
Ellen K. Levy is a NY-based artist and writer. She was Past President of the College Art Association before earning her doctorate in 2012 from the University of Plymouth (UK) on art and neuroscience. She then served as Special Advisor on the Arts and Sciences at the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts. Her diploma from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston followed a B.A. from Mount Holyoke College in Zoology. Levy’s solo exhibitions include the New York and the National Academy of Sciences, and she was represented by Associated American Artists and Michael Steinberg Fine Arts (NYC). Her honors include an arts commission from NASA, an AICA award, and a Distinguished Visiting Fellowship at Skidmore College. She has lectured, taught, and published widely, locally and internationally, on art and complex systems. With Patricia Olynyk she co-directs the NY LASER.
This is the first iteration of a collaboration with Dr. Paul Iaizzo, the director of education in the Lillehei Heart Institute and the Visible Heart® laboratory, and Dr. Brenda Ogle, an associate professor in the Stem Cell Institute in the Department of Bioengineering. Together they learn how sculpture can inform cardiac device creation and how cardiology research can inform biologically inspired art.
Following a “Heart and Art” panel in November, 2018, Alison has made a number of temporary installations in the Target Studio and discussed her partnership with the Visible Heart and the System Regeneration laboratories on May 1, 2019. As part of the event, Alison invited artists to interact with the first prototypes generated from her experiences at both laboratories. The installation was an initial attempt at creating a touchable, physical interface for the heartbeat. The evening included performances choreographed by Chris Schlichting that offered another layer of how our actions are both spontaneous and learned. Participating dancers included Mirabai Miller, Tori Cassagranda, Marggie Ogas, Julia Bither, Hettie Stern, Rachel Clark, Nicole Stumpf, Laura Selle Virtucio, Marisol Herling, Shui Xian, and Emilia Bruno.
Alison Hiltner is a fiscal year 2019 recipient of an Artist Initiative grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is made possible in part by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.
Hox Zodiac is inspired by the Hox genes, which are essential to the embryonic creation of body plans of different animals in the framework of the Chinese Zodiac. Beyond our current cultural immersion that pivots on animal experimentation and industrial agriculture, we ask that you reconsider us human animals as sharing the cycles of time and space with those on the zodiac wheel. At this hybrid event, we invite you to share a meal offering for breakfast, lunch, or dinner as your animal sign, to partake in food and exchange conversations around our relationship to animals as pets, food, science experiments, and myths.
You are welcome to share what you like to EAT or offer yourself and BE EATEN.
Sign up for the monthly gatherings of animals around the table – EAT or be EATEN! We celebrate the DOG with leftovers from Thanksgiving.
Zoom Link: http:// https://ucla.zoom.us/j/99605352419
UCLA Art Sci Center presents Zeynep Abes and the outcome of her residency STEAM Imaging IV at Fraunhofer MEVIS, the video Installation MOMENTS WITHIN
Zeynep Abes, Turkish media artist and graduate of UCLA's Design Media Arts MFA program, exhibits Moments Within: Forgotten Feelings and False Memories. The video installation is the outcome of her residency »STEAM Imaging IV« at the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Medicine MEVIS, Germany. Our identity, who we are, and what we do today are closely tied to our past or what we remember. But how trustworthy is our memory? Our recollections are fluid, subject to alteration every time they're retrieved. That is, we don't remember our past the exact
same way each time. Moments Within explores memory deteriorating over time and the change in the way we retrieve a fading past, whether with natural memory loss or patients with Alzheimer's.
Using a publicly available 7-Tesla MRI scan of a brain as a poetic and practical tool, the continuously disfigured visualizations focus on the parts of the brain that are crucial in determining the stability of memory, like the amygdala, hippocampus, and neocortex. As a one-channel video installation, Moments Within visualizes our cerebral vascular system as dreamlike landscapes in 3D space to create an immersive experience of remembering
and forgetting.
STEAM Imaging IV was hosted by Fraunhofer MEVIS in collaboration with Ars Electronica, Linz, AU, the International Fraunhofer Talent School Bremen, the School Center Walle, Bremen, DE, and the UCLA ArtSci Center, Los Angeles, US. The residency program allowed artist Zeynep Abes to engage in intensive exchange with Fraunhofer MEVIS experts to examine current methods, developments, and results of research in their works critically. A key component of the program was the shared encounter with school students and their parents from the School Center Walle.
After the opening reception on the 7th, the show will be open for viewing by appointment only.
Hox Zodiac is inspired by the Hox genes, which are essential to the embryonic creation of body plans of different animals in the framework of the Chinese Zodiac. Beyond our current cultural immersion that pivots on animal experimentation and industrial agriculture, we ask that you reconsider us human animals as sharing the cycles of time and space with those on the zodiac wheel. At this hybrid event, we invite you to share a meal offering for breakfast, lunch, or dinner as your animal sign, to partake in food and exchange conversations around our relationship to animals as pets, food, science experiments, and myths.
You are welcome to share what you like to EAT or offer yourself and BE EATEN.
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2022
10am PDT, 1pm EDT, 7pm CET
FEATURED ROOSTERS:
Charles Taylor (LA)
Maša Jazbec (SL)
Bailey Connolly (CT)
Photo description:
Rooster head from at Hox Zodiac table -- the Angewandte Innovation Lab (AIL) -- opening banquet, Microperformativity conference & exhibition, 2018
More on: https://artsci.ucla.edu/node/1426
