- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Have you seen it?
Insect.Desperto?
Internationally renowned artist Eduardo Kac, who uses
biotechnology and genetics to create provocative works, created the runtime animation, "Insect.Desperto" back in 1995.
(By the way, "Desperto” means “awaken” in Portuguese.)
Kac, a native of Brazil who lives and works in Chicago, describes his runtime animation as "visual and sound tracks that function independently and complementarily in two languages (English and Portuguese), one not being the translation of the other."
The art project starts with a slide or frame of "insects, helpless, dark" and then the words and sound jump together like so many pogo sticks.
Check out the individual frames first. Then see it in Flash (Flash plug required).
Eduardo Kac, however, is best known for Alba, the green-fluoresent bunny. A laboratory implanted a gene from jellyfish into the bunny. Under special lights, the bunny glows green.
You can learn more about him and his art when he speaks on "Telepresence and Bio Art" from 6:30 to 8 p.m., Thursday, March 5 at the Consilience of Art and Science colloquium, sponsored by the Art/Science Fusion Program at the
Kac will introduce his pioneering telepresence work, give examples and discuss his current transgenic art from 6:30 to 8 p.m. in the Veterans' Memorial Center Theatre, 203 E. 14th St., Davis. The theatre is located between Davis High School and the Davis Public Library. The lecture is free and open to the public.
Following his lecture, Kac will autograph copies of his new book, Telepresence and Bio Art -- Networking Humans, Rabbits and Robots.
“Eduardo brings contemporary art into the center of the public discourse on issues that range from the poetics of online experience to the cultural impact of biotechnology to the creation of life and evolution,” said UC Davis Art/Science Fusion Program co-director Diane Ullman, associate dean of Undergraduate Academic Programs,
“One of the goals of the UC Davis Art/Science Fusion Program,” said Ullman, herself an artist and a scientist, “is to explore the connection between art and science through undergraduate programs, intellectual exchanges and visual and performing arts.”
See more information about Eduardo Kac and his work on his Web site.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
If you like to combine art with science, here you go.
The deadline to submit a CD and entry information is Feb. 20. The Pence Gallery, located at
The goals of the Pence Gallery exhibitions are three-fold, said Art/Science Fusion co-director Diane Ullman, associate dean of Undergraduate Academic Programs,
The goals are:
1. To show create work that explores the intersection between art and science
2. To foster communication between the arts and sciences
3. To spark new ways of viewing the world and ourselves.
You can find more information--the rules and an entry form--here. For additional information, contact Natalie Nelson, director of the Pence Gallery, at (530) 758-3370 or at penceartdirector@sbcglobal.net.
One has only to look at photographs of insects to realize that "Neither science nor the arts can be complete without combining their separate strengths."
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
What a series!
You won't want to miss the Consilience of Art and Science speaker series that gets under way Nov. 12 and continues through April 9 at the University of California, Davis.
The lectures are free and open to the public.
UC Davis entomologist Diane Ullman, associate dean of Undergraduate Academic Programs, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, and professor of entomology, helped initiate this series.
Ullman and artist Donna Billick, co-directors of the UC Davis Art/Science Fusion Program, are devoted to the fusion of art and science. They anticipate that the centennial colloquium will stimulate interaction and discussion as the distinguished scholars focus on the “interlocking principles that bind art and science.”
The first speaker is Corey Keller, associate curator of photography for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She'll deliver her presentation on "Sight Unseen: Picturing the Invisible, 1840 to 1900" from 6:30 to 8 p.m., Wednesday, Nov. 12 in the Activities and Recreation Center, Ballrooms A and B.
Keller will discuss what the early photomicrographs, astrophotographs, motion studies, and x-rays meant to science and how these pictures of the invisible touched people.
Keller will show some of the first astrophotographs, “which resulted from emulsion coated plates that could collect and accumulate light through the telescope over many hours, thus revealing stars and galaxies that were not visible when looking through the telescope with the human eye--which can’t accumulate light to create images,” Ullman said.
“They were quite popular and published in popular science magazines of the time, like La Nature,” Ullman said.
Van Gogh was reportedly so awed by the astrophotographs that they influenced his famous painting, Starry Night.
Later, the series will delve into art and insects. Catherine Chalmers, a professional artist and author of Food Chain who explores the connections between humans and insects, will speak Jan. 7.
For more information, see Consilience of Art and Science.