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.
Ina and Mark have been collaborating on numerous art and new media projects for the last 20 years. This past February 12th, they received the Advanced Imaging Society’s 2018 Lumiere Award for the Best 3D Short Animation. Their recent ongoing project is Media Art Nexus or MAN NTU Singapore. MAN is a public art project that aims at providing a platform for exhibiting interactive digital art created by the multi-disciplinary community of Nanyang Technological University Singapore and beyond. Their goal is to form an international platform in which scientific and artistic issues, methods and visions are interlinked to merge art, science and technology and break new ground in artistic expression. The talk would focus on some of the interdisciplinary work and exchange as well as on gaining access to new target audiences bringing a new aspect of artistic endeavour created in Singapore to international levels. The project is supported by the NTU Museum Singapore.
Ina is an award-winning new media artist. Ina has presented her works at the Ars Electronica Festival, ZKM, Siggraph Asia Hong Kong, 3D Stereo MEDIA Liège, Women 3D directors Paramount Studios Hollywood, FMX Conference Stuttgart, 67th Edinburgh International Film Festival. Currently Associate Professor at the School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University Singapore her recent community-forming project features designing for an expanded media experiences for public space. Ina holds a Master’s of Fine Art from UCLA.
Mark Chavez is an animator, artist, educator and entrepreneur who has developed systems and techniques for animation across various media. He has worked on more than numerous award winning major feature films and innovative interactive titles to his credit at animation studios such as LaserMedia Inc. Los Angeles, Philips Interactive Media, Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS) Japan, Acclaim Entertainment New York, Dreamworks Feature Animation Glendale and Rhythm and Hues Studios Los Angeles. Animation industry veteran and founding faculty at Nanyang Technological University’s School of Art, Design and Media’s Digital Animation area, he is currently based in Singapore and Los Angeles, founder of Giant Monster Pte Ltd. Mark holds a Master’s of Fine Art from UCLA.
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.
MICHELLE MCAULIFFE + BILL FONTANA + JONATHAN MOORE + HAYTHAM NAWAR
Location: UCLA CNSI | Presentation Space (Fifth Floor)
Following an opening reception for Haytham Nawar's exhibition Collective Bread Diaries: A Taste of Protest, join us for our monthly LASER talk! Featuring presentations by:
Michelle Mcauliffe
Bill Fontana
Jonathan Moore
Haytham Nawar
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.
A presentation about Fontana's recent work that explores the image that a sound makes and the sounds that an image makes.
Bill Fontana has worked for the past 45 years creating installations that use sound as a sculptural medium to interact with and transform our perceptions of visual and architectural settings. These have been installed in public spaces and museums around the world including San Francisco, New York, Rome, Paris, London, Chicago, Vienna, Berlin, Venice, Sydney ,Tokyo, Barcelona, Linz, Manchester, Istanbul and Abu Dhabi.
