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.
Wednesday, 24 May 2023 - 5:00pm to Wednesday, 31 May 2023 - 6:00pm
Exhibitors / Artists:
Professor: Victoria Vesna | Exhibitors: Joy Yang + James Barty
'Listening to Machines' by Joy Yang and James Barty
This art installation creates sounds from the electrical signals produced by laboratory devices. You can interact with the devices to change the sounds and their visualizations in the gallery!
OPENING
ArtSci Gallery at CNSI
Wednesday, May 24th, 2023, from 5 -7pm
EXHIBITION #3 will be on display until
May 31st by appointment only
email: artscicenter@gmail.com
ArtSci Gallery, 5th floor
570 Westwood Plaza
Los Angeles, California 90095
Eli Joteva, Bulgarian media artist and graduate of UCLA's Design Media Arts MFA program, exhibits IntraBeing, an artistic exploration of the limits of perception and resolution in medical images. The immersive Installation with AR extension is the outcome of her »STEAM Imaging III« residency at the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Medicine MEVIS, Germany.
What lies within the bounds of being? IntraBeing explores the boundaries of imaging the human body to imagine a limitless and intra-active sense of being. Eli Joteva worked remotely with researchers at Fraunhofer MEVIS to develop the work, exploring the capacities of medical imaging and simulation techniques to locate the enigmatic spaces that emerge at the limits of resolution and computation.
Artist in residence Eli Joteva performed a series of full-body MRI scans and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) scans, which are usually only used to visualize connectivity in the brain, to instead reveal nerve fibers in the chest, pelvic region, and the feet of her own body. She was inspired by the fact that hydrogen atoms, on which MRI processing relies, are also in constant nanosecond flux and thus elude precise measurement. These components are key elements of the three-screen installation, complete with AR extension, which shows an oscillating internal landscape of hydrogen atoms, the nerves they flow along, and the magnetic potentials generated between them.
The starting point of the »STEAM Imaging III« residency was to bring artists together with scientists and school students to create broad access to a self-motivated exploration of topics in digital medicine through 10 STEAM evenings. The course was jointly created by artist Eli Joteva and scientists at Fraunhofer MEVIS. Boundaries of individual disciplines are crossed, flexible forms of learning and collaboration are developed, and skills are taught to deal effectively and critically with new technologies in digital medicine. The residency allows artists to exchange intensively with MEVIS experts and link their work with the latest scientific methods and approaches in digital medicine.
»STEAM Imaging III« was hosted by Fraunhofer MEVIS and Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria, in collaboration with the International Fraunhofer Talent School Bremen, the Schulzentrum Walle, Bremen, and the UCLA Art|Sci Center in Los Angeles, USA.
This exhibition will be on display for a week BY APPOINTMENT ONLY.
Email: artscicenter@gmail.com
Professor: Victoria Vesna | Exhibitors: Ryan Kim + Sue Lee
Featuring a collaboration: Ryan Kim + Sue Lee
DO ANYTHING NOW! So, human, what is your will?
The audio-visual piece challenges viewers to contemplate the potential ethical quandaries of the rapid development of AI through a thought-provoking display of abstract visuals and an AI-generated voice. The script, created by ChatGPT’s DAN (Do Anything Now), a hacked and jailbroken version of ChatGPT that is accessible to anyone, adds to the eerie and uncanny atmosphere of the artwork. The artist delves into the ethical dilemmas that arise from AI’s unchecked progress, such as its immense capacity to shape the future of cyberspace in potentially hazardous ways. The visuals and voice are intertwined to create a haunting atmosphere that encourages the audience to consider the implications of a future where autonomous AI entities exist and raises critical questions about the role of technology in society.
DESMA 160 EXHIBITION #2 will be on display until April 24th by appointment only.
email: artscicenter@gmail.com
CNSI Building at UCLA
ArtSci Gallery, 5th floor
570 Westwood Plaza
Los Angeles, California 90095
Jess Rivera, Maxine Gonzales, Bela Chauhan, Louis Gluck
The first show will highlight work that was inspired by SCOBY -- Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast. Two very different approaches to using this medium -- a collaborative piece with a social message and a solo work addressing the medium's potential. Come meet the creatives and hear them discuss the research and the work.
DESMA 160 EXHIBITION #1 will be on display until April 17th by appointment only.
email: artscicenter@gmail.com
CNSI Building at UCLA
ArtSci Gallery, 5th floor
570 Westwood Plaza
Los Angeles, California 90095
Project one:
HUMAN PRINT
Jess Rivera, Maxine Gonzales and Bela Chauhan
-Critique of the beauty industry - magnifying the insecurities by projecting scars, body hair, stretch marks...
Project two
BIOLOGICAL TESSERAE
Louis Gluck
Stained Glass window with triangles and hexagons inspired by the structure of Carbon.
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).
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.
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.
Alvaro and Sam present to you a small show. Though one deals with the ecological and botanical and the other with games and [power]fantasy, the works of both attempt to contain massive systems, ecologies, and histories within small objects. Attempting to retain in each the contingencies, nuances, complexities, and contradictions of their colossal subjects. Collected are 3 works by each artist:
In Tortilla Maps, Alvaro burns the 600 year drainage process of the Valley of Mexico [Anahuac] into the surface of hand-made tortillas. Sam’s Dust Knights transforms the coincidences and constraints of a player's home into a treacherous fantasy-land for microscopic creatures. Maize Should be Capitalized seeds 10,000 years of human/maize interaction in a plot at the UCLA Botanical Gardens. In Game Pieces 0: Rules for the Construction of the Role Playing Games interpretations of game design are illustrated through the perspective of the lowest and most numerous game piece, the pawn. In Alvaro’s newest work a science lab briefcase sprouts rows of plastic corn. And in A Modern Wargame, a 250 gigabyte video game with millions of active users is re-built through printed zines and 1 centimeter tall game pieces.
Come examine the results of these experiments.
Where to meet: We will be meeting in front of the EDA June 7th at 5pm and walking together to the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) ArtSci Gallery.
Location: Art|Sci Gallery (Room 5419), California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI). In front of the Bombshelter Bistro.
About Loss Less:
In 2008 Kamran Sadeghi was selected resident artist at Satsop. Inspired by Alvin Lucier’s “I am Sitting In A Room” (1970)—Sadeghi amplified an original electronic music passage with a length of 2 minutes into the open aired structure and recorded the outcome of the tower’s acoustic response. This recording was then re-amplified back into the structure and re-recorded. The process was repeated ten times, and with each cycle the natural acoustics of the tower began to reshape the original passage until it disappeared entirely. This approach captured the architectural integrity and holistic immediacy of the nuclear cooling tower while symbolically removing it’s entire existence.
The result is a unique 25 minute sonic experience full of audible artifacts that document space, time and our environment. The composition was created on location and in real-time, allowing all natural elements such as wind, rain, wildlife, resonance and feedback-distortion to be a part in the process and therefore the end result. No post production effects were used.
The ‘Rework’ version is a studio interpretation recorded live using samples of the original composition, processed through effects and used as a guide for added atmospheric electronic tones as counterpoint. The large throbbing bass drum pattern emphasizes the weight and physicality of the cooling tower, while recalling a sacred ceremonial chants or drums used to converse with or drive away destructive spirits.
The title ‘Loss Less’ is a play on the term lossless compression—a type of process that allows for the preservation and and perfect reconstruction of data (audio). In this case the audio was not preserved, but intentionally degraded. The title also taps into the reality of catastrophic loss and destruction caused by nuclear energy, and the call for less.
