EVENT INFO
Exhibition opening: Wednesday, April 10th, 4- 6 pm
CNSI ArtSci Gallery, 5th floor
570 Westwood Plaza, Los Angeles, CA 90095
The exhibition will be on display through April 17th, 2024
The images in this collection induct the viewer into a fantastic universe of textures and viscosities generated in the making of processed foods. In a set of advertisements exhumed from back issues of industry trade journals in food engineering from the 1960s through the 1990s, this exhibit explores the values and the chemistry of an otherworldly scene in which there are no lumps, inconsistencies, or bubbles. Emulsifiers, clouding agents, gums, thickeners, anti-foaming agents, and antioxidants ensure that the marshmallows remain eternally fluffy, the particles are all the same size, mixtures never separate, and the sauce stays on top. Produced by upstream chemical manufacturers and aimed at an audience of food processors, these messages were not intended for the end consumer - and indeed often extolled the invisibility of their products to the eating public. Now that the health impacts of highly processed foods are increasingly ringing alarm bells in medicine and epidemiology, and the environmental footprint of these industrialized systems of production becomes ever more evident, this exhibit invites the eating public to see into the process for themselves.
This exhibit leverages the deep collections of the UCLA Library system in bringing these material off the page and onto the wall. It is curated by the Hot Cling and Shear Magic Research Group, a team of UCLA undergraduates led by Professor Hannah Landecker, pied piper of the grim joy of historical excavation of apparently banal but terribly consequential social and technical events shaping our biological lives. The team, composed of undergraduates majoring in Human Biology and Society and Psychobiology, is comprised of Xian Zeng, Nicole Vasquez, Emily Sutherland, Kianna Satari, Manasi Sastry, Chloe Nelson, Max Kokka, Kiana Karimi, Rayna Irving, Sara Herron, Xavier Herrera, Haley Ficker, Lea Dahlke, and Shelsy Aragon.
Hannah Landecker, with a Ph.D. in Science and Technology Studies from MIT and a B.Sc. in Cell and Developmental Biology from the University of British Columbia, uses the tools of history and social science to study contemporary developments in the life sciences, and their historical taproots in the twentieth century. She has taught and researched in the fields of history of science, anthropology and sociology. At UCLA she is cross-appointed between the Institute for Society and Genetics, and the Sociology Department. She is currently working on a book called “American Metabolism,” which looks at transformations to the metabolic sciences wrought by the rise of epigenetics, microbiomics, cell signaling and hormone biology.
Landecker’s work focuses on the social and historical study of biotechnology and life science, from 1900 to now. She is interested in the intersections of biology and technology, with a particular focus on cells, and the in vitro conditions of life in research settings.
Ingeborg Reichle is a Berlin-based contemporary art historian and curator at the intersection of art and technoscience. In 2004 she gained her Ph.D. from the Humboldt University Berlin with the dissertation Art in the Age of Technoscience: Genetic Engineering, Robotics, and Artificial Life in Contemporary Art (Springer 2009). In recent years she served as Professor in the Department of Media Theory at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, Austria, and as founding chair of the Department of Cross-disciplinary Strategies (CDS), where she designed an integrated BA study program on applied studies in art, science, philosophy, and global challenges. Recent curatorial projects include the sci-art program NaturArchy at the Joint Research Centre (JRC) in Ispra, Italy, the European Commission’s science and knowledge service and the sci-art program NanoARTS by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia. In 2022 she joined the Board of Trustees of the ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe and since 2023 she serves on the Board of Trustees of Fritz and Trude Fortmann Foundation for Building Culture and Materials.
Reichle’s recent book Plastic Ocean: Art and Science Responses to Marine Pollution (De Gruyter 2021) brings together numerous international art projects related to marine plastic pollution, environmental emergencies, and climate science, and draws attention to the irreversible destruction of our marine ecosystems.
Guest Responder: María Antonia González Valerio
María Antonia González Valerio holds a PhD in Philosophy. She is a full-time professor at the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Her academic pursuits are situated within the intersection of ontology and aesthetics, as well as the interdisciplinary realm of arts, sciences, and humanities, with a specific focus on art involving biomedia. As the director of the Seminar Arte+Ciencia, she facilitates collaborative engagements between artists, academics, and scientists, fostering interdisciplinarity that yields graduate education, specialised theoretical research, artistic creations, and exhibitions. Additionally, she is a curator and the driving force behind the artistic collective Bios ex Machina. She is the author of the books (selection): Through the Scope of Life. Art and (Bio)Technologies Philosophically Revisited (Springer, 2023), Cabe los límites: Escritos sobre filosofía natural desde la ontología estética (México: UNAM/Herder, 2016), Un tratado de ficción (México: Herder, 2010), and El arte develado (México: Herder, 2005).
February 10th marks the official start of the Lunar New Year of the Wood Dragon, and as part of our ritual series of gatherings, we will host two celebrations honoring the dragons of our community on
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2024!
HYBRID – 12:00 pm to 1:30 pm PST
On-site – UCLA Haines Hall, room 110 – as part of the EAT or be EATEN: HOX Zodiac class sponsored by Fiat Lux and the Rothman Foundation
On-line – public
ON-SITE – 4 pm to 6 pm PST – Gathering around the table
– UCLA Art Sci studio, Broad Arts Center, room 5250
Adam Glaser, scientist (online from Seattle)
Alyce DeMarais, Professor in the Biology department at the University of Puget Sound (online from Seattle)
Anuradha Vikram, author and lecturer, co-curator for the "Atmosphere of Sound: Sonic Art in Times of Climate Disruption”; ArtSci Center's project, part of the Getty PST;
Gabriel Tolson, curatorial assistant for the "Atmosphere of Sound: Sonic Art in Times of Climate Disruption” project, part of the Getty PST;
Chandler McWilliams, media artist, author, Design Media Arts faculty
Clarissa Ribeiro, artist and educator (online from Brazil)
E. J. Koh, poet and author (online from Seattle)
Evan “Otter” Wilkinson, UCLA Royce Hall Venue Manager
Kathy Brew, artist, writer, and educator (online from NY)
Malina Stefanovska, Professor of French and Francophone Studies, UCLA ELTS Faculty
Rob Richards, artist/engineer
Rowena Kou, DMA graduate student.
Sagan Yee, media artist
María Antonia González Valerio, Polona Tratnik, Ingeborg Reichle, Claudia Schnugg
Join us for a panel discussion featuring María Antonia González Valerio, Polona Tratnik, Ingeborg Reichle, and Claudia Schnugg as they explore the themes and insights of "Through the Scope of Life: Art and (Bio)Technologies Philosophically Revisited," a book co-authored by María Antonia González Valerio and Polona Tratnik.
This book offers intriguing philosophical inquiries into biotechnological art and the life sciences, addressing their convergences as well as their epistemic and functional divergences. Rooted on a thorough understanding of the history of philosophy, this work builds on critical and ontological thought to interpret the concept of life that underscores first-hand dealings with matter and experimentation. The book breaks new ground on the issue of animality and delivers fresh posthumanist perspectives on the topics addressed. The authors embark on a deep ontological probe of the concept of medium as communication-bridging and life-bearing. They also take on the concept of performativity as biotechnological art.
The book includes concrete, well-documented case studies and shows how certain narratives and practices directly impact ideas surrounding science and technologies. It will interest philosophers in art and technology, aesthetics, ontology, and the life sciences. It will also engage art practitioners in art and science, curators and researchers.
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María Antonia González Valerio holds a PhD in Philosophy. She is a full-time professor at the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Her academic pursuits are situated within the intersection of ontology and aesthetics, as well as the interdisciplinary realm of arts, sciences, and humanities, with a specific focus on art involving biomedia. As the director of the Seminar Arte+Ciencia, she facilitates collaborative engagements between artists, academics, and scientists, fostering interdisciplinarity that yields graduate education, specialised theoretical research, artistic creations, and exhibitions. Additionally, she is a curator and the driving force behind the artistic collective Bios ex Machina. She is the author of the books (selection): Through the Scope of Life. Art and (Bio)Technologies Philosophically Revisited (Springer, 2023), Cabe los límites: Escritos sobre filosofía natural desde la ontología estética (México: UNAM/Herder, 2016), Un tratado de ficción (México: Herder, 2010), and El arte develado (México: Herder, 2005).
Polona Tratnik holds a PhD in philosophy. She is full professor at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Ljubljana and senior researcher at the Institute IRRIS for Research, Development and Strategies of Society, Culture and Environment, where she leads a project on political functions of folktales. Her recent publications include: Art as Capital: The Intersection of Science, Technology, and the Arts (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021) and The European Avant-Garde – A Hundred Years Later (ed., Brill, 2024).
Ingeborg Reichle is a Berlin-based contemporary art historian and curator at the intersection of art and technoscience. In 2004 she gained her Ph.D. from the Humboldt University Berlin with the dissertation Art in the Age of Technoscience: Genetic Engineering, Robotics, and Artificial Life in Contemporary Art (Springer 2009). In recent years she served as Full Professor in the Department of Media Theory at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, Austria, and as founding chair of the Department of Cross- disciplinary Strategies (CDS), where she designed an integrated BA study program on applied studies in art, science, philosophy, and global challenges. Recent curatorial projects include the sci-art program NaturArchy at the Joint Research Centre (JRC) in Ispra, Italy, the European Commission’s science and knowledge service and the sci-art program NanoARTS by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia. In 2022 she joined the Board of Trustees of the ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe and since 2023 she serves on the Board of Trustees of Fritz and Trude Fortmann Foundation for Building Culture and Materials.
Dr. Claudia Schnugg is curator and artscience scholar based in Austria. Her ongoing practice in the field of art and science is twofold: as scholar she is researching artscience collaborations, investigating effects and impact of such art-science exchange on actors, organizations involved and the relevance of the outcome. In 2019 she published her book Creating ArtScience Collaborations with Springer/Palgrave Macmillan. ArtScience programmes she curates at institutions such as European Space Agency/ESTEC, Helmholtz Center München, the EC funded ITN network RepliFate, BIFOLD at TU Berlin, and Resonances IV “NaturArchy” of the SciArt Project at the Joint Research Center of the European Commission in Ispra. Most recent exhibitions are CORALS – Marco Barotti (Berlin, 2023), Intersecting Realities (Timisoara, 2023), Cosmic Elements: Star-Pacing Songs (Beijing, 2023), Cosmological Elements (Shanghai, 2022). Claudia is member of international juries for art prices, residency projects, and scientific boards for artscience projects.
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 sponsored by the David Bermant Foundation, partnered with Harvestworks NY and the UCLA Art Sci center.
Ivana Dama was born and raised under the socialist regime in Belgrade shortly after the end of the civil war and during the time of NATO bombing. The tension between the former Yugoslavian countries was still undoubtedly present. Even though she was only a young child when the bombing began, images and sounds of the destruction still clearly permeate her mind. The memories of living in a small shelter with the sounds and vibrations of the air raid sirens have contributed to her interest in using air and sound as a primary medium. Her work, which includes audio-video installations, robotics, web projects, and music performances, explores the deep connections between sound, memory, and human experience. Currently pursuing a graduate degree in Sculpture at Yale University, Ivana holds a previous degree in Media Arts and Digital Humanities from UCLA's School of Arts and Architecture. Her work explores the different realms of space encompassing the microscopic, architectural, and satellite scale. Through various experiments she explores how sounds behave in different environments such as vacuum, water, and outer space. Ivana has participated in over 30 group shows and had solo exhibitions in Portland and Los Angeles.
Humans are just one species among millions, coexisting in an expansive living network. Immerse yourself in installations envisioned by artists, designers, scientists, technologists and changemakers from across 12 countries. Their cross-cultural and interdisciplinary collaborations open portals to a shared future, in which planet and people flourish together.
Part of PEM’s Climate + Environment Initiative, this traveling exhibition from the Barbican Centre in London celebrates the power of global creativity to transform the conversation around the climate emergency. The structures and design featured in the exhibition are sourced from biodegradable, sustainable materials to minimize carbon footprint. We invite you to imagine our ideal future world. What will it look like? How will we use the precious time we have here? Technology has brought us closer to nature than we have ever been before, and Indigenous insight continues to reconnect us to our roots. What will it take to live together in harmony?
Walk up to a table set for dinner, but imagine the guests include a fox and a wasp. Plunge into a virtual ocean with magnified plankton, and peer through the layers of a tree to experience the microscopic foundations of life.
Our Time on Earth is produced and curated by the Barbican with guest curators FranklinTill and co-produced by Musée de la civilisation, Québec City, Canada. This exhibition is made possible by Carolyn and Peter S. Lynch and The Lynch Foundation. We thank James B. and Mary Lou Hawkes, Chip and Susan Robie, and Timothy T. Hilton as supporters of the Exhibition Innovation Fund. We also recognize the generosity of the East India Marine Associates of the Peabody Essex Museum.
Share your impressions, snapshots and tales with us on social media using #OurTimeOnEarth.
Pedro Reissig, PhD, will join Victoria Vesna's Fiat Lux: Eat or BE EATEN class under the Food Studies program to deliver a performance and talk on his latest book, 'Mouth Gastronomy,' Integrating HOX ZODIAC Animals and Key Ingredients.
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Mouth Gatronomy is an original concept, born from the interest in rediscovering and revaluing the mouth, with a spirit of self-empowerment, in a world overwhelmed by stimuli and external references. MG can be defined as "cooking" in the mouth through deliberate and sequential steps. MG occurs when we use our mouth to modify food and interact with it to feel and discover its essence through its approximations and transformations in the mouth as a significant experience in itself, as a creative act. This is based on three basic principles for a good gastronomic quality food, small amounts, and connecting with oneself and the food while eating. There is a before and after with Mouth eating a cookie without using your teeth, letting it dissolve and melt with saliva to enjoy its flavor more intensely and for longer than if you just chewed and swallowed... Our idea of eating is historically based on biting and chewing since food used to be more hostile and challenging. With the development of culture, many of the things we eat do not even require chewing, but the inertia is strong, and added to contemporary anxiety, we have become more devourers than gastronomic explorers and enjoyers. So, perhaps we should rethink are we really what we eat? Or do we eat what we are? Or perhaps it is a dialectical process, which will allow us to elucidate and find the balance we need and seek...
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Pedro Reissig, PhD, has been involved in Food Design as a practitioner, social entrepreneur, and scholar for the past decade. His design career includes several startups, the most prominent being Vacavaliente, a long standing MoMA Store favorite. His academic work is rooted in the relationship between form and structure within a paradigm he calls “techno-morphology”, subject of numerous international research publications, projects and lecture appearances. His interest in the transdiscipline of Food Design is motivated by rethinking and redefining the sense and role it can play for us as people, professionals and society. This search for a meaningful and useful “Food Design for improving our food lives” has led him to found the Latin American Food Design Network (www.lafooddesign.org) and create an FD Educational Platform (www.fdxe.org). Also his personal interest in design morphology paved the way for his FD agency in Buenos Aires (www.demorfa.com). His most recent work includes the publication of the book, in Spanish for now, “Food Design: hacia un eco-sistema alimentario”, the launching of the “Revista Latinoamericana de Food Design: comes lo que eres” (Latin American FD Journal: you eat what you are), and most currently, the publication of the research project “Gastronomía Bucal” (Mouth Gastronomy).
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FIAT LUX: Let There Be Light! ✨
Fiat Lux is the motto of the University of California System; "Fiat Lux" is translated from Latin as "Let There Be Light." At UC Merced, we translate this phrase ourselves as "Let your light shine," because Fiat Lux is about your individual talents and all of the brightness that you hold and bring to your role as a student at the University and beyond.
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WATCH THE RECORDING: https://vimeo.com/909356396?share=copy
UCLA Art|Sci Center wishes you a wonderful holiday season and a year filled with inspiration, community, and creative possibility.
In the greatest dark hour, we see the LIGHT brought to us by ART + SCIENCE
*ALL OUR EVENTS ARE FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC*
YOUR END-OF-THE-YEAR, TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATION WILL HELP US TO CONTINUE PROMOTING OUR VERSION OF STEAM:
SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, ECOLOGY, ART & MINDFULNESS
THIS YEAR WE WERE INSPIRED AND DRIVEN BY STEAM (SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, ECOLOGY, ART, AND MINDFULNESS)
WE LED:
14 Panels
7 Workshops
10 Events and Lectures
10 Artist Talks
9 Exhibitions
As we reflect on the year's challenges and find solace in the community, we invite you to the latest iteration of our Hox Zodiac meal series: the 2024 HOXLIDAY gathering and open house!
You are invited to enrich our gathering with unique stories, culinary traditions, and wisdom as informed by your respective Zodiac sign or cultural background–or even, if inclined, your HOX-gene character.
Optional: You are welcome to bring small food offerings based on the ingredients recommended for your Zodiac sign (EAT); or to offer yourself (BE EATEN). Don't worry if you aren't able to bring food – stories, poems, sound/music, or other offerings informed by your Zodiac placement are equally encouraged.
For inspiration and guidance on preparing foods, please refer to our website hoxzodiac.com.
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We especially want to show our sincere appreciation for the dedicated UCLA staff members whose generous support has been instrumental to the work of our team and for our students at UCLA, whose extraordinary commitment and effort lightened this particularly tough year. Our gathering is intended to honor their determination, fortitude, and exceptional contributions.
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We eagerly anticipate celebrating the spirit of the HOX ZODIAC, reflecting on the past year, and looking forward to the Year of the Dragon with hope and unity.
The Sci|Art Lab+Studio Summer Institute exposes high school students to the scientific method and artistic processes as complementary tools for rethinking traditional models of exploration and innovation by making connections between scientific research, popular culture, and contemporary arts.
The program will include lab visits, workshops facilitating hands-on experiments, and lectures with world-renowned artists and scientists. Through engagement, students will be exposed to the work of scientists and artists that explore new forms of creative expression, communication, and collaboration within this multi-disciplinary field.
To foster academic development, students will develop an original concept for a collaborative final project under the challenge of ‘Imagine the Impossible’. Building off of course material and guided by the assistance and skill of the base Sci|Art Team, student groups will create and deliver a multimedia presentation to share their work and ideas during the program’s closing ceremony.
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Session A:
June 23 – July 6, 2024
Admission based / In-person
Session B:
July 8 – July 19, 2024
Admission based / Virtual
Session C:
July 21 – August 3, 2024
Admission based / In-person
Program Eligibility: 8th-12th grade in Spring 2024
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STEAM (Science, Technology, Ecology, Arts and Mindfulness)
