art in the age of nanotechnology
A Perth International Arts Festival exhibition - 5 February - 30 April 2010
The unique works developed for art in the age of nanotechnology operate at the intersection of art, science and technology, demonstrating innovative examples of contemporary art and scientific collaboration.
The exhibition will comprise of a series of collaborative projects designed to challenge, explore and critique our understanding of the material world and will bring together artists and scientists from the around the world to present new ways of seeing, sensing and connecting with matter that’s miniscule and abstract.
art in the age of nanotechnology will feature internationally-recognised artists and scientists such as Christa Sommerer (Austria) & Laurent Mignonneau (France); Paul Thomas (Aus) & Kevin Raxworthy (Aus); Mike Philips (UK); Boo Chapple (Aus) and Victoria Vesna (USA) & James Gimzewski (Scotland).
http://johncurtingallery.curtin.edu.au/exhibitions/future.cfm
A Mote it is… (from the ‘art in the age of nano technology catalogue).
“A mote it is to trouble the mind’s eye.” (1)
Words spoken by Horartio to describe Hamlet’s father’s ghost. In this Shakespearian play the ghost is seen but not believed and one is left to wonder if it is just the seeing of it that makes it real - its existence totally dependent on the desire of the viewer to see it. The ‘mote’ or speck of dust in the eye of the mind of the beholder both creates the illusion and convinces us that what we see is real. Something just out of the corner of our minds eye, those little flecks magnified by our desire to see more clearly. Yet the harder we look the more blurred our vision becomes.
A ‘mote’ is both a noun and a verb. Middle English with Indo-European roots, its early Christian origins and Masonic overtones describe the smallest thing possible and empower it with the ability to conjure something into being (so mote it be…). This dual state of becoming and being (even if infinitesimally tiny) render it a powerful talisman in the context of nano technology.
Throughout the last Century we were reintroduced to the idea of an invisible world. The development of sensing technologies allowed us to sense things in the world that we were unaware of (or maybe things we had just forgotten about?). The invisible ‘Hertzian’ landscape was made accessible through instruments that could measure, record and broadcast our fears and desires. Our radios, televisions and mobile phones revealed a parallel world that surrounds us. These instruments endow us with powers that in previous centuries would have been deemed occult or magic.
Our Twenty First Century magic instruments mark a dramatic shift from the hegemony of the eye to a reliance on technologies that do our seeing for us - things so big, small or invisible that it takes a leap of faith to believe they are really there. Our view of the ‘real world’ is increasingly understood through images made of data, things that are measured and felt rather than seen. What we know and what we see is not the same thing - if you see what I mean? The worrying thing is that for a long time we thought the invisible world was made of layers of transparent electromagnetic fields, now through technologies such as the Atomic Force Microscope we are faced with the reality that the ‘invisible’ is actually what constitutes our material world, we can reach out and touch it!
It is our relationship with these technologies that troubles the mind’s eye. Our ability to shift scales, from the smallest thing to the largest thing has been described as the ‘transcalar imaginary’ (2). In this context astronomer Carl Sagan described the Earth as a “mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.” (3) The famous image taken from Voyager 1 in 1990 shows the planet suspended in an infinite Universe. A mote that seems so large to us, but which is in fact so cosmologically small, disturbs our sensibilities and desire for order in our world.
About A Mote it is…:
A Mote it is… is constructed from data captured by an AFM (Atomic Force Microscope) from a ‘mote’ or piece of dust extracted from the artist’s eye. The whirlwind of data projected within the gallery is rendered invisible by the gaze of the viewer. The more we look the more invisible it becomes - look away and it re-emerges from the maelstrom of data. A ghost of the mote can be seen in viewers peripheral vision but never head on. – if you see what I mean?
Notes:
1: Shakespeare, W. Hamlet. Act 1, Scene 1, Line 129.
2: http://www.twine.com/twine/12vx9k6qs-2zp/transcalar-imaginary
3: Sagan, C. 1994,Pale Blue Dot, Random House. p6
Many thanks to:
Lee Nutbean and Justin Roberts at i-DAT.
Professor Genhua Pan and Yuqing Du at the Wolfson Nanotechnology Laboratory at University of Plymouth.
More images:
http://picasaweb.google.com/Mike.Phillips.net/AFMAMoteItIs#
The Syncretic Sense
Roy Ascott
4 April 24 May 2009
The first UK retrospective exhibition of the pioneering cybernetic artist Roy Ascott, curated in collaboration with i-DAT (Institute for Digital Art and Technology, University of Plymouth).
http://www.plymouthartscentre.org/art/future.html
Long before email and the internet, Roy Ascott started using online computer networks as an art medium and coined the term telematic art. Since the 1960s he has been a pioneer of art, which brought together the science of cybernetics with elements of Dada, Surrealism, Fluxus and Pop Art. Parallel to his artwork, Roy Ascott is a highly acclaimed teacher and theorist of art pedagogy.
This exhibition explores the influences and rhetoric of Roy Ascott’s work, mapping the impact, history and development of technology and looking to the future of Web2 and Second life. Roy Ascott sees telematic art as the transformation of the viewer into an active participant in creating the artwork, which remains in process throughout its duration. Significantly, the content of his projects were often spiritual: staging the first planetary casting of the I Ching with an early form of network in 1982; whilst his major installation at the Ars Electronica centre in 1989 explored Gaia theory.
The exhibition also looks back at the impact of Roy Ascott’s experimental years of art education. In the 1960s Roy Ascott was the head of Groundcourse at Ealing College of Art and developed one of the most influential and unorthodox approaches to teaching foundation studies in art. The basis of the course was developed around cybernetic theories of systems of communication: the flow of information, interactive exchange, feedback, participation and systemic relationship.
Roy Ascott studied under Victor Pasmore and Richard Hamilton at King’s College, Newcastle, University of Durham. His exhibitions include Venice Biennale, Ars Electronica Linz and Biennale do Mercosul, Brazil. He was President of the Ontario College of Art and Dean of San Francisco Art Institute. He is President of the Planetary Collegium, an international research network based in the University of Plymouth www.planetary-collegium.net
Press enquiries: Contact Hannah Prothero
Marketing & Communications Manager
Phone: 01752 276993
Email: hannah at plymouthartscentre dot org
Image: Roy Ascott, Plastic Transactions, 1970
