Tag Archives: Ars Scientia

Quantum Studio artist-in-residence Caroline Delétoille gives an artist talk on 16 Oct 2024 at 3 pm at the University of BC (Vancouver, Canada)

The University of British Columbia’s (UBC) Morris & Helen Belkin Art Gallery (The Belkin) sent an October 4, 2024 series of announcements (received via email). Here are two of the announcements, Note 1: You can see all of the announcements on The Belkin events webpage, Note 2: The art/science event is second, Note 3: Links have been removed

Conversation with Weiyi Chang and Lisa Myers

Tuesday, October 8 at 12:30 pm (online)

Please join us for an online conversation between guest curator Weiyi Chang and Lisa Myers, an artist and curator based in Toronto and Port Severn and a member of Beausoleil First Nation. Myers has worked with anthocyanin pigment from blueberries in printmaking and in her stop-motion animation. Her participatory performances involve sharing berries and other food items in social gatherings, reflecting on the value found in place and displacement; straining and absorbing. Recently, her artistic practice has expanded into audio and augmented reality projects that draw attention to the histories of the land, dislocation and gentrification. Through close attention to Myers’s practice, this conversation will allow us to reflect on themes and concerns articulated in An Opulence of Squander, currently on view at the Belkin.

Artist Talk with Caroline Delétoille

Wednesday, October 16 at 3 pm

As part of Quantum Studio, artist-in-residence Caroline Delétoille will discuss her collaborative partnerships with scientists and engineers while embedded at UBC’s Stewart Blusson Quantum Matter Institute. Delétoille will address her studio and research practices and share some initial insights about “Quantum Sensation,” a project initiated in 2023 in close collaboration with a physicist and philosopher and the focus of her residency at UBC. This talk is part of Ars Scientia, a larger research initiative which seeks to foster knowledge exchange across the arts, sciences and pedagogies.

More about …

The conversation between Weiyi Chang and Lisa Myers is one of a series known as “Of Other Earths.” Here’s more about the series and the upcoming October 8, 2024 event, from The Belkin’s Conversation Series: Of Other Earths webpage,

Join us for Of Other Earths, a series recuperating forgotten, suppressed and abandoned histories to reconsider capitalist and colonial relationships to the planet and its inhabitants. Multiplying and compounding environmental harms are radically destabilizing earthly habitats, calling into question the viability of existing productivist paradigms that require continuous resource extraction and consumption.

This online conversation series hosted by curator Weiyi Chang foregrounds practitioners who aim to decentre and unsettle the logic of perpetual growth by examining alternative approaches to human-planetary relations. In each session she will engage an artist or scholar about their work in the context of one of the provocations running through the exhibition An Opulence of Squander. These dialogues will offer a generative way to think about how we engage, care for, and conserve past works of art and artists and the ecological lessons that experience might hold.

An Opulence of Squander draws primarily from the Belkin’s collection and focuses on works that critique the imperative for growth at all costs, growth that has contributed to our collective ecological and social conundrum. The works resist the growth imperative and reflect on the dual exploitation of labour and nature.

Register for the Zoom link

This talk will be recorded and made available online.

Then, there’s the art/science talk with Caroline Delétoille, from The Belkin’s Artist Talk: Caroline Delétoille webpage,

Join us at the Belkin for an artist talk by Quantum Studio artist-in-residence Caroline Delétoille, who will discuss her collaborative partnerships with scientists and engineers while embedded at UBC’s Stewart Blusson Quantum Matter Institute. Delétoille will address her studio and research practices and share some initial insights about “Quantum Sensation,” a project initiated in 2023 in close collaboration with a physicist and philosopher and the focus of her residency at UBC.

Everyone is welcome and admission is free.

Caroline Delétoille’s month-long artist residency is a collaboration between the Consulate General of France in Vancouver and UBC’s Stewart Blusson Quantum Matter Institute, the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery through Quantum Studio, which is part of a larger program of residencies sponsored by the Embassy of France in Western Canada.

This talk is part of Ars Scientia, a larger research initiative which seeks to foster knowledge exchange across the arts, sciences and pedagogies. Since launching in 2021, we have developed a wide variety of programs, including pairing artists and scientists in residencies to explore the potential for academic art-science collaborations. Artists provide new ways of imagining research and knowledge exchange as a dimensional counterpart to the research carried out at Blusson QMI. Through the development of conversation programs and panel series in tandem with the creation of an ongoing artist residency, Ars Scientia addresses questions of pedagogical outcomes, interdisciplinary research and the emergent interstices of art and science.

Caroline Delétoille

Artist

Caroline Delétoille is a Paris-based visual artist with a previous academic foray into mathematics. Her work interrogates questions concerned with memory, the ordinary and dreams. Though her practice is focused largely on painting and photography, her writing is central to the search for pictoriality and narration. Delétoille’s work has been exhibited in France and Spain. She is currently developing an exhibition with Musée Maison Poincaré in collaboration with the Kastler Brassel Laboratory and Quantum Studio.

In French,

L’annonces 27/06/2024 du Consulat général de France à Vancouver,

Programme de résidence Arts & Sciences « Quantum Studio »

Caroline Delétoille est la nouvelle lauréate du programme de résidence Arts & Sciences « Quantum Studio », un programme créée par nos services avec nos partenaires de l’institut canadien Stewart Blusson Quantum Matter Institute et la galerie d’art vancouvéroise Morris & Helen Belkin Art Gallery de l’Université de Colombie-Britannique. Caroline Delétoille succède à Javiera Tejerina. L’artiste viendra à Vancouver du 14 octobre au 12 novembre, sur le campus de l’université.

La résidence, ouverte à l’ensemble des pratiques artistiques, a pour but de rendre plus accessible le travail des chercheurs en sciences quantiques (physique quantique, informatique quantique, physique de l’infiniment petit, sciences des matériaux, physique fondamentale) par le biais de l’art ; les échanges entre scientifiques et artistes sont au coeur de cette résidence.

Nos partenaires offriront à l’artiste un espace de réflexion dans lequel elle pourra se réunir avec les chercheurs, échanger sur leurs pratiques, apprendre de leurs travaux respectifs réfléchir ensemble à un projet créatif, à la croisée des arts et des sciences.

Le travail final de l’artiste sera donc un rendu, une mise en avant du travail des chercheurs. En fin de résidence, des séminaires et évènements publics co-organisés avec l’institut et la galerie sont prévus.

Caroline Delétoille

Biographie de l’artiste :

Mon travail est une recherche constante du souvenir, une documentation de l’ordinaire. En 2019, j’apprends par un coup de téléphone que la maison de famille a été vidée la veille et son contenu jeté. De là s’amorce chez moi une interrogation sur les souvenirs, leur développement et leur importance, dans une exploration plastique des traces de la mémoire.

Qu’elle soit vraie ou fausse, l’histoire se raconte. Partant d’images d’archives, les photographies sont les pièces à convictions d’une enquête à mener. Mes peintures font un pas de côté avec la réalité, l’espace pictural devient un terrain de jeu. Les teintes sont franches, vives, dans une atmosphère saturée de verts et de jaunes. La couleur arrive sur le regardeur, je veux qu’elle l’enveloppe, lui tombe dessus. Des plans superposés en aplats structurent la composition et viennent déjouer les lignes de fuite. La perspective contribue ainsi à nous déséquilibrer, elle attire dans un décor ornemental sans profondeur de champ. Les motifs envahissent l’espace, les objets sortent de la toile, les ombres peuvent prendre des formes étranges, presque oniriques. À mesure que les repères rationnels sont perturbés, l’imagination s’active.

Mes peintures parlent d’une mémoire collective et individuelle à partir de scènes intimes et familières telles que le quotidien de l’enfance, mon propre vécu et des photos de famille. J’aime expérimenter la matière à travers les techniques (huile, sérigraphie, monotype, acrylique, pastels…), dans l’esprit des courants des arts décoratifs.

The English language version posted by the Consulate is a rough summary and not a translation of their French language notice but both versions have the same embedded images.

Quantum Studio

I did a little digging to find out more about this Stewart Blusson Quantum Matter Institute (Blusson QMI) and Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery (the Belkin), both at UBC, in partnership with The Embassy of France in Canada and their art/sci residency, known as the Quantum Studio.

The best I could track down is in UBC’s Stewart Blusson Quantum Matter Institute (Blusson QMI) July 31, 2023 news release about Javiera Tejerina-Risso, the 2023 Quantum Studio artist-in-residence,

UBC’s Stewart Blusson Quantum Matter Institute (Blusson QMI) and Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery (the Belkin), in partnership with The Embassy of France in Canada, are delighted to announce Javiera Tejerina-Risso as the artist-in-residence for the Quantum Studio Art & Science Residency taking place in November 2023 at UBC Vancouver.

Javiera is a multidisciplinary French-Chilean artist from Marseille, France. Having worked in art and science for more than 15 years, she has developed a collaborative approach in her creative practice enabling her to work with researchers and include their vocabulary, concepts and areas of study in her creative work.

The Quantum Studio residency aims to build exchanges between art and quantum science immersed at the renowned UBC campus and in the rich local artistic ecosystem. The artist receives a €2,000 grant and paid accommodation during the residency.

Blusson QMI and the Belkin will provide the selected artist with a space in which the artist and researchers will be able to connect, discuss their projects, and learn from one another to create a project at the junction between art and science. 

The scientific topics to be explored during this residency include:

  • Fundamental concepts: quantum mechanics, light-
  • Matter and materials: low-dimensional materials, organic and optoelectronic materials, superconductors, atomic structures (2D, 3D)
  • Experimental techniques: spectroscopies, atomic imaging microscopy, x-ray scattering
  • Experimental conditions: ultra-low temperatures, ultra-high vacuum, ultra-fast dynamics

The Residency is part of a larger program of residencies initiated by the Embassy of France in West Canada. Other laureates will also be present in Vancouver in the fall of 2023 as part of the curatorial residency of the Embassy’s XR Fall program [extended reality], which focuses on immersive artistic creations. [emphasis mine]

Blusson QMI and the Belkin are the founding members of Ars Scientia, an interdisciplinary program aimed at creating synergies between scientists and artists in BC. At the intersection of arts and science, Ars (skill, technique, craft) Scientia (knowledge, experience, application) presents an opportunity to foster new modes of knowledge exchange intended to invigorate art, science, and pedagogy in search of profound exchange and collaborative research outcomes.

Learn more about Ars Scientia here.

The highlighted paragraph is as much as I can find for now. Btw, I will be posting about the XR Fall programme soon.

One more point of interest

This isn’t information about a 2025 residency but you may find the details from the 2024 call useful for early preparation of your application. From an April 16, 2024 University of British Columbia’s news release,

In 2023, the French Embassy in Canada, in partnership with the Stewart Blusson Quantum Matter Institute (QMI) and the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at the University of British Columbia (UBC), launched the Arts-Sciences Residency Program “Quantum Studio” in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

In 2024, a new edition of this artist residency will take place from October 14 to November 12 at UBC Blusson QMI in Vancouver. The program accepts applications from French artists exploring the intersections between the arts and sciences. Applications are now open and will close on May 26, 2024, at 11:59pm Paris time [May 26, 2024, at 2:59pm (PT)].

Open to all artistic practices, the residency seeks to build exchanges between the arts and the quantum sciences (quantum physics, quantum computing, physics of the infinitely small, materials science, fundamental physics).

The Stewart Blusson Quantum Matter Institute and the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery will provide the selected artist with a space in which artists and researchers can meet, discuss their practices, learn from each other and reflect together on a creative project at the crossroads of the arts and sciences.

Prior to the residency in Vancouver, several online meetings will be organized to establish and maintain initial contact between the winning artist in France and the host team (institutions and scientists) in Vancouver.

About the residency

Objectives

  • Foster or consolidate a creative project.
  • Share their work at arts and science seminars co-organized with the Stewart Blusson Quantum Matter Institute and the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery.
  • Encourage discovery of Western Canada’s scientific and artistic ecosystem, as well as forming collaborations.

Advantages

  • 4 weeks of residence in Vancouver
  • Accommodation on the UBC campus and a working office at the Stewart Blusson Quantum Matter Institute
  • Round-trip airfare from France to Vancouver
  • A €2,000 residency grant (corresponding to per diem and participation in three half-day lectures/master classes during the residency)
  • Networking and connections with the local ecosystem
  • Participation in events in British Columbia during the residency.

Eligibility

  • Artist carrying an artistic project in writing or development
  • At least 18 years old
  • Resident in France for at least 5 years
  • Speaking English
  • Ideally, justifying first experiences of creation mixing arts and sciences (applications from artists who have already worked or are working in connection with physical sciences will be appreciated).
  • This program is open to artistic practices in all their diversity (writing, visual and plastic arts, digital arts, design, dance, performance, immersive realities, sound creation, etc.).

Application Process and Required Documents

The application submission:

To apply, please submit the following documents to the French Consulate as stated above:

  • Application form: ENG_Application-Form-Art and science residency-2023
  • A copy of your ID card or passport
  • A biography and a CV
  • A portfolio of previous projects (with video links, if applicable)
  • A letter of motivation
  • A precise synopsis of the project
  • A projected work plan for the residency (forecast)
  • Visuals of the project (if applicable)
  • A letter of recommendation (optional)
  • A letter from a French cultural institution accompanying the project for a future exhibition or production of the work (facultative).

Timeline

  • April 15, 2024: Opening of the call for applications
  • May 26, 2024 (11h59pm, Paris time): Deadline for applications
  • Week of June 3, 2024: Interviews with the preselected candidates
  • Week of June 10, 2024: Notification of the results

Contact

For inquiries regarding the application process, please contact the French Consulate here: culture@consulfrance-vancouver.org

For more information on the selection process and commitments, please see here.

There you have it.

encou(n)ters and more at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada) on May 15, 2023

I have one upcoming art/science event being held on the University of British Columbia’s (UBC) Vancouver campus. At the very end of this post, there’s a brief mention of two art/climate events to be held at the Peter Wall Institute on campus.

Ars Scientia draws to a close?

Ars Scientia was initially announced in 2021 as a two year initiative between Stewart Blusson Quantum Matter Institute (Blusson QMI), the Morris & Helen Belkin Art Gallery (the Belkin) and UBC’s Department of Physics and Astronomy (UBC PHAS). In other words, physicists and artists collaborating to do something over a two-year period.

There’ve been a number of Ars Scientia talks (use the search term “Ars Scientia” to find them on this blog) and now there’s going to be second (presumably final) symposium, “encou(n)ters.” From a May 9, 2023 Belkin Gallery notice (received via email),

SYMPOSIUM: ENCOU(N)TERS

Monday, May 15 [2023] from 2-6 pm at UBC Botanical Garden [2]

The Ars Scientia research cluster launched a collaborative residency
program in 2021, bringing together artists and physicists to interrogate
the intersections of art and science. Join us at UBC Botanical Garden
for our second annual research symposium, _encou(n)ters_, to learn more
about residency experiences and engage in interdisciplinary discussions
with our participating artist and physicist investigators. Alongside
presentations from Ars Scientia collaborators, we are honoured to invite
Kavita Philip for a keynote lecture. UBC’s Research Excellence Cluster
program seeded Ars Scientia with the objective of creating programming
that fuses the practices of art and science in the emerging [emphasis mine] field of
interdisciplinary research.

Interdisciplinary research is emerging? From the Interdisciplinarity Wikipedia entry, Note: Links have been removed,

Although “interdisciplinary” and “interdisciplinarity” are frequently viewed as twentieth century terms, the concept has historical antecedents, most notably Greek philosophy.[2] Julie Thompson Klein attests that “the roots of the concepts lie in a number of ideas that resonate through modern discourse—the ideas of a unified science, general knowledge, synthesis and the integration of knowledge”,[3] while Giles Gunn says that Greek historians and dramatists took elements from other realms of knowledge (such as medicine or philosophy) to further understand their own material.[4]

For an example of art and science from ancient times, “De rerum natura” or on the “Nature of Things” is a six book poem devoted to physics according to its Wikipedia entry, Note: Links have been removed,

De rerum natura (Latin: [deː ˈreːrʊn naːˈtuːraː]; On the Nature of Things) is a first-century BC didactic poem by the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius (c. 99 BC – c. 55 BC) with the goal of explaining Epicurean philosophy to a Roman audience. The poem, written in some 7,400 dactylic hexameters, is divided into six untitled books, and explores Epicurean physics through poetic language and metaphors.[1] Namely, Lucretius explores the principles of atomism [emphases mine]; the nature of the mind and soul; explanations of sensation and thought; the development of the world and its phenomena; and explains a variety of celestial and terrestrial phenomena. The universe described in the poem operates according to these physical principles, guided by fortuna (“chance”),[2] and not the divine intervention of the traditional Roman deities.

In 2011, the historian and literary scholar Stephen Greenblatt wrote a popular history book about the poem, entitled The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. In the work, Greenblatt argues that Poggio Bracciolini’s discovery of De rerum natura reintroduced important ideas that sparked the modern age.[98][99][100] The book was well-received, and later earned the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction and the 2011 National Book Award for Nonfiction.[101][102]

More recently than Lucretius, Richard Holmes’ 2008 book “The Age of Wonder; How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science” explores the relationship 19th century English romantic poets had with science.

Getting back to “encou(n)ters,” here are some details from the Belkin Gallery’s event page,

[second annual research symposium, encou(n)ters]

Monday, May 15 [2023] from 2-6 pm at UBC Botanical Garden

The symposium is free and open to the public, but space is limited; RSVP here.

Symposium Program

Building Momentum, 2-3 pm

Opening remarks by Ars Scientia research leads Shelly Rosenblum, Jeremy Heyl and Andrea Damascelli; Artist talks by jg mair with Alannah Hallas and Timothy Taylor

Experiments in Real Space, 3:15-4:30 pm

Introduction and audience participation experience by James Day; Artist talks by Josephine Lee, Kelly Lycan and Justine Chambers, and Scott Billings

Keynote Address: Kavita Philip, 5-6 pm

Introduction by Susan Sechrist; Keynote address by Kavita Philip

Please join us for a reception following the panels to continue the conversation and enjoy the garden

The keynote speaker, Kavita Philip, joined the University of British Columbia in 2020 according to an October 1, 2020 UBC announcement, Note: Links have been removed,

Dr. Kavita Philip has commenced her appointment as the President’s Excellence Chair in Network Cultures, joining UBC as Professor of English with the UBC Department of English Language and Literatures.

Dr. Philip received her Ph.D. in Science and Technology Studies from Cornell University in 1996. Her research and teaching in Global South histories and sociologies of science, computational technologies, environment, network cultures, media, and politics crosses geographic boundaries and ranges across scholarly disciplines. For 25 years, Dr. Philip has been engaged not only in the intellectual task of forging methods to connect techno-scientific, social scientific, and humanistic inquiry, but also in the institutional task of building these collaborative spaces. She seeks to develop public humanities research that acknowledges the intertwined material and social contexts of cultural production. These networked commitments make her the ideal candidate for this chair.

Dr. Philip most recently taught in the History department at the University of California, Irvine. In addition, she has taught in Literature programs as well as Media and Communication Studies, beginning her career at Georgia Tech’s School of Literature, Communication, and Culture (formerly an English Department). There, she participated in the creation of a Bachelor of Science degree in Science, Technology and Culture. Dr. Philip expanded and bridged legacy English department curricula from the 1980s with approaches from STS, eco-criticism, speculative fiction, and media studies. In addition, she founded and ran the “Science, Technology, and Race” project, which was heralded for its exemplary pedagogy and outreach. At Georgia Tech, she received the E. Roe Stamps award for excellence in teaching.

At UC Irvine, in addition to her role as a Professor in History, Dr. Philip was also an affiliated Faculty in Informatics, and the Director and co-founder (with Du Bois scholar Dr. Nahum Chandler) of the research group in Science, Technology and Race at the University of California, Irvine. During her time at UC Irvine, she also served as the Director of the Critical Theory Institute, Director of the Graduate Feminist Emphasis, and Director of Graduate Studies in History.

Susan Sechrist, the scholar, who is introducing Dr. Philip, has this to say about herself on her eponymous blog, Note: Links have been removed,

I write literary and speculative fiction as well as critical essays at the intersection of fiction, science, and mathematics. My feature, Go Figure, is a column about mathematical metaphor in fiction, for the online literary blog Bloom. My math-curious short story, A Desirable Middle, was published by the eclectic Journal of Humanistic Mathematics.

I live in Vancouver, Canada, on the unceded, ancestral territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam Indian Band), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish Nation), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh Nation). I’m a Creative Writing MFA student at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and a Public Scholar, awarded when I was working on a PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies. Before returning to graduate school, I worked as a technical writer and editor for over 20 years, freelancing for clients as varied as high-tech research organizations, academic institutions, software and hardware companies, and technology start-ups.

At a Society for Technical Communication (STC) conference in Las Vegas, I presented a paper on an idea that would become the core of my scholarly research: what if technical writers used figurative and metaphorical language to explicate difficult, complex, scientific ideas? What if technical documentation was actually… interesting? That question led to a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies at Skidmore College, where my thesis was about the connections between literature and mathematical breakthroughs.

There are two other upcoming research events (art and climate change) that you can check out on this Belkin Gallery page (just scroll down past the symposium).

Teeny adventures, Latent Life, and photonic writing—a March 28, 2023 talk at 1 pm PT at the University of British Columbia

After reading the latest newsletter (received via email on March 20, 2023), featuring Scott Billings’ talk ‘Latest Life’, from the University of British Columbia’s (UBC) Belkin Gallery I was reminded of a book produced at the nanoscale back in 2009 (May 21, 2009 posting; scroll down to the final paragraph) and which I wrote about again in 2012 (October 12, 2012 posting) when ‘Teeny Ted from Turnip Town’ was added to the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s smallest book. (‘Teeny Ted’ also has a Wikipedia entry.)

The March 20, 2023 Belkin Gallery (also known as the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery) newsletter is promoting the next Ars Scientia events (the information can also be found on this webpage),

We hope you’ll join us this spring for talks and presentations related
to our ongoing research projects in art and science, and the
Anthropocene. Over the past years, we have developed a deep and
abiding interdisciplinary research practice related to these themes,
working with diverse disciplines that are fortified through oppositions,
collaborations and the celebration of new perspectives. We have shared
our different fields of experience, expertise and resources to catalyze
meaningful responses to research, pedagogy, communication and outreach,
and in doing so build responses that are more than the sum of their
parts. This methodology of bringing the unique perspectives and
practices of artists and curators to academic units presents an
opportunity to foster new modes of knowledge exchange. In this spirit,
we hope you’ll join us in thinking through these critical areas of
inquiry.

Ars Scientia

Building on exhibitions like The Beautiful Brain and Drift, the Ars Scientia research project connects artists with physicists to explore the intersections between the disciplines of art and science. A collaboration between the Belkin, the Department of Physics and Astronomy, and the Blusson Quantum Matter Institute [QMI], [emphases mine] this spring’s artists’ residencies culminate in a series of talks by JG Mair, Scott Billings and Timothy Taylor, followed by a symposium in May with keynote speaker Kavita Philip.

Tuesday, March 28 [2023] at 1 pm [PT]

Artist Talk with Scott Billings

Tuesday, April 4 [2023] at 2 pm [PT]

Artist Talk with Timothy Taylor

Monday, May 15 [2023]

Symposium with keynote by Kavita Philip

I have more details (logistics in particular) about the Scott Billings talk, from the QMI Ars Scientia Artist Talks 2023: Latent Life by Scott Billings events page,

Please join Scott Billings for Latent Life, a presentation based on his recent research in the Ars Scientia residency. Drawing from a 1933 lecture in which Neils Bohr asserts that the impossibility of using a physical explanation for the phenomenon of life is analogous to the insufficiency of using a mechanical analysis to understand phenomena of the atom, Billings will discuss his seemingly conflicting dual practice as both visual artist and mechanical engineer. Reflecting upon a preoccupation with the animality of cinematic machine, among (many) other things, Billings will relay his recent direct experience with photonic writing [emphasis mine] at QMI’s NanoFab Lab and the wonderful new conundrum of making and exhibiting micro-sculptures that are far too small to see with the naked eye.

Date & time: March 28 [2023], 1:00-2:00pm [PT]

Location: 311, Brimacombe Building (2355 East Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4)

For more information on this event, please click here.

Photonic writing and sculpture? I’m guessing the word ‘writing’ in this context doesn’t mean what it usually means. Still, it did bring back memories of the world’s smallest book. I always did wonder about the point of producing book that couldn’t be read without expensive equipment. And now, there’s sculpture that can’t be seen.

I hope Billings’s talk will shed some light on this phenomenon of artists and writers creating objects than cannot be seen with the naked eye. Scientists do this sort of thing for fun but the motivation for writers and artists seems to be about proving something and not at all about play.

‘Drift: Art and Dark Matter’ at Vancouver’s (Canada) Belkin Art Gallery from 10 September – 05 December 2021

The drift in “Drift: Art and Dark Matter” (at the Belkin Art Gallery) comes from a mining term for an almost horizontal passageway or tunnel in a mine. (This makes sense when you realize SNOLAB is one of the partners for this show. For anyone unfamiliar with SNOLAB, there is more coming shortly.)

The show itself appears to be a suite of multimedia installations from four artists, which were first shown at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre at Queen’s University, Ontario.

Image: Josèfa Ntjam, Organic Nebula, 2019, photomontage, mixed techniques. Collection of the artist [one of the Drift show artists]

For anyone who’s primarily interested in the show’s Belkin Gallery appearance, scroll down to the “Drift moves to the Belkin in British Columbia” subhead where you’ll find an invitation to the show’s opening and more about the BC collaboration. **As of Sept. 9, 2021, I have updated the ‘questions’ subsection (scroll down to ?) with newly arrived answers.**

Drift: the show and the art/science residencies at Queen’s University

This show, which ran from 20 February to 30 May 2021, had its start at Queen’s University (Ontario) where it featured astroparticle physics, art/science residencies, and artists Nadia Lichtig, Josèfa Ntjam, Anne Riley and Jol Thoms, (from the Drift: Art and Dark Matter exhibition webpage on the Agnes Queen’s University site; Note: The Agnes is also known as, the Agnes Etherington Art Centre), Note: A link has been removed,

Some kind of invisible matter is having a gravitational effect on everything. Without the gravity of this “dark” matter, galaxies would fly apart. Observational data in astroparticle physics indicate that it exists, but so far dark matter hasn’t been directly detected. Given the contours of such an unknown, artists Nadia Lichtig, Josèfa Ntjam, Anne Riley and Jol Thoms reflect on the “how” and “why” of physics and art as diverse and interrelating practices of knowledge. Through open exchange between disciplines, they have created works that are sensory agents between scientific ideas of dark matter and the exploration of that which has never been directly sensed.

Drift: Art and Dark Matter is a residency and exhibition project generated by Agnes Etherington Art Centre, the Arthur B. McDonald Canadian Astroparticle Physics Research Institute and SNOLAB. Four artists of national and international stature were invited to make new work while engaging with physicists, chemists and engineers contributing to the search for dark matter at SNOLAB’s facility in Sudbury, two kilometres below the surface of the Earth.

The title Drift draws from the mining term for a horizontal tunnel, in this case the hot underground passageway in the copper and nickel mine stretching between the elevator and the clean lab spaces of SNOLAB. The project thereby begins from a reflection on the forms and energies that connect physics to art, labour, landscapes, cultures and histories.

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario, City of Kingston Arts Fund through the Kingston Arts Council and the George Taylor Richardson Memorial Fund at Queen’s University.

Partners

The Arthur B. McDonald Canadian Astroparticle Physics Research Institute is the Canadian hub for astroparticle physics research, uniting researchers, theorists, and technical experts within one organization. Located at and led by Queen’s University, the McDonald Institute is proud to have thirteen partner universities and research institutes across the country, all of which are key players in Canada’s past and future innovation in astroparticle physics.

VISIT site >

SNOLAB is a world-class science facility located deep underground in the operational Vale Creighton nickel mine, near Sudbury, Ontario in Canada. The combination of great depth and cleanliness that SNOLAB affords allows extremely rare interactions and weak processes to be studied.  The science programme at SNOLAB is currently focussed on sub-atomic physics, largely neutrino and dark matter physics. SNOLAB seeks to enable, spearhead, catalyze and promote underground science, while inspiring both the public and future professionals in the field.

VISIT website >

SNO stands for Sudbury Neutrino Observatory according to the information in my June 6, 2019 posting about a then upcoming talk tiled, Whispering in the Dark: Updates from Underground Science. More recently, I noted that TRIUMF’s (Canada’s national particle accelerator centre) new Chief Executive Officer, Nigel Smith, was moving to Vancouver from Sudbury’s SNOLAB in my May 12, 2021 posting.

Drift’s online exhibition at the Agnes can still be accessed and there is lots to see.

There’s a little more to be had from the Drift: Art and Dark Matter exhibition webpage on the Agnes website,

Artist Biographies

Nadia Lichtig is an artist currently living in the South of France. In her multilayered work, voice is transposed into various media including painting, print, sculpture, photography, performance, soundscape and song—each medium approached not as a field to be mastered, but as a source of possibilities to question our ability to decipher the present. Visual and aural aspects entangle in her performances.

Lichtig studied linguistics at the LMU Munich in Germany and at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Paris, France with Jean-Luc Vilmouth, where she graduated with honours in 2001, before assisting Mike Kelley in Los Angeles, USA the same year. She taught at the Shrishti School of Art and Technology, Bangalore, India as a visiting professor in 2006, at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts of Valence in 2007, and is professor of Fine Arts at the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-arts of Montpellier (MOCO-ESBA), France since 2009. She has collaborated with musicians who are also visual artists, such as Bertrand Georges (Audible), Christian Bouyjou (Popopfalse), Nicolu (La Chatte), Nina Canal (Ut) and Michael Moorley (The dead C). Nadia Lichtig worked and works under several group names and pseudonyms (until 2009: EchoparK, Falseparklocation, Skrietch, Ghosttrap and Nanana).

Josèfa Ntjam was born in 1992 in Metz (FR), and currently lives and works in Paris. Ntjam is part of a generation of artists who grew up with the internet, communicating and sending images by electromagnetic wave. Working with video, text, installation, performance and photomontage, Ntjam creates a story with every piece that acts as a reflection of the world around her. Drawing connections to science fiction and the cosmos, Ntjam has said of her work, “I sat there some time ago with Sun Ra in his Spaceship experimenting with a series of alternative stories. An exoteric syncretism with which I travel as a vessel in perpetual motion.”

Ntjam studied in Amiens and Dakar (Cheikh Anta Diop University) and graduated from l’Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Art, Bourges (FR) and Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Art, Paris-Cergy (FR). Her works and performance have been shown at numerous venues such as the 15th Biennial of Lyon, DOC! Paris, a la Zentral (CH), Palais de Tokyo, Beton Salon, La Cite internationale des arts, la Bienanale de Dakar (SN), Let Us Rflect Festival (FR), FRAC de Caen, and CAC Bretigny.

Anne Riley is a multidisciplinary artist living as an uninvited Slavey Dene/German guest from Fort Nelson First Nation on the unceded Territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-waututh Nations. Her work explores different ways of being and becoming, touch, and Indigeneity. Riley received her BFA from the University of Texas at Austin in 2012. She has exhibited both in the United States and Canada. Currently she is working on a public art project commissioned by the City of Vancouver with her collaborator, T’uy’tanat Cease Wyss. Wyss and Riley’s project A Constellation of Remediation consists of Indigenous remediation gardens planted throughout the city, decolonizing and healing the dirt back to soil. The duo was longlisted for the 2021 Sobey Art Award.

Riley’s that brings the other nearly as close as oneself, included in the 2015 exhibition Every Little Bit Hurts at Western Front, foregrounded touch, impression and embodied experience. It featured a wall drawing created by the artist rubbing, dragging and moving her body across the gallery wall wearing raw-dyed denim. “I’m interested in queer touch as a radical act,” she says. “It’s not always possible because of fear. But I’m also investigating first touch between mother and child. I have the same hands as my mother and my great grandmother.”

Jol Thoms is a Canadian-born, European-based artist, author and sound designer. Both his written and moving-image work engage posthumanism, feminist science studies, general ecology and the environmental implications of pervasive technical/sensing devices. In the fields of neutrino and dark matter physics he collaborates with renowned physics institutes around the world. These “laboratory-landscapes” are the focus of his practice led PhD at the University of Westminster. In 2017 Thoms was a fellow of Schloss Solitude and resident artist at the Bosch Campus for Research and Advanced Engineering.

Thoms graduated with an Honors BA in Philosophy, Art History and Visual Studies from the University of Toronto (2009) and later studied under Prof. Simon Starling at the Städelschule in Frankfurt (2013). Between 2014 and 2016 he developed and taught an experimental creative-research program for architecture students at the University of Braunschweig with then interim director Tomás Saraceno. In 2016 Thoms won the MERU Art*Science Award for his film G24|0vßß, which was installed in the Blind Faith: Between the Cognitive and the Visceral in Contemporary Art group exhibition at Haus der Kunst, Munich.

Drift moves to the Belkin in British Columbia

An invitation (also received via email) to the show’s launch in BC is for the evening before the show officially opens,

Thursday 9 Sep 2021, 6 pm

Please join us for the opening of Drift: Art and Dark Matter  with a performance-conversation between artists Denise Ferreira da Silva and Jol Thoms. This event is free and open to the public, but space is limited due to COVID-19 safety protocols. To ensure a spot, please RSVP to belkin.rsvp@ubc.ca.

Opening remarks will begin at 6 pm, followed by a conversation with Ferreira da Silva and Thoms who will touch on intersections between the films Soot Breath / Corpus Infinitum (2021) and n-Land (2021), both of which will play throughout the evening on the Belkin’s Outdoor Screen.

Soot Breath / Corpus Infinitum (2021) is a film collaboration between Arjuna Neuman and Denise Ferreira da Silva. Moving across scales geologic, historic-cultural, quantum and cosmic, the work reimagines knowledge and existence without the limits of European and Colonial constructions of the human.

n-Land (2021) is an audio-visual composition by Jol Thoms. Examining context and agency through scales at once geologic, cosmic and human, the piece probes the ecological ethics of our time through a holographic, multi-dimensional view of the SNOLAB site.

The official dates for Drift are Friday, September 10, 2021to December 5, 2021.

As best as I can tell from the Morris & Helen Belkin Art Gallery (the Belkin) homepage description of ‘Drift’, the show will comprise the original series of installations from the four artists featured at the Agnes. The new work from art/science residencies at the University of British Columbia (UBC), where the Belkin is located will be featured in artist talks and in a symposium to be held in November 2021.

Here’s how the newest residencies are described and a list of the various supporting agencies in an undated announcement on the Galleries West website,

As a complement to the Drift exhibition, the Belkin is collaborating with the Stewart Blusson Quantum Matter Institute (SBQMI) and the Department of Physics and Astronomy at UBC on Ars Scientia [emphasis mine], an interdisciplinary research project fusing the praxes of art and science that will include artist-scientist residencies and a research symposium.

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario, City of Kingston Arts Fund through the Kingston Arts Council and the George Taylor Richardson Memorial Fund at Queen’s University. The project is curated by Sunny Kerr, Curator of Contemporary Art at Agnes Etherington Art Centre. The Belkin gratefully acknowledges [emphasis mine] the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council, UBC Grants for Catalyzing Research Clusters, and our Belkin Curator’s Forum members.

Ars Scientia

There’s a brief description of Ars Scientia in the graduate school webspace located on the UBC website. Emily Wight’s March 22, 2021 article for the Stewart Blusson Quantum Matter Institute (SBQMI) provides more detail about Ars Scientia (the first para. is the least interesting),

The Stewart Blusson Quantum Matter Institute (Blusson QMI) has partnered with the Morris & Helen Belkin Art Gallery (the Belkin) and UBC’s Department of Physics and Astronomy (UBC PHAS) in Ars Scientia, a new project that connects physicists and artists in an effort to find shared ways of communicating about science and explaining the world around us. The partnership was recently awarded two years of funding through the UBC Research Excellence Cluster program.

Though the project is in its early days, the team at Ars Scientia is already working quickly to partner scientists with artists who will conduct six-month residencies in order to explore the potential for academic art-science collaborations; much of the cluster’s early programming will be in support of DRIFT: Art and Dark Matter (DRIFT), an exhibit set to debut at the Belkin in September 2021. DRIFT is a collaborative exhibit that has linked artists and scientists in exploring ways of describing that which exists beyond the limits of our language and understanding; most recently, the exhibit connected the Agnes Etherington Art Centre at Queen’s University, the Arthur B. McDonald Canadian Astroparticle Physics Research Institute, and SNOLAB.

This partnership is a promising early step in Blusson QMI’s mission to engage meaningfully with the art community and external audiences, and an opportunity for an enriching exchange of knowledge and perspective. Students in particular will benefit from this exchange; by inviting artists into labs and research spaces, trainee scientists will gain valuable insight into how someone with different expertise might interpret their work, and how to communicate more effectively about their research. New programs are under development and will be announced soon.

Ars Scientia is co-led by Andrea Damascelli, UBC PHAS [Dept. of Physics and Astronomy] Professor and Blusson QMI Scientific Director; Jeremy Heyl, UBC PHAS Professor; and Shelly Rosenblum, Curator of Academic Programs at the Belkin, and supported by a team of staff including Program Manager James Day.

Art/science residencies in BC

I found this undated announcement on the Belkin Art Gallery website,

Ars Scientia: Merging Artistic Practice with Scientific Research

The long search for dark matter has put the spotlight on the limitations of human knowledge and technological capability. Confronted with the shortcomings of our established modes of detecting, diagnosing and testing, the search beckons the creation of new ways of learning and knowing. Fusing the praxes of arts and science in the emergent fields of interdisciplinary research, Ars Scientia, a tripartite partnership between UBC’s Stewart Blusson Quantum Matter Institute (SBQMI), the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Belkin, presents an opportunity to foster new modes of knowledge exchange across the arts, sciences and their pedagogies. Funded by UBC’s Research Excellence Cluster program, Ars Scientia will conduct rich programming and research to address this line of inquiry over the next two years beginning in 2021.

The Ars Scientia research cluster has begun this interdisciplinary work by partnering scientists with artists to conduct six-month residencies that explore the potential for academic art-science collaborations. [List is not complete] Artists Justine A. Chambers, Josephine Lee, Khan Lee and Kelly Lycan have partnered with physicists Rysa Greenwood, Alannah Hallas, Daniel Korchinski, Kirk Madison, Sarah Morris and Luke Reynolds to identify areas of collaborative research in pursuit of both scientific and artistic aims. The residencies will culminate in a research symposium where collaborative findings will be shared, set to take place in November 2021 [emphases mine].

Much of the early programming of Ars Scientia will be in support of Drift: Art and Dark Matter (7 September-5 December 2021) at the Belkin, a residency and exhibition project generated by Agnes Etherington Art Centre, the Arthur B. McDonald Canadian Astroparticle Physics Research Institute and SNOLAB.

There is what seems to be a more complete list of the participants in the Belkin/Blusson residency on the same webpage as the undated announcement of the above,

  • Justine A. Chambers
  • Andrea Damascelli
  • James Day
  • Rysa Greenwood
  • Jeremy Heyl
  • Daniel Korchinski
  • Josephine Lee
  • Khan Lee
  • Kelly Lycan
  • Kirk Madison
  • Susana Mendez Álcala
  • Sarah Morris
  • Marcus Prasad
  • Luke Reynolds
  • Shelly Rosenblum
  • Emily Wight

You’ll notice two things should you go to the undated announcement. First, some of the names are clickable; these are the artists’ biographies. Second, Emily Wight who wrote the March 22, 2021 article for the Stewart Blusson Quantum Matter Institute (SBQMI) is also on the list. I also noticed that a couple of the names belong to people who are staff members, James Day (Ars Scientia Program Manager) and Marcus Prasad (from his personal website: Academic Programs Assistant at the Belkin Assistant Project Coordinator for Ars Scientia).

?

On Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021, I emailed some followup questions for the folks at the Belkin. Sadly, I failed to take into account that long weekend, which gave them very little time to respond before I planned to post this. Should I receive any replies, I will update this posting.

*ETA September 9, 2021: Marcus Prasad, Academic Programs Assistant at the Belkin Assistant Project Coordinator for Ars Scientia, very kindly sent answers to the questions:

Here are the questions:

  • Would you have any details about the talks, projects, and/or symposium?

*One of Ars Scientia’s main projects is a residency program between UBC physicists and 4 artists who have been paired up or grouped together to think through an arts-science collaboration. As practicing professionals in their respective fields, they have been asked to think about points of intersection and difference in their disciplines, as well as to formulate new ways of knowing and learning from each other. The intent of this residency program is to provide time and space for these collaborations to unfold in whatever way the participants desire. We plan to have a symposium/gathering event at the end of November where findings from these collaborations can be presented in a large discussion. While this research cluster is topically related to the Drift exhibition at the Belkin, it is somewhat of a separate entity. Programming in the research cluster complements the Belkin’s exhibition, but will continue over the next couple of years after Drift has left the gallery. [emphases mine]

  • Will there be an online version of the BC work? (e.g., the Agnes had and still has an online version of the show.)

*I am unsure what kind of online presence the Belkin will have for the works in the exhibition specifically, but documentation of related events and programming is often made available on their website.

  • I noticed that Emily Wight who wrote the March 22, 2021 article about the show for the ‘Stewart Blusson’ is also listed as one of the participants. The only (more or less) relevant online reference I could find for Ms. Wight was at Carleton University for a student art show. Is this the same person? Is she an artist and/or writer who’s participating in the residency?

*Emily Wight is part of the steering committee for Ars Scientia, along with myself, James Day, and Susana Mendez Álcala. Shelly Rosenblum, Andrea Damascelli, and Jeremy Heyl are the cluster co-leads, and the rest of the listed names are either artists or physicists participating in the residency.

**Note: Susana Mendez Álcala is the Large Grants and Awards Officer at the SBQMI.

  • Will there be some talks that focus on astrophysics? e.g., Might someone from TRIUMF such as the new CEO, Nigel Smith who came here from the SNOLAB give a talk? [See my May 12, 2021 posting about TRIUMF’s new Chief Executive Office {CEO}]
  • Following on that thought, will there be any joint events with other organizations as there were with The Beautiful Brain show? [See my September 11, 2017 posting titled: “Art in the details: A look at the role of art in science—a Sept. 19, 2017 Café Scientifique event in Vancouver, Canada” for more about that exhibit and its associated events ?

*To my knowledge, we have not planned for a talk with TRIUMF as of yet. The QMI is working on programming with the H.R. MacMillan space centre for Dark Matter Days, however, and we do plan to expand our reach to other organizations in the second year of our cluster.

**Prasad also had this to say: “… we are in the midst of getting an Ars Scientia website up, so there’ll be more concrete information on there to come.”

**Thank you to Marcus Prasad for the answers and for clearing up a few matters that I had not thought to ask about.**

One comment: I have had difficulties accessing the Belkin Gallery website, e.g., most of Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2021 and on the morning of Friday, September 3, 2021. Hopefully, they’re experiencing just a few glitches and nothing more serious.

There you have it.