ART+SCIENCE 2019

Blog #8  Final Project  by Makayla Gallimore  Treeios                                                                 The Tree of Life project was inspired by Julia Christensen. When I was challenged to experiment and be imaginative with this concept I was super enthusiastic. The questions of longevity, culture, funding, and keeping the public reeled in for 200 years is still unanswered. This raises the question of how will this project be able to keep up with our fast evolving planet and technology. That is what makes this project exhilarating because so much to be discovered. There are many challenges that will be faced but once the answers of this project are found it will be very successful and so unique. It will be a mission like no other. The idea of seeing how the planet evolves through this s...

ART 384A:  Art and Science Artwork Statement on the Tree of Life 12.11.19 Josie Tiffany The subject of the piece is the “Tree of Life”, a present project of NASA that attempts to create a natural antennae to sonify the changes on Earth.  The project’s intended purpose is to promote longevity so that future, inquisitive generations to come can observe changes and listen to the songs of the Earth.  To reiterate once more, the ideology of building a system that can endure time in space as well as a lifetime of continuously supplying information about our surroundings is vastly crucial.  Thus, the motivation behind this specific art piece is to convey the Tree of Life’s principle of longevity by visualizing itself against the unknown future. The acrylic work performed on canvas displays a negative of a pear tree in full blossom.  The subject of the piece was not only inspired by the project’s first tree sample, a pear tree, but was also prompt...

Discussing the Tree of Life project with the team at NASA ’s Jet Propulsion Lab was an experience that ignited my curiosity and led me to ask many more questions than I had initially prepared to. What initially struck me about the project was that there was a co-dependent “duet,” collaboration between nature and technology. I have never really seen a collaboration of the sort, especially one that harnesses the power of life. The piece would not have the same meaning or importance if it were purely human-made, and it would not be much of a project for NASA with just a tree alone! Integrating these two ideas into one experimental project at first felt new to me. Still, after some reflection, I came to see it was not utterly irrelevant to my practice as an artist. Artists learn to integrate their work into the environment, regardless of whether or not that thing that they’ve created has a function. I think that the team working on this project must have to make similar considerations wh...

Blog Post #8 The Tree of Life             This project, taking inspiration from the Tree of Life by Julia Christensen, is about both longevity and public interest. Through exploring and understanding the Tree of Life project an important challenge stuck out; how to keep public interest for a project spanning 200 years. The Tree of Life project is faced with many challenges and obstacles stemming from the longevity of the project, but this issue seemed important because of the public funding that this project will rely on. The Tree of Life is both a global endeavor that will face and overcome many obstacles in both the art and science world.             One of the biggest challenges that NASA has faced over the years has been time. The current longest running missions at NASA are Voyager I and II. They were launched in 1977 and have been active for more t...

Created for JPL’s Tree of Life project, we focused on making a piece that could be used as promotional material for the project. One facet of concern that came up during the meeting with the A-Team was how to keep the project relevant and exciting for the average person. Therefore, we made a poster that communicated artistry and mystery in order to engage the viewer. The aspect of making art that can be reproduced and relevant was important to us. Much like Dan Goods of JPL explained about his Vintage Travel Poster project, NASA is a government organization. Creating a work that allows all usage rights is a way to give back to the community that funds the projects. We wanted our poster to be an addition to the shareable body of work. Additionally, since the Tree of Life project is not set to launch for another fifty years, we wanted our contribution to be in a form that will remain popular. Poster usage dates back centuries and we predict will be around for centuries more. One asp...

Olivia Collins & Nicole Daskas  Lia Halloran Intersection of Art & Science December 11, 2019  The Sounds of Nature The Sounds of Nature is a sound piece project created between Nicole Daskas and Olivia Collins. The project produces a symphony of natural noises through individual clips combined in one video. The piece incorporates different footage shot from nature in Zion National Park. Zion has a range of scenery from canyons to waterfalls that help capture a variety of sounds. Although everywhere in the park is surrounded by constant subtle noises, only scenes that had a presence on its own are incorporated. It only takes place in this one location to make the project cohesive visually. Filming at a national park helped with not including any man made elements such as buildings or cars to keep the theme of only natural visuals and sounds.  The video is created by layering different videos on top of one another. It is important to keep the visual ...

Let’s Get Lost Sammy Keane Artist Statement As an artist, I would describe myself as a perfectionist who hopes to become more fluid and experimental. I feel most comfortable working with graphite and using hatching techniques to shade and add depth to bodies of work. Lately, I have been using acrylic paint to create detailed, flat, paintings that compositionally create space using line-work. I believe I have learned the most from my previous mistakes. I make sure to continually tell myself to step back and put my work on the wall when I become frustrated as it allows me to see my pieces from a different perspective. Let’s Get Lost is a 55”x 44” artwork created with black and white acrylic paint. This intention when making this piece was to not only use line-work as a way of creating an optical illusion but also to create so much movement that it inevitably made each viewer “get lost” within the painting. Illusions of movement occur when the way you see something is d...

Art & Science Final Blog Post Nicole Daskas Since completing this class, I have found that there are far more examples of art and science colliding than I originally thought. While I did not believe that art and science are two completely separate, disparate entities, I did not realize just how many contemporary artists work so closely with scientists. I also did not know that scientists need artists to help visualize data in efficient ways. I knew that artists and scientists often work and research in a similar process, experimenting and studying before starting a new project. I did not, however, expect to find so many examples of artists working with science and become so excited about the intersection of the two disciplines.  The Museum of Jurassic Technology is something that has stuck with me all semester since the trip. I was inspired to see that the creator’s thesis art piece became something that he expanded upon and turned into a public installation, one of th...

The Box of Life is a long-term collaborative project started by Sammy Keane and Sophie Ungless. From the exterior, this piece looks like a simple, wooden box, but inside the viewer will find a 200-page journal with each page headed with a year, starting with 2019 and continuing until 2219. Additionally, there are writing utensils and a list of instructions for the project included inside the box. The guidelines lay out the intention of the project: The Box of Life is an evolving and collaborative time capsule that moves from person to person and years pass. The box will be given to a new person at the beginning of each year, and they are in charge of documenting that year in whatever way they see fit on the respective page in the journal. The participants can record their year from a personal or more objective standpoint; however, they are required to stick to only one page. They are also asked to include a dated picture of themselves in the box. Instead of including technology like ...

Research system of perception, explain the science behind an optical illusion you find? Josie Tiffany Through the artistry of optical illusions, these works continue to boggle the mind of all who visualize the frustratingly, compelling mind puzzle.  The essence of optical illusions is to confuse and manipulate the eyes of the viewer and to demonstrate that not all objects in life can make sense (no matter how much we want them to be).  Optical illusions offer a sense of "perceivement" of what may be possible, but as you continue to go down the line thinking on the slight chance that you may have "figured out" the trick to the illusion, you end up more confused when you realize that you simply cannot make sense.  This is why optical illusions have never peaked my interest due to the fact that they have no limitations of infuriating me.  I simply CANNOT stand something that messes with my mind as well as something that hurts my eyes. However there is one...