Toronto’s Art/Sci Salon’s January 30, 2023 announcement (received via email) lists information for two organizations, the Onsite Gallery’s events and the Salon’s own events.
Onsite Gallery
This gallery is located in Toronto, Ontario at 199 Richmond St. W. From the homepage, “It is the flagship professional gallery of OCAD [Ontario College of Art and Design] University and an experimental curatorial platform for art, design and new media.”
From the Onsite Gallery ‘more-than-human‘ event page. First, there’s the exhibition (Note 1: I found the gallery’s event page I’m using here more informative than the email announcement; Note 2: I have not included the images featuring the artists and their work),
more-than-human
February 01 to May 13, 2023
Curated by Jane Tingley
Core exhibition of the CONTACT Photography Festival
more-than-human presents media artworks at the intersection of art, science, Indigenous worldviews, and technology that speculatively and poetically use multimodal storytelling as a vehicle for interpreting, mattering, and embodying more-than-human ecologies. The artworks in this exhibition aim to critically and emotionally engage with the important work of decentering the human and rethinking the perspective that sees nature as a lifeless resource for exploitation. Many of the artworks use technological and scientific tools as entry points for witnessing and interacting with these more-than-human worlds, as they help visualize phenomena beyond human sensory perception while nevertheless situating us within them. Combined, the artworks in the show weave a story that tells a tale of symbiosis, intersections, and more-than-human relationality. They incorporate scientific, philosophical, and Indigenous perspectives to create an experiential tapestry that asks the viewer to reconsider, reorient, and rethink relationships with the more-than-human.
Jane Tingley is an artist, curator, Director of the SLOlab: Sympoietic Living Ontologies Lab and Associate Professor at York University. Her studio work combines traditional studio practice with new media tools – and spans responsive/interactive installation, performative robotics, and telematically connected distributed sculptures/installations. Her works is interdisciplinary in nature and explores the creation of spaces and experiences that push the boundaries between science and magic, interactivity, and playfulness, and offer an experience to the viewer that is accessible both intellectually and technologically. Using distributed technologies, her current work investigates the hidden complexity found in the natural world and explores the deep interconnections between the human and non-human relationships. As a curator her interests lie at the intersection art, science, and technology with a special interest in collaborative creativity as impetus for innovation and discovery. Recent exhibitions include Hedonistika (2014) at the Musée d’art contemporain (Mtl, CA), INTERACTION (2016) and Agentsfor Change (2020) at THE MUSEUM (Kitchener, CA). As an artist she has participated in exhibitions and festivals in the Americas, the Middle East, Asia, and Europe – including translife -International Triennial of Media Art at the National Art Museum of China, Beijing, Elektra Festival in Montréal (CA) and the Künstlerhause in Vienna (AT). She received the Kenneth Finkelstein Prize in Sculpture (CA), the first prize in the iNTERFACES – Interactive Art Competition (PT).
more-than-human artists
Ursula Biemann is an artist, author and video essayist. Her artistic practice is research oriented and involves fieldwork from Greenland to Amazonia, where she investigates climate change and the ecologies of oil, ice, forests and water. In her multi-layered videos, she interweaves vast cinematic landscapes with documentary footage, science fiction poetry and academic findings to narrate a changing planetary reality. In 2018, Biemann was commissioned by Museo de Arte, Universidad Nacional de Colombia in the co-creation of a new Indigenous University in the South of Colombia led by the Inga people in which she contributes the online platform Devenir Universidad. Her recent video installation Forest Mind (2021) emerges from this long-term collaboration. She has published numerous books, including Forest Mind (2022) and the audiovisual online monograph Becoming Earth on her ecological video works between 2011-2021. Biemann has exhibited internationally with recent solo exhibitions at MAMAC, Nice and the Centre culturel suisse, Paris. She is appointed Doctor honoris causa in Humanities by the Swedish University Umea, and has received the 2009 Prix Meret Oppenheim, the Swiss Grand Award for Art, and the 2022 Zurich Art Award.
Lindsey french (she/they) is a settler artist, educator and writer whose work engages in multi- sensory signaling within ecological and technological systems. She has exhibited widely including at the Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), the International Museum of Surgical Science (Chicago), Pratt Manhattan Gallery (New York), the Miller Gallery for Contemporary Art (Pittsburgh), and SixtyEight Art Institute (Copenhagen). Recent publications include chapters for Ambiguous Territory: Architecture, Landscape, and the Postnatural (Actar, 2022), Olfactory Art and The Political in an Age of Resistance (Routledge, 2021), Why Look at Plants (Brill, 2019), and poetry for the journal Forty-Five. They earned an interdisciplinary BA in Environment, Interaction, and Design (Hampshire College), and an MFA in Art and Technology Studies (School of the Art Institute of Chicago). Newly based in the prairie landscape of Treaty 4 territory in Regina, Saskatchewan, french teaches as an Assistant Professor in Creative Technologies in the Faculty of Media, Art, and Performance at the University of Regina.
Grace Grothaus Is a computational media artist whose research explores ecosystemic human and plant relationships in relation to the present global climate crisis and speculative futures. She is interested in art’s potential to foster empathy with more-than-human worlds. Frequently collaborative, Grace works with scientists, engineers, musicians and other visual and performing artists. Her research-creation is expressed as physical computing installations which take place both outdoors or in the gallery and often center around the sensing and visualization of invisible environmental phenomena. Her artworks have been exhibited widely including at the International Symposium of Electronic Art (Barcelona, ES & Durban, SA), Environmental Crisis: Art & Science (London, UK), Cité Internationale des Arts (Paris, FR), and the World Creativity Biennale (Rio de Janiero, BR). Grothaus has received numerous awards including from the United States National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts. Currently she is working towards a PhD in Digital Media from York University where she has been named a VISTA scholar and a Graduate Fellow of Academic Distinction.
Dolleen Tisawii’ashii Manning is an interdisciplinary artist and Queen’s National Scholar in Anishinaabe Language, Knowledge, and Culture (ALKC) in the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Studies at Queen’s University. Manning has expertise in Anishinaabe ontology, mnidoo interrelationality, phenomenology, and art. A member of Kettle and Stoney Point First Nation, her primary philosophical influence and source of creativity is her early childhood grounding in Anishinaabe onto- epistemology. She is Principal Investigator of Earthdiver: Land-Based Worlding (MITACS), and Co-Investigator on Pluriversal Worlding with Extended Reality. Manning co-directs the cross- institutional Peripheral Visions Co-Lab (York and Queen’s). She is an affiliate of Revision Centre for Art and Social Justice, and Fellow of The International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI).
Mary Bunch is a media artist, Canada Research Chair, and Associate Professor, Cinema and Media Arts at York University. Through theoretical inquiry and collaborative research creation, Bunch mobilizes queer, feminist, disability and decolonial frameworks to better understand peripheral worldmaking imaginaries in media arts and intermedial performance. She is co-editor of a special issue on Access Aesthetics in Public, Principal Investigator on the research creation project Pluriversal Worlding with Extended Reality (SSHRC Insight) and co-investigator on Earthdiver: Land- Based Worlding (MITACS). Dr Bunch is co-director of the Peripheral Visions Co- Lab, Executive Committee member of Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts and Technology, a core member of Vision: Science to Applications (VISTA), a Fellow at the Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies, and an Affiliate of Revision Centre for Art and Social Justice.
Suzanne Morrissette (she/her) (she/her) is an artist, curator, and scholar who is currently based out of Toronto. Her father’s parents were Michif- and Cree-speaking Metis with family histories tied to the Interlake and Red River regions and Scrip in the area now known as Manitoba. Her mother’s parents came from Canadian-born farming families descended from United Empire loyalists and Mennonites from Russia. Morrissette was born and raised in Winnipeg and is a citizen of the Manitoba Metis Federation. As an artistic researcher Suzanne’s interests include: family and community knowledge, methods of translation, the telling of in-between histories, and practices of making that support and sustain life. Her two recent solo exhibitions, What does good work look like? and translations recently opened in Toronto (Gallery 44) and Montreal (daphne art centre) respectively. Her work has appeared in numerous group exhibitions such as Lii Zoot Tayr (Other Worlds), an exhibition of Metis artists working with concepts of the unknowable, and the group exhibition of audio-based work about waterways called FLOW with imagineNATIVE Film + Media Art Festival. Morrissette holds a PhD from York University in Social and Political Thought. She currently holds the position of Assistant Professor and Graduate Program Director for the Criticism and Curatorial Practices and Contemporary Art, Design, and New Media Histories Masters programs at OCAD University.
Joel Ong (PhD, MSc.Bioart) is a media artist whose works connect scientific and artistic approaches to the environment, developed from more than a decade of explorations in sound, installation and socially conscious art. His conceptual explorations revolve around metaphors of distance, connectivity, assiduously reworking this notion of the ‘environment’ – how different tools and scales of observation reveal diverse biotic and abiotic relationalities, and how these continually oscillate between natural and computational worlds. His works have been shown at internationally at the Currents New Media Festival, Nuit Blanche Toronto, Seattle Art Museum, the Gregg Museum of Art and Design, the Penny Stamps Gallery and the Ontario Science Centre etc. Joel is Associate Professor in Computational Arts and Director of Sensorium:The Centre for Digital Arts and Technology at York University, in Toronto, Canada. His research has been funded by such as SSHRC, eCampus Ontario, Women and Gender Equality Canada.
Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits are Riga and Karlsruhe based artists and co-founders of RIXC Center for New Media Culture in Riga [Latvia], co-curators of RIXC Art and Science Festival, chief-editors of Acoustic Space, as well as co-chairs of recently founded NAIA – Naturally Artificial Intelligence Art association in Karlsruhe, Germany. Together they create visionary and networked artworks – from pioneering internet radio experiments in 1990s, to artistic investigations in electromagnetic spectrum and collaborations with radio astronomers, and more recent “techno-ecological” explorations. Their projects have been nominated (Purvitis Prize 2019, 2021, International Public Arts Award – Euroasia region 2021), awarded (Ars Electronica 1998, Falling Walls – Science Breakthrough 2021) and shown widely including at the Venice Architecture Biennale, Latvian National Museum of Arts, House of Electronic Arts in Basel, Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, and other venues, exhibitions and festivals in Europe, US, Canada and Asia. More recently they both also have been lecturers in MIT ACT – Art Culture Technology program (2018-2021), Boston.
Rasa Smite holds a PhD in sociology of media and culture; her thesis Creative Networks. In the Rear-View Mirror of Eastern European History (11) has been published by The Amsterdam Institute for Network Cultures. Currently she is a Professor of New Media Art at Liepaja University, and Senior Researcher at FHNW Academy of Art and Design in Basel, Switzerland.
Raitis Smits holds his doctoral degree in arts, and he is a Professor at the Art Academy of Latvia. In 2017 Raitis was a Fulbright Researcher in the Graduate Center of NYC.
Artists Rasa Smite & Raitis Smits, Grace Grothaus, Suzanne Morrissette and Lindsey french introduce their works exhibited in more-than-human and engage in a discussion about their practice. Moderated by Jane Tingley.
Join Dr Karen Houle for an introductory talk on basic premises of Cartesian humanism followed by an exhibition tour discussion of the artworks in that context with Jane Tingley.
Forest Mind (31 minutes) tackles the underlying concepts that distinguish the Indigenous knowledge systems from that of modern science, gauging the limits of rationalism which has dominated Western thinking for the last 200 years.
Artists Joel Ong, Jane Tingley, Dolleen Tisawii’ashii Manning and Mary Bunch introduce their artworks their works exhibited in more-than-human and engage in a discussion about their practice. Moderated by Lisa Deanne Smith.
Join us for a slow paced, sensory-based guided walk that connects you with the healing power of the natural world. Space is limited, advance registration required.
Registration is limited, free tickets will be released on 1 April [2023] at 12 p.m.: https://bit.ly/3XlyOga
There’s more.
Art/Sci Salon February 28 – May 7, 2023 events
From the January 30, 2023 Art/Sci Salon announcement (received via email), Note: Most of the in-person events take place in Toronto,Ontario,
Mark your calendar for the following events (more details coming up soon)
Artsci Dialogues
Ecology, Symbiosis, Human/Plant Relations
Feb 25 [2023], 3:00-5:00 pm, The Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences [222 College Street · Toronto, Ontario] In person and Online
Ethics of Care
March 25 [2023], 3:00-5:00 pm The Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical sciences In person and Online
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.
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.
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.
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.
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].
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.
At long last, the end is in sight! This last part is mostly a collection of items that don’t fit elsewhere or could have fit elsewhere but that particular part was already overstuffed.
Podcasting science for the people
March 2009 was the birth date for a podcast, then called Skeptically Speaking and now known as Science for the People (Wikipedia entry). Here’s more from the Science for the People About webpage,
Science for the People is a long-format interview podcast that explores the connections between science, popular culture, history, and public policy, to help listeners understand the evidence and arguments behind what’s in the news and on the shelves.
Every week, our hosts sit down with science researchers, writers, authors, journalists, and experts to discuss science from the past, the science that affects our lives today, and how science might change our future.
THE TEAM
Rachelle Saunders: Producer & Host
I love to learn new things, and say the word “fascinating” way too much. I like to talk about intersections and how science and critical thinking intersect with everyday life, politics, history, and culture. By day I’m a web developer, and I definitely listen to way too many podcasts.
Created in 2007 with the generous funding of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Strategic Knowledge Cluster grant, Situating Science is a seven-year project promoting communication and collaboration among humanists and social scientists that are engaged in the study of science and technology.
…
You can find out more about Situating Science’s final days in my August 16, 2013 posting where I included a lot of information about one of their last events titled, “Science and Society 2013 Symposium; Emerging Agendas for Citizens and the Sciences.”
…
The “think-tank” will dovetail nicely with a special symposium in Ottawa on Science and Society Oct. 21-23. For this symposium, the Cluster is partnering with the Institute for Science, Society and Policy to bring together scholars from various disciplines, public servants and policy workers to discuss key issues at the intersection of science and society. [emphasis mine] The discussions will be compiled in a document to be shared with stakeholders and the wider public.
The team will continue to seek support and partnerships for projects within the scope of its objectives. Among our top priorities are a partnership to explore sciences, technologies and their publics as well as new partnerships to build upon exchanges between scholars and institutions in India, Singapore and Canada.
…
The Situating Science folks did attempt to carry on the organization’s work by rebranding the organization to call it the Canadian Consortium for Situating Science and Technology (CCSST). It seems to have been a short-lived volunteer effort.
Meanwhile, the special symposium held in October 2013 appears to have been the springboard for another SSHRC funded multi-year initiative, this time focused on science collaborations between Canada, India, and Singapore, Cosmopolitanism and the Local in Science and Nature from 2014 – 2017. Despite their sunset year having been in 2017, their homepage boasts news about a 2020 Congress and their Twitter feed is still active. Harking back, here’s what the project was designed to do, from the About Us page,
Welcome to our three year project that will establish a research network on “Cosmopolitanism” in science. It closely examines the actual types of negotiations that go into the making of science and its culture within an increasingly globalized landscape. This partnership is both about “cosmopolitanism and the local” and is, at the same time, cosmopolitan and local.
Anyone who reads this blog with any frequency will know that I often comment on the fact that when organizations such as the Council of Canadian Academies bring in experts from other parts of the world, they are almost always from the US or Europe. So, I was delighted to discover the Cosmopolitanism project and featured it in a February 19, 2015 posting.
Expose a hitherto largely Eurocentric scholarly community in Canada to widening international perspectives and methods,
Build on past successes at border-crossings and exchanges between the participants,
Facilitate a much needed nation-wide organization and exchange amongst Indian and South East Asian scholars, in concert with their Canadian counterparts, by integrating into an international network,
Open up new perspectives on the genesis and place of globalized science, and thereby
Offer alternative ways to conceptualize and engage globalization itself, and especially the globalization of knowledge and science.
Bring the managerial team together for joint discussion, research exchange, leveraging and planning – all in the aid of laying the grounds of a sustainable partnership
Eco Art (also known as ecological art or environmental art)
I’m of two minds as to whether I should have tried to stuff this into the art/sci subsection in part 2. On balance, I decided that this merited its own section and that part 2 was already overstuffed.
Let’s start in Newfoundland and Labrador with Marlene Creates (pronounced Kreets), here’s more about her from her website’s bio webpage,
Marlene Creates (pronounced “Kreets”) is an environmental artist and poet who works with photography, video, scientific and vernacular knowledge, walking and collaborative site-specific performance in the six-acre patch of boreal forest in Portugal Cove, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, where she lives.
…
For almost 40 years her work has been an exploration of the relationship between human experience, memory, language and the land, and the impact they have on each other. …
…
Currently her work is focused on the six acres of boreal forest where she lives in a ‘relational aesthetic’ to the land. This oeuvre includes Water Flowing to the Sea Captured at the Speed of Light, Blast Hole Pond River, Newfoundland 2002–2003, and several ongoing projects:
…
Marlene Creates received a Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts for “Lifetime Artistic Achievement” in 2019. …
An October 1, 2018 article by Yasmin Nurming-Por for Canadian Art magazine features 10 artists who focus on environmental and/or land art themes,
As part of her 2016 master’s thesis exhibition, Fredericton [New Brunswick] artist Gillian Dykeman presented the video Dispatches from the Feminist Utopian Future within a larger installation that imagined various canonical earthworks from the perspective of the future. It’s a project that addresses the inherent sense of timelessness in these massive interventions on the natural landscape from the perspective of contemporary land politics. … she proposes a kind of interaction with the invasive and often colonial gestures of modernist Land art, one that imagines a different future for these earthworks, where they are treated as alien in a landscape and as beacons from a feminist future.
…
A video trailer featuring “DISPATCHES FROM THE FEMINIST UTOPIAN FUTURE” (from Dykeman’s website archive page featuring the show,
If you have the time, I recommend reading the article in its entirety.
Oddly, I did not expect Vancouver to have such an active eco arts focus. The City of Vancouver Parks Board maintains an Environmental Art webpage on its site listing a number of current and past projects.
I cannot find the date for when this Parks Board initiative started but I did find a document produced prior to a Spring 2006 Arts & Ecology think tank held in Vancouver under the auspices of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Canadian Commission for UNESCO, the Vancouver Foundation, and the Royal Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (London UK).
In all likelihood, Vancouver Park Board’s Environmental Art webpage was produced after 2006.
I imagine the document and the think tank session helped to anchor any then current eco art projects and encouraged more projects.
While its early days were in 2008, EartHand Gleaners (Vancouver-based) wasn’t formally founded as an arts non-for-profit organization until 2013. You can find out more about them and their projects here.
Eco Art has been around for decades according to the eco art think tank document but it does seemed to have gained momentum here in Canada over the last decade.
Photography and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
Exploring the jack pine tight knit family tree. Credit: Dana Harris Brock University (2018)
Pictured are developing phloem, cambial, and xylem cells (blue), and mature xylem cells (red), in the outermost portion of a jack pine tree. This research aims to identify the influences of climate on the cellular development of the species at its northern limit in Yellowknife, NT. The differences in these cell formations is what creates the annual tree ring boundary.
Science Exposed is a photography contest for scientists which has been run since 2016 (assuming the Past Winners archive is a good indicator for the programme’s starting year).
The 2020 competition recently closed but public voting should start soon. It’s nice to see that NSERC is now making efforts to engage members of the general public rather than focusing its efforts solely on children. The UK’s ASPIRES project seems to support the idea that adults need to be more fully engaged with STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) efforts as it found that children’s attitudes toward science are strongly influenced by their parents’ and relatives’ attitudes.(See my January 31, 2012 posting.)
Ingenious, the book and Ingenium, the science museums
To celebrate Canada’s 150th anniversary in 2017, then Governor General David Johnston and Tom Jenkins (Chair of the board for Open Text and former Chair of the federal committee overseeing the ‘Review of Federal Support to R&’D [see my October 21, 2011 posting about the resulting report]) wrote a boo about Canada’s inventors and inventions.
Johnston and Jenkins jaunted around the country launching their book (I have more about their June 1, 2017 Vancouver visit in a May 30, 2017 posting; scroll down about 60% of the way]).
The book’s full title, “Ingenious: How Canadian Innovators Made the World Smarter, Smaller, Kinder, Safer, Healthier, Wealthier and Happier ” outlines their thesis neatly.
Not all that long after the book was launched, there was a name change (thankfully) for the Canada Science and Technology Museums Corporation (CSTMC). It is now known as Ingenium (covered in my August 10, 2017 posting).
The reason that name change was such a relief (for those who don’t know) is that the corporation included three national science museums: Canada Aviation and Space Museum, Canada Agriculture and Food Museum, and (wait for it) Canada Science and Technology Museum. On the list of confusing names, this ranks very high for me. Again, I give thanks for the change from CSTMC to Ingenium, leaving the name for the museum alone.
2017 was also the year that the newly refurbished Canada Science and Technology Museum was reopened after more than three years (see my June 23, 2017 posting about the November 2017 reopening and my June 12, 2015 posting for more information about the situation that led to the closure).
A Saskatchewan lab, Convergence, Order of Canada, Year of Science, Animated Mathematics, a graphic novel, and new media
Since this section is jampacked, I’m using subheads.
Saskatchewan
Dr. Brian Eameshosts an artist-in-residence,Jean-Sebastien (JS) Gauthier at the University of Saskatchewan’s College of Medicine Eames Lab. A February 16, 2018 posting here featured their first collaboration together. It covered evolutionary biology, the synchrotron (Canadian Light Source [CLS]) in Saskatoon, and the ‘ins and outs’ of a collaboration between a scientist an artist. Presumably the art-in-residence position indicates that first collaboration went very well.
In January 2020, Brian kindly gave me an update on their current projects. Jean-Sebastin successfully coded an interactive piece for an exhibit at the 2019 Nuit Blanche Saskatoon event using Connect (Xbox). More recently, he got a VR [virtual reality] helmet for an upcoming project or two.
Our Glass is a work of interactive SciArt co-created by artist JS Gauthier and biologist Dr Brian F. Eames. It uses cutting-edge 3D microscopic images produced for artistic purposes at the Canadian Light Source, Canada’s only synchrotron facility. Our Glass engages viewers of all ages to peer within an hourglass showing how embryonic development compares among animals with whom we share a close genetic heritage.
Eames also mentioned they were hoping to hold an international SciArt Symposium at the University of Saskatchewan in 2021.
Convergence
Dr. Cristian Zaelzer-Perez, an instructor at Concordia University (Montreal; read this November 20, 2019 Concordia news release by Kelsey Rolfe for more about his work and awards), in 2016 founded the Convergence Initiative, a not-for-profit organization that encourages interdisciplinary neuroscience and art collaborations.
Cat Lau’s December 23, 2019 posting for the Science Borealis blog provides insight into Zaelzer-Perez’s relationship to science and art,
…
Cristian: I have had a relationship with art and science ever since I have had memory. As a child, I loved to do classifications, from grouping different flowers to collecting leaves by their shapes. At the same time, I really loved to draw them and for me, both things never looked different; they (art and science) have always worked together.
I started as a graphic designer, but the pursuit to learn about nature was never dead. At some point, I knew I wanted to go back to school to do research, to explore and learn new things. I started studying medical technologies, then molecular biology and then jumped into a PhD. At that point, my life as a graphic designer slipped down, because of the focus you have to give to the discipline. It seemed like every time I tried to dedicate myself to one thing, I would find myself doing the other thing a couple years later.
I came to Montreal to do my post-doc, but I had trouble publishing, which became problematic in getting a career. I was still loving what I was doing, but not seeing a future in that. Once again, art came back into my life and at the same time I saw that science was becoming really hard to understand and scientists were not doing much to bridge the gap.
For a writer of children’s science books, an appointment to the Order of Canada is a singular honour. I cannot recall a children’s science book writer previous to Shar Levine being appointed as a Member of the Order of Canada. Known as ‘The Science Lady‘, Levine was appointed in 2016. Here’s more from her Wikipedia entry, Note: Links have been removed,
Shar Levine (born 1953) is an award-winning, best selling Canadian children’s author, and designer.
Shar has written over 70 books and book/kits, primarily on hands-on science for children. For her work in Science literacy and Science promotion, Shar has been appointed to the 2016 Order of Canada. In 2015, she was recognized by the University of Alberta and received their Alumni Honour Award. Levine, and her co-author, Leslie Johnstone, were co-recipients of the Eve Savory Award for Science Communication from the BC Innovation Council (2006) and their book, Backyard Science, was a finalist for the Subaru Award, (hands on activity) from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Science Books and Films (2005). The Ultimate Guide to Your Microscope was a finalist-2008 American Association for the Advancement of Science/Subaru Science Books and Films Prize Hands -On Science/Activity Books.
…
To get a sense of what an appointment to the Order of Canada means, here’s a description from the government of Canada website,
The Order of Canada is how our country honours people who make extraordinary contributions to the nation.
Since its creation in 1967—Canada’s centennial year—more than 7 000 people from all sectors of society have been invested into the Order. The contributions of these trailblazers are varied, yet they have all enriched the lives of others and made a difference to this country. Their grit and passion inspire us, teach us and show us the way forward. They exemplify the Order’s motto: DESIDERANTES MELIOREM PATRIAM (“They desire a better country”).
…
Year of Science in British Columbia
In the Fall of 2010, the British Columbia provincial government announced a Year of Science (coinciding with the school year) . Originally, it was supposed to be a provincial government-wide initiative but the idea percolated through any number of processes and emerged as a year dedicated to science education for youth (according to the idea’s originator, Moira Stilwell who was then a Member of the Legislative Assembly [MLA]’ I spoke with her sometime in 2010 or 2011).
As the ‘year’ drew to a close, there was a finale ($1.1M in funding), which was featured here in a July 6, 2011 posting.
The larger portion of the money ($1M) was awarded to Science World while $100,000 ($0.1 M) was given to the Pacific Institute of Mathematical Sciences To my knowledge there have been no followup announcements about how the money was used.
Animation and mathematics
In Toronto, mathematician Dr. Karan Singh enjoyed a flurry of interest due to his association with animator Chris Landreth and their Academy Award (Oscar) Winning 2004 animated film, Ryan. They have continued to work together as members of the Dynamic Graphics Project (DGP) Lab at the University of Toronto. Theirs is not the only Oscar winning work to emerge from one or more of the members of the lab. Jos Stam, DGP graduate and adjunct professor won his third in 2019.
A graphic novel and medical promise
An academic at Simon Fraser University since 2015, Coleman Nye worked with three other women to produce a graphic novel about medical dilemmas in a genre described as’ ethno-fiction’.
Lissa: A Story about Medical Promise, Friendship, and Revolution (2017) by Sherine Hamdy and Coleman Nye, two anthropologists and Art by Sarula Bao and Caroline Brewer, two artists.
As young girls in Cairo, Anna and Layla strike up an unlikely friendship that crosses class, cultural, and religious divides. Years later, Anna learns that she may carry the hereditary cancer gene responsible for her mother’s death. Meanwhile, Layla’s family is faced with a difficult decision about kidney transplantation. Their friendship is put to the test when these medical crises reveal stark differences in their perspectives…until revolutionary unrest in Egypt changes their lives forever.
The first book in a new series [ethnoGRAPIC; a series of graphic novels from the University of Toronto Press], Lissa brings anthropological research to life in comic form, combining scholarly insights and accessible, visually-rich storytelling to foster greater understanding of global politics, inequalities, and solidarity.
I hope to write more about this graphic novel in a future posting.
New Media
I don’t know if this could be described as a movement yet but it’s certainly an interesting minor development. Two new media centres have hosted, in the last four years, art/sci projects and/or workshops. It’s unexpected given this definition from the Wikipedia entry for New Media (Note: Links have been removed),
New media are forms of media that are computational and rely on computers for redistribution. Some examples of new media are computer animations, computer games, human-computer interfaces, interactive computer installations, websites, and virtual worlds.[1][2]
In Manitoba, the Video Pool Media Arts Centre hosted a February 2016 workshop Biology as a New Art Medium: Workshop with Marta De Menezes. De Menezes, an artist from Portugal, gave workshops and talks in both Winnipeg (Manitoba) and Toronto (Ontario). Here’s a description for the one in Winnipeg,
This workshop aims to explore the multiple possibilities of artistic approaches that can be developed in relation to Art and Microbiology in a DIY situation. A special emphasis will be placed on the development of collaborative art and microbiology projects where the artist has to learn some biological research skills in order to create the artwork. The course will consist of a series of intense experimental sessions that will give raise to discussions on the artistic, aesthetic and ethical issues raised by the art and the science involved. Handling these materials and organisms will provoke a reflection on the theoretical issues involved and the course will provide background information on the current diversity of artistic discourses centred on biological sciences, as well a forum for debate.
…
VIVO Media Arts Centre in Vancouver hosted the Invasive Systems in 2019. From the exhibition page,
Picture this – a world where AI invades human creativity, bacteria invade our brains, and invisible technological signals penetrate all natural environments. Where invasive species from plants to humans transform spaces where they don’t belong, technology infiltrates every aspect of our daily lives, and the waste of human inventions ravages our natural environments.
…
This weekend festival includes an art-science exhibition [emphasis mine], a hands-on workshop (Sat, separate registration required), and guided discussions and tours by the curator (Sat/Sun). It will showcase collaborative works by three artist/scientist pairs, and independent works by six artists. Opening reception will be on Friday, November 8 starting at 7pm; curator’s remarks and performance by Edzi’u at 7:30pm and 9pm.
New Westminster’s (British Columbia) New Media Gallery recently hosted an exhibition, ‘winds‘ from June 20 – September 29, 2019 that could be described as an art/sci exhibition,
Landscape and weather have long shared an intimate connection with the arts. Each of the works here is a landscape: captured, interpreted and presented through a range of technologies. The four artists in this exhibition have taken, as their material process, the movement of wind through physical space & time. They explore how our perception and understanding of landscape can be interpreted through technology.
These works have been created by what might be understood as a sort of scientific method or process that involves collecting data, acute observation, controlled experiments and the incorporation of measurements and technologies that control or collect motion, pressure, sound, pattern and the like. …
Council of Canadian Academies, Publishing, and Open Access
Established in 2005, the Council of Canadian Academies (CCA) (Wikipedia entry) is tasked by various departments and agencies to answer their queries about science issues that could affect the populace and/or the government. In 2014, the CCA published a report titled, Science Culture: Where Canada Stands. It was in response to the Canada Science and Technology Museums Corporation (now called Ingenium), Industry Canada, and Natural Resources Canada and their joint request that the CCA conduct an in-depth, independent assessment to investigate the state of Canada’s science culture.
I gave a pretty extensive analysis of the report, which I delivered in four parts: Part 1, Part 2 (a), Part 2 (b), and Part 3. In brief, the term ‘science culture’ seems to be specifically, i.e., it’s not used elsewhere in the world (that we know of), Canadian. We have lots to be proud of. I was a little disappointed by the lack of culture (arts) producers on the expert panel and, as usual, I bemoaned the fact that the international community included as reviewers, members of the panel, and as points for comparison were drawn from the usual suspects (US, UK, or somewhere in northern Europe).
Science publishing in Canada took a bit of a turn in 2010, when the country’s largest science publisher, NRC (National Research Council) Research Publisher was cut loose from the government and spun out into the private, *not-for-profit publisher*, Canadian Science Publishing (CSP). From the CSP Wikipedia entry,
Since 2010, Canadian Science Publishing has acquired five new journals:
Canadian Science Publishing offers researchers options to make their published papers freely available (open access) in their standard journals and in their open access journal, (from the CSP Wikipedia entry)
Arctic Science aims to provide a collaborative approach to Arctic research for a diverse group of users including government, policy makers, the general public, and researchers across all scientific fields
FACETS is Canada’s first open access multidisciplinary science journal, aiming to advance science by publishing research that the multi-faceted global community of research. FACETS is the official journal of the Royal Society of Canada’s Academy of Science.
Anthropocene Coasts aims to understand and predict the effects of human activity, including climate change, on coastal regions.
In addition, Canadian Science Publishing strives to make their content accessible through the CSP blog that includes plain language summaries of featured research. The open-access journal FACETS similarly publishes plain language summaries.
*comment removed*
CSP announced (on Twitter) a new annual contest in 2016,
New CONTEST! Announcing Visualizing Science! Share your science images & win great prizes! Full details on the blog http://cdnsciencepub.com/blog/2016-csp-image-contest-visualizing-science.aspx1:45 PM · Sep 19, 2016·TweetDeck
The 2016 blog posting is no longer accessible. Oddly for a contest of this type, I can’t find an image archive for previous contests. Regardless, a 2020 competition has been announced for Summer 2020. There are some details on the VISUALIZING SCIENCE 2020 webpage but some are missing, e.g., no opening date, no deadline. They are encouraging you to sign up for notices.
Back to open access, in a January 22, 2016 posting I featured news about Montreal Neuro (Montreal Neurological Institute [MNI] in Québec, Canada) and its then new policy giving researchers world wide access to its research and made a pledge that it would not seek patents for its work.
Fish, Newfoundland & Labrador, and Prince Edward Island
AquAdvantage’s genetically modified salmon was approved for consumption in Canada according to my May 20, 2016 posting. The salmon are produced/farmed by a US company (AquaBounty) but the the work of genetically modifying Atlantic salmon with genetic material from the Chinook (a Pacific ocean salmon) was mostly undertaken at Memorial University in Newfoundland & Labrador.
The process by which work done in Newfoundland & Labrador becomes the property of a US company is one that’s well known here in Canada. The preliminary work and technology is developed here and then purchased by a US company, which files patents, markets, and profits from it. Interestingly, the fish farms for the AquAdvantage salmon are mostly (two out of three) located on Prince Edward Island.
Intriguingly, 4.5 tonnes of the modified fish were sold for consumption in Canada without consumers being informed (see my Sept. 13, 2017 posting, scroll down about 45% of the way).
It’s not all sunshine and roses where science culture in Canada is concerned. Incidents where Canadians are not informed let alone consulted about major changes in the food supply and other areas are not unusual. Too many times, scientists, politicians, and government policy experts want to spread news about science without any response from the recipients who are in effect viewed as a ‘tabula rasa’ or a blank page.
Tying it all up
This series has been my best attempt to document in some fashion or another the extraordinary range of science culture in Canada from roughly 2010-19. Thank you! This series represents a huge amount of work and effort to develop science culture in Canada and I am deeply thankful that people give so much to this effort.
I have inevitably missed people and organizations and events. For that I am very sorry. (There is an addendum to the series as it’s been hard to stop but I don’t expect to add anything or anyone more.)
I want to mention but can’t expand upon,the Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy, which was established in the 2017 federal budget (see a March 31, 2017 posting about the Vector Institute and Canada’s artificial intelligence sector).
Science Borealis, the Canadian science blog aggregator, owes its existence to Canadian Science Publishing for the support (programming and financial) needed to establish itself and, I believe, that support is still ongoing. I think thanks are also due to Jenny Ryan who was working for CSP and championed the initiative. Jenny now works for Canadian Blood Services. Interestingly, that agency added a new programme, a ‘Lay Science Writing Competition’ in 2018. It’s offered n partnership with two other groups, the Centre for Blood Research at the University of British Columbia and Science Borealis
While the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada does not fit into my time frame as it lists as its founding date December 1, 1868 (18 months after confederation), the organization did celebrate its 150th anniversary in 2018.
Vancouver’s Electric Company often produces theatrical experiences that cover science topics such as the one featured in my June 7, 2013 posting, You are very star—an immersive transmedia experience.
Let’s Talk Science (Wikipedia entry) has been heavily involved with offering STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) programming both as part of curricular and extra-curricular across Canada since 1993.
This organization predates confederation having been founded in 1849 by Sir Sandford Fleming and Kivas Tully in Toronto. for surveyors, civil engineers, and architects. It is the Royal Canadian Institute of Science (Wikipedia entry)_. With almost no interruption, they have been delivering a regular series of lectures on the University of Toronto campus since 1913.
The Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics is a more recent beast. In 1999 Mike Lazirides, founder of Research In Motion (now known as Blackberry Limited), acted as both founder and major benefactor for this institute in Waterloo, Ontario. They offer a substantive and imaginative outreach programmes such as Arts and Culture: “Event Horizons is a series of unique and extraordinary events that aim to stimulate and enthral. It is a showcase of innovative work of the highest international standard, an emotional, intellectual, and creative experience. And perhaps most importantly, it is a social space, where ideas collide and curious minds meet.”
While gene-editing hasn’t seemed to be top-of-mind for anyone other than those in the art/sci community that may change. My April 26, 2019 posting focused on what appears to be a campaign to reverse Canada’s criminal ban on human gene-editing of inheritable cells (germline). With less potential for controversy, there is a discussion about somatic gene therapies and engineered cell therapies. A report from the Council of Canadian is due in the Fall of 2020. (The therapies being discussed do not involve germline editing.)
French language science media and podcasting
Agence Science-Presse is unique as it is the only press agency in Canada devoted to science news. Founded in 1978, it has been active in print, radio, television, online blogs, and podcasts (Baladodiffusion). You can find their Twitter feed here.
I recently stumbled across ‘un balados’ (podcast), titled, 20%. Started in January 2019 by the magazine, Québec Science, the podcast is devoted to women in science and technology. 20%, the podcast’s name, is the statistic representing the number of women in those fields. “Dans les domaines de la science et de la technologie, les femmes ne forment que 20% de la main-d’oeuvre.” (from the podcast webpage) The podcast is a co-production between “Québec Science [founded in 1962] et l’Acfas [formerly, l’Association Canadienne-Française pour l’Avancement des Sciences, now, Association francophone pour le savoir], en collaboration avec la Commission canadienne pour l’UNESCO, L’Oréal Canada et la radio Choq.ca.” (also from the podcast webpage)
Does it mean anything?
There have been many developments since I started writing this series in late December 2019. In January 2020, Iran shot down one of its own planes. That error killed some 176 people , many of them (136 Canadians and students) bound for Canada. The number of people who were involved in the sciences, technology, and medicine was striking.
It was a shocking loss and will reverberate for quite some time. There is a memorial posting here (January 13, 2020), which includes links to another memorial posting and an essay.
As I write this we are dealing with a pandemic, COVID-19, which has us all practicing physical and social distancing. Congregations of large numbers are expressly forbidden. All of this is being done in a bid to lessen the passage of the virus, SARS-CoV-2 which causes COVID-19.
In the short term at least, it seems that much of what I’ve described in these five parts (and the addendum) will undergo significant changes or simply fade away.
As for the long term, with this last 10 years having hosted the most lively science culture scene I can ever recall, I’m hopeful that science culture in Canada will do more than survive but thrive.
*”for-profit publisher, Canadian Science Publishing (CSP)” corrected to “not-for-profit publisher, Canadian Science Publishing (CSP)” and this comment “Not bad for a for-profit business, eh?” removed on April 29, 2020 as per Twitter comments,
Hi Maryse, thank you for alerting us to your blog. To clarify, Canadian Science Publishing is a not-for-profit publisher. Thank you as well for sharing our image contest. We’ve updated the contest page to indicate that the contest opens July 2020!
As noted in part 1, I’ve taken a very broad approach to this survey of science culture in Canada over the last 10 years. It isn’t exhaustive but part 1 covers science communication, science media (mainstream and others such as blogging) and arts as exemplified by music and dance. Now it’s time for part 2 and the visual arts, festivals, science slams, and more..
Art/Sci or Art/Science or SciArt—take your pick
In 2005 my heart was broken. I had to give up on an event I’d conceived and tried to organize for five years, ‘Twisted: an art/science entrée’. Inspired by an art/science organization in New York, it just wasn’t the right timing for Vancouver or, it seems, for Canada, if the failure of an art/science funding collaboration between the Canada Council and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada (NSERC) during roughly during that time period could be considered as another indicator.
The situation has changed considerably during this last decade (or so it seems). There are more performing and visual artists using scientific ideas and principles as inspiration for their work or they’re collaborating outright with scientists, or scientists are expressing themselves through artistic endeavours. Of course, of consequences of all this activity is a naming issue. (Isn’t there always?) I’m not taking sides all i want is clarity.
Part 1 featured more of the ‘inspirational’ art/science efforts. Here you’ll find the more ‘science’ inflected efforts.
ArtSci Salon located at the University of Toronto was founded in 2010 according to its About webpage,
This website documents the activity of the ArtSci Salon, a group of artists, scientists and art-sci-tech enthusiasts meeting once a month to engage in critical discussions on topics at the intersection between the arts and science.
Started in 2010 as a spin-off of the Subtle Technologies Festival, ArtSciSalon responds to the recent expansion in the GTA [Greater Toronto Area] of a community of scientists and artists increasingly seeking collaborations across disciplines to successfully accomplish their research projects and inquiries.
Based on the demographic, the requisites, and the interests of our members, the goal of ArtSci Salon is:
To provide outreach opportunities for local and international innovative research projects in the Sciences and in the Arts;
To foster critical dialogue on topics and concerns shared by the sciences and the arts;
To facilitate new forms of collaboration across fields.
Our guests deliver short presentations, demonstrations or performances on a series of shared topic of interest to artists and scientists.
…
Many, many ArtSci Salon events have been listed here. I mention it because the ArtSci Salon website doesn’t have a complete listing for its previous events. While I can’t guarantee completeness, you can perform an ‘ArtSci Salon’ search on the blog search engine and it should get you enough to satisfy your curiosity.
Curiosity Collider‘s first event seems to have been in April 2015 (as noted in my July 7, 2015 posting). i wonder what they’ll do to celebrate their fifth anniversary? Anyway, they describe themselves this way (from the Mandate webpage),
Curiosity Collider Art-Science Foundation is a Vancouver based non-profit organization that is committed to providing opportunities for artists whose work expresses scientific concepts and scientists who collaborate with artists. We challenge the perception and experience of science in our culture, break down the walls between art and science, and engage our growing community to bringing life to the concepts that describe our world.
…
You can find Curiosity Collider here. I see they don’t have anything scheduled yet for 2020 but they had a very active Fall 2019 season and I expect they needed a breather and now there’s ‘flattening the COVID-19 curve’.
Once Curiosity Collider gets started again, you’ll find they put on different kinds of events, usually evening get togethers featuring various artists and scientists in a relaxed environment or joint events with other groups such Nerd Nite, Science Slam, and others. In 2019, Curiosity Collider hosted its first festival. You’ll find more about that in the Festivals subsection further down in this posting.
ArtSci at Cape Breton University (Nova Scotia) seems to have existed from March 2017 to November 2018. At. least, that’s the period its Twitter feed was active.
Art the Science is according to its homepage, “A Canadian Science-Art non-profit organization.” According to their About webpage,
… Art the Science facilitates cross-disciplinary relationships between artists and scientists with a goal of fostering Canadian science-art culture. In doing so, we aim to advance scientific knowledge communication to benefit the public, while providing opportunities for artists to exhibit their work in unconventional and technologically innovative ways. By nurturing the expression of creativity, be it in a test-tube or with the stroke of a brush, Art the Science has become one of the most beloved and popular online SciArt (science + art) communities in the world. Since 2015, it has developed numerous digital SciArt exhibitions, and has highlighted the work of both pioneering and upcoming SciArt artists internationally. The organization also promotes the role of SciArt by conducting various outreach initiatives, including delivering lectures and keynote presentations designed to foster public engagement and a deeper appreciation of science and art.
Volunteer Run: Since 2015, Art the Science has been operating with the hard work and dedication of volunteer hours from our board and supporters. We have been busy generating evidence to show the impact and reach of our initiatives. We believe this evidence will help us secure financial support as we move forward.
…
Their site features information about artist residencies in research laboratories, online exhibitions, and a blog focused on the artists and scientists who create.
National events, festivals, and conferences
These days it’s called Science Odyssey and takes place in May of each year. I first came across the then named National Science and Technology Week in 1993. The rebranding occurred in 2016 after the Liberals swept into victory in October 2015 federal election.
Science Odyssey
In 2020, Science Odyssey (as noted previously, prior to 2016 this was known as National Science and Technology Week and was held in October each year) it was slated to take place from May 2 to May 17. In most years, it functions as a kind of promotional hub for science events independently organized across the country. The focus is largely on children as you can see in the 2019 promotional video,
Cancelled for 2020, its events have ranged from an open house at a maker lab to lectures at universities to festivals such as Pint of Science and Science Rendezvous that occur during Science Odyssey. (I profiled Science Odyssey, Pint of Science, Science Rendezvous and more in my May 1, 2019 posting.)
Pint of Science
Beer and science is a winning combination as they know in the UK where Pint of Science was pioneered in 2012. Pint of Science Canada was started in 2016 and is scheduled for May 11 – 13, 2020,
Pint of Science Canada invites scientists to your favorite local bars to discuss their latest research and discoveries over a drink or two. This is the perfect opportunity to meet scientists and ask questions. You have no excuse not to come and share a drink with us!
Démystifier la recherche scientifique et la faire découvrir au grand public dans un cadre détendu, avec une bière à la main c’est possible. Parce que oui, la science peut être le fun!
…
There isn’t a cancellation notice on the website as of April 15, 2020 but I suspect that may change.
Science Rendezvous
Billing itself as a free national kick-off festival for Science Odyssey and the country’s largest celebration of science and engineering, it was founded in 2008 and was confined to Toronto in that first year. In 2019, they promoted over 300 events across the country.
This year, Science Rendezvous is scheduled for May 9, 2020. Please check as it is likely cancelled for 2020.
Science Literacy Week
This week first crossed my radar in 2015 and because I love this passage, here’s an excerpt from my Sept 18, 2015 posting where it’s first mentioned,
Just as Beakerhead ends, Canada’s 2015 Science Literacy Week opens Sept. 21 – 27, 2015. Here’s more about the week from a Sept. 18, 2015 article by Natalie Samson for University Affairs,
On Nov. 12 last year [2014], the European Space Agency landed a robot on a comet. It was a remarkable moment in the history of space exploration and scientific inquiry. The feat amounted to “trying to throw a dart and hit a fly 10 miles away,” said Jesse Hildebrand, a science educator and communicator. “The math and the physics behind that is mindboggling.”
Imagine Mr. Hildebrand’s disappointment then, as national news programs that night spent about half as much time reporting on the comet landing as they did covering Barack Obama’s gum-chewing faux pas in China. For Mr. Hildebrand, the incident perfectly illustrates why he founded Science Literacy Week, a Canada-wide public education campaign celebrating all things scientific.
From Sept. 21 to 27 [2015], several universities, libraries and museums will highlight the value of science in our contemporary world by hosting events and exhibits on topics ranging from the lifecycle of a honeybee to the science behind Hollywood films like Jurassic World and Contact.
Mr. Hildebrand began developing the campaign last year, shortly after graduating from the University of Toronto with a bachelor’s degree in ecology and evolutionary biology. He approached the U of T Libraries for support and “it really snowballed from there,” the 23-year-old said.
…
In 2020, Science Literacy Week will run from September 21 – 27. (I hope they are able to go forward with this year’s event.) Here’s how the ‘Week’ has developed since 2015, from its About webpage,
…
The latest edition of Science Literacy Week came to include over 650 events put on by more than 300 partners in over 250 cities across Canada. From public talks to explosive chemistry demos, stargazing sessions to nature hikes, there was sure to be an interesting activity for science lovers of all ages. Science Literacy Week is powered by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).
Beaming Science, Exploration, Adventure and Conservation into Classrooms Across North America
Guest Speakers and Virtual Field Trips with Leading Experts from Around the World
Using Technology to Broadcast Live into Classrooms from the Most Remote Regions on the Planet Since
September 2015, We’ve Run Well over 1,000 Live Events Connecting Hundreds of Thousands of Students to Scientists and Explorers in over 70 Countries
Onto another standalone festival.
Beakerhead
Calgary’s big art/science/engineering festival, Beakerhead got its start in 2013 as a five-day event as per my December 7, 2012 post. It’s gone through a few changes since then including what appears to be a downsizing. The 2019 event was on September 21, 2019 from 5 pm to 11 pm.
According to his profile on LinkedIn, Jeff Popiel is Beakerhead’s interim CEO and has been since 2018. Mary Anne Moser (one of Breakerhead’s co-founders; the other is Jay Ingram, formerly of the Daily Planet science television show) was welcomed as the new Executive Director for Calgary’s science centre, Telus Spark, in April 2019.
Beakerhead’sr Wikipedia entry, despite being updated in December 2019, lists as its most current iteration of the festival that one that place in 2018.
All organizations experience ups and downs; I certainly hope that this represents a temporary lull. On the plus side, the Beakerhead Twitter feed is being kept current. and there is a February 18, 2020 entry on the Beakerhead’s homepage.
Invasive Species (Curiosity Collider) & Special Projects (ArtSci Salon)
The first and possibly only Collisions Festival (from the Curiosity Collider folks), Invasive Species took place in November 2019. A three-day affair, it featured a number of local (Vancouver area) artist/scientist collaborations. For a volunteer-run organization, putting on a three-day festival is quite an accomplishment. So, brava and bravo!
The ArtSci Salon in Toronto hasn’t held any festivals as such but has hosted a number of ‘special projects’ which extend over days and/or weeks and/or months such as The Cabinet Project, which opened in April 2017 (not sure how long it ran) and featured a number of artists’ talks and tours; Emergent Form from April 1 -30, 2018; EDITED (gene editing) from October 25 – November 30, 2018; and, FACTT-Evolution from March 29 – May 15, 2019.
International conferences and the Canadian art/technology scene
I am sure there are others (I’d be happy to hear about them in the comments) but these two organizations seem particularly enthused about holding conferences in Canada. I would like to spend more time on art and technology in Canada but that’s a huge topic in itself so I’m touching on it lightly.
ISEA 2015 and 2020
Formerly the Inter-Society of Electronic Arts, the organization has rebranded itself as ISEA (pronounced as a word [acronym] with a long ‘s’ like ‘z’). The acronym is used both for the organization’s name, the International Society for Electronic Arts, and its annual International Symposium of Electronic Arts, known familiarly as ISEA (year).
ISEA 2015 took place in Vancouver and was held in August of that year (you can read more about in my April 24, 2015 posting where I announced my presentation of a paper and video “Steep (1): A digital poetry of gold nanoparticles.”).
The upcoming ISEA 2020 was to take place in Montréal from May 19 – 24 but has been rescheduled for October 13 – 18. The theme remains: Why Sentience? Here’s more from the 2020 symposium About page,
Montreal Digital Spring (Printemps numérique) is proud to present ISEA2020 from October 13 to 18, 2020 in Montreal.
ISEA2020 will be the Creativity Pavilion of MTL connect; using digital intelligence as the overarching theme, this international event aims to look across the board at the main questions related to digital development, focusing on its economic, social, cultural and environmental impacts in various sectors of activity.
Montreal was awarded host of the next edition of ISEA in the closing ceremony of ISEA2019, held in Gwangju, South Korea. Soh Yeong Roh, Director of Art Center Nabi in Seoul, hand over the eternal light to Mehdi Benboubakeur, Executive Director of Montreal Digital Spring. As Benboubakeur stated: “ISEA returns to Montreal after 25 years. Back in 1995, ISEA positioned Montreal as a digital art center and brought emerging local artists into the international spotlight. In 2020, Montreal will once more welcome the international community of ISEA and will use this opportunity to build a strong momentum for the future.”
SEA 2020 turns towards the theme of “Why Sentience? Sentience describes the ability to feel or perceive. ISEA2020 will be fully dedicated to examining the resurgence of sentience—feeling-sensing-making sense—in recent art and design, media studies, science and technology studies, philosophy, anthropology, history of science and the natural scientific realm—notably biology, neuroscience and computing. We ask: why sentience? Why and how does sentience matter? Why have artists and scholars become interested in sensing and feeling beyond, with and around our strictly human bodies and selves? Why has this notion been brought to the fore in an array of disciplines in the 21st century?
I notice Philippe Pasquier of Simon Fraser University (Surrey campus, Vancouver area) is a member of the organizing committee. If memory serves, he was also on the organizing committee for ISEA 2015. He was most recently mentioned here in a November 29, 2019 where I featured his Metacreation Lab and when I mentioned the ISEA 2020 call for submissions.
… We received a total of 987 submissions from 58 countries. Thank you to those who took the time to create and submit proposals for ISEA2020 under the theme of sentience. We look forward to seeing you in Montreal from May 19 to 24, 2020 during MTL connect/ISEA2020!
Statistics by categories:
Artworks: 536
Artist talks: 121
Full papers: 108
Short papers: 96
Workshops / Tutorials: 53
Panels / Roundtables: 24
Institutional presentations: 22
Posters / Demos: 18
Good luck to everyone who made a submission. I hope you get a chance to present your work at ISEA 2020. I wonder if I can attend. I’ll have to make up my mind soon as they stop selling early bird tickets on and around March 16, 2020.
SIGGRAPH
The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), founded in 1947, has a special interest group (SIG) dedicated to computer GRAPHics. Hence, there is SIGGRAPH, which holds an annual conference each in North America and in Asia.
Vancouver hosted SIGGRAPH in 2011, 2014, and 2018 and will host it again in 2022. It is the only Canadian city to have hosted a SIGGRAPH conference since the conference’s inception in 1974. It is a huge meeting. In 2018, Vancouver hosted 16,637 attendees.
If you have a chance, do check out the next SIGGRAPH that you are able to attend. As inspiration you can check out the profile I wrote up for the most recent conference in Vancouver (my August 9, 2018 posting). They’re not as open to the public as I’d like but there are a few free events.
Coffee, tea, or beer with your science?
There are many ways to enjoy your science.Here are various groups (volunteer for the most part) that host regular (more or less) science nights at cafés and/or pubs and/or bars. Although I mentioned Café Scientifique Vancouver in part 1, it doesn’t really fit into either part 1 or part 2 of this review of the last decade but it’s being included (in a minor way) because the parent organization, Café Scientifique, is in a sense the progenitor for all the other ‘Café’ type efforts (listed in this subsection) throughout Canada. In addition, Café Scientifique is a truly global affair, which means if you’re traveling, it’s worth checking out the website to see if there’s any event in the city you’re visiting.
Science Slam Canada
I’m so glad to see that we have a Science Slam community in Canada (the international phenomenon was featured here in a July 17, 2013 posting). Here’s more about the phenomenon from the Science Slam Canada homepage,
Science slams have been popular in Europe for more than a decade but have only recently gained traction in North America. Science Slam Canada was founded in 2016 and now runs regular science slams in Vancouver. Given wide interest and support, Science Slam Canada is continuing to grow, with upcoming events in Edmonton and Ottawa.
Based on the format of a poetry slam, a science slam is a competition that allows knowledge holders, including researchers, students, educators, professionals, and artists to share their science with a general audience. Competitors have five minutes to present on any science topic and are judged based on communication skills, audience engagement, and scientific accuracy. Use of a projector or slideshow is not allowed, but props and creative presentation styles are encouraged.
The slam format provides an informal medium for the public and the scientific community to connect with and learn from each other. Science slams generally take place in bars, cafes, or theaters, which remove scientists from their traditional lecture environments. The lack of projector also takes away a common presentation ‘crutch’ and forces competitors to engage with their audience more directly.
Competitors and judges are chosen through a selection process designed to support diversity and maximize the benefit to speakers and the audience. Past speakers have ranged from students and researchers to educators and actors. Judges have included professors, media personalities, comedians and improvisers. And since the event is as much about the audience as about the speakers, spectators are asked to vote for their favourite speaker.
Our dream is to create a national network of local science slams, with top competitors meeting at a national SUPER Slam to face off for the title of Canadian Science Slam Champion. This past year, we ran a regional slam in Vancouver, bringing together speakers from across BC’s Lower Mainland. Next year, we hope to extend our invitation even further.
Their last Vancouver Slam was in November 2019. I don’t see anything scheduled for 2020 either on the website or on their Twitter feed. Of course, they don’t keep a regular schedule so my suggestion is to keep checking. And, there’s their Facebook site.
Alan Shapiro who founded Science Slam Canada maintains an active Twitter feed where his focus appears to be water but he includes much more. If you’re interested in Vancouver’s science scene, check him out. By the way, his day job is at STEMCELL Technologies, which you may remember, if you read part 1, funds the Science in the City website mentioned under the Science blogging in Canada subhead (scroll down about 50% of the way).
Nerd Nite
Sometime around 2003, Chris Balakrishnan founded Nerd Nite. Today, he’s a professor with his own lab (Balakrishnan Laboratory of Evolution, Behavior and Other Fine Sciences) at East Carolina University; he also maintains an active interest in Nerd Nite.
I’m not sure when it made its way to Canada but there are several cities which host Nerd Nites (try ‘nerd nite canada’ in one of the search engines). In addition to Nerd Nite Vancouver (which got its start in 2013, if it’s existence on Twitter can be used as evidence), I found ones in Toronto, Kitchener-Waterloo, Edmonton, Calgary, and, I believe there is also one in North Vancouver.
Their events are monthly (more or less) and the last one was on February 26, 2020. You can read more about it here. They maintain an active Twitter feed listing their own events and, on occasion, other local science events.
Story Collider
This US organization (Story Collider; true personal stories about science) was founded in 2010 and was first featured here in a February 15, 2012 posting. Since then, it has expanded to many cities including Vancouver. Here’s more about the organization and its worldwide reach (from the Story Collider About Us webpage), Note: Links have been removed,
The Story Collider is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization dedicated to true, personal stories about science. Since 2010, we have been working with storytellers from both inside and outside science to develop these stories, and we share them through our weekly podcast and our live shows around the world.
We bring together dedicated staff and volunteers from both science and art backgrounds to produce these shows — starting with our executive director, Liz Neeley, who has a background in marine biology and science communication, and our artistic director, Erin Barker, a writer and experienced storyteller — because we believe both have value in this space. Currently, The Story Collider has a home in fourteen cities — New York, Boston, DC, Los Angeles, St. Louis, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Seattle, Milwaukee, Toronto, Vancouver, Cambridge, UK, and Wellington, New Zealand — where events organized by local producers are held on a monthly or quarterly basis. We’ve also been delighted to work with various partners — including publishers such as Springer Nature and Scientific American; conferences for organizations such as the American Geophysical Union and the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative; and universities such as Yale University, North Carolina State University, Colorado University, and more — to produce shows in other locations. Every year, we produce between 50 and 60 live events featuring more than 250 stories in total, and we share over a hundred of these stories on our podcast.
…
Vancouver’s first Story Collider of 2020, ‘Misfits’ was scheduled for February 1 at The Fox Cabaret at 2321 Main Street . You can see more about the event (which in all likelihood took place) and the speakers here.
As for when Story Collider set down a few roots in Vancouver, that’s likely to be some time after February 2012. The two Vancouver Story Collider organizers, Kayla Glynn and Josh Silberg each have active Twitter feeds. Glynn is focuses mainly on local events; Silberg provides a more eclectic experience.
Brain Talks
This is a series of neuroscience’ talks held monthly (more or less) held at Vancouver General Hospital. They served wine out of a box and cheese and crackers at the one talk (it was about robots) I attended. Here’s more about the inspiration for this series from the University of British Columbia Brain Talks Vision page
BrainTalks is a forum for academics and members of the general public to create a dialogue about the rapidly expanding information in neuroscience. The BrainTalks series, was inspired in part by the popularity of the TED Talks series. Founded by Dr. Maia Love in October 2010, the goal is for neuroscientists, neurologists, neuroradiologists, psychiatrists, and people from affiliated fields to meet and dialogue monthly, in the hopes of promoting excellence in research, facilitating research and clinician connections and discussion, and disseminating knowledge to the general public. Additionally, the hope to reduce stigma associated with mental illness, and promote compassion for those suffering with brain illnesses, be they called neurologic or psychiatric, was part of the reason to create the series.
The structure is a casual environment with brief presentations by local experts that challenge and inspire dialogue. Discussions focus on current knowledge about the mind and our understanding of how the mind works. Presentations are followed by a panel discussion, catered snacks, and networking.
BrainTalks is now part of the programming for the University of British Columbia’s Department of Psychiatry. The Department of Education, and the Department of Continuing Professional Development include BrainTalks at UBC as part of their goal to enhance public knowledge of psychiatry, enhance clinician knowledge in areas that may affect psychiatric practice, and disseminate recent research in brain science to the public.
SoapBox Science
Thanks to Alan Shapiro (founder of Science Slam Canada) and his Twitter feed for information about a new science event that may be coming to Vancouver, SoapBox Science founded in the UK in 2011 puts on events that can be found worldwide (from the homepage),
Soapbox Science is a novel public outreach platform for promoting women scientists and the science they do. Our events transform public areas into an arena for public learning and scientific debate; they follow the format of London Hyde Park’s Speaker’s Corner, which is historically an arena for public debate. With Soapbox Science, we want to make sure that everyone has the opportunity to enjoy, learn from, heckle, question, probe, interact with and be inspired by some of our leading scientists. No middle man, no PowerPoint slide, no amphitheatre – just remarkable women in science who are there to amaze you with their latest discoveries, and to answer the science questions you have been burning to ask. Look out for bat simulators, fake breasts or giant pictures of volcanoes. Or simply hear them talk about what fascinates them, and why they think they have the most fantastic job in the world!
…
2020 is an exciting year for us. We are running 56 events around the world, making this the biggest year yet! Since 2011 we have featured over 1500 scientists and reached 150,000 members of the public! Soapbox Science was commended by the Prime Minister in 2015, and was awarded a Silver Medal from the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) in June 2016. Both Soapbox Science co-founders were also invited to provide oral evidence at a 2016 Parliamentary inquiry on science communication.
I believe 2020 is/was to have been the first year for a SoapBox Science event in Vancouver. There aren’t any notices of cancellation for the Vancouver event that I’ve been able to find. I expect there will although with a planned June 2020 date there’s still hope, In any case, you might find it interesting to view their ‘Apply to speak’ webpage, (Note: I have rearranged the order of some of these paragraphs),
Are you a woman* who works in science and who is passionate about your research? Are you eager to talk to the general public about your work in a fun, informal setting? If so, then Soapbox Science needs YOU! We are looking for scientists in all areas of STEMM, from PhD students to Professors, and from entry-level researchers to entrepreneurs, to take part in this grassroots science outreach project.
*Soapbox Science uses an inclusive definition of ‘woman’ and welcomes applications from Non-binary and Genderqueer speakers.
The deadline for applications has now passed but you’ll find on their ‘Apply to speak’ webpage, a list of cities hosting 2020 SoapBox Science events,
Argentina: Tucumán- 12th September
Australia: Armidale- August Sydney- 15th August Queensland- August
Belgium: Brussels- 27th June
Brazil: Maceio- 22nd November Rio de Janeiro- 18th July Salvador- 5th June
Canada: Calgary- 2nd May Halifax- July Hamilton- Date TBC Ottawa- 19th September Québec- June Toronto- 27th September St John’s- 5th September Vancouver- June Waterloo- 13th June Winnipeg- May
Germany: Berlin- June Bonn- May Düsseldorf- 25th July Munich- 27th June
Ireland: Dublin- Date TBC Cork- July Galway- July
Nigeria: Lagos- August Lagos- 7th November
Malaysia: Kuala Lumpur- April
Portugal: Lisbon- 19th Sept
South Africa: Cape Town- September
Sweden: Uppsala- 16th May Gothenburg- 24th April- Closing date 31st January
Tanzania: Arusha- 8th August
UK: Aberdeen- 30th May Birmingham- Date TBC Brighton- 30th May Bristol- 4th July Cardiff- Date TBC Edinburgh- Date TBC Exeter- June Keswick- 26th May Leicester- 6th June Leeds- July London- 23rd May Milton Keynes- 27th June Newcastle- 13th June Nottingham- Date TBC Plymouth- 30th May Stoke-on-Trent, Date TBC Swansea- Date TBC York- 13th June
USA: Boulder- 26th April Denver- Date TBC Detroit- September Philadelphia- 18th April
If you’re interested in the SoapBox Science Vancouver event,there’s more on this webpage on the University of British Columbia website and/or this brochure for the Vancouver event.
There’s a very good November 11, 2019 article by Natalie Angier for the New York Times on carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and the colour black,
On a laboratory bench at the National Institute of Standards and Technology was a square tray with two black disks inside, each about the width of the top of a Dixie cup. Both disks were undeniably black, yet they didn’t look quite the same.
Solomon Woods, 49, a trim, dark-haired, soft-spoken physicist, was about to demonstrate how different they were, and how serenely voracious a black could be.
“The human eye is extraordinarily sensitive to light,” Dr. Woods said. Throw a few dozen photons its way, a few dozen quantum-sized packets of light, and the eye can readily track them.
Dr. Woods pulled a laser pointer from his pocket. “This pointer,” he said, “puts out 100 trillion photons per second.” He switched on the laser and began slowly sweeping its bright beam across the surface of the tray.
On hitting the white background, the light bounced back almost unimpeded, as rude as a glaring headlight in a rearview mirror.
The beam moved to the first black disk, a rondel of engineered carbon now more than a decade old. The light dimmed significantly, as a sizable tranche of the incident photons were absorbed by the black pigment, yet the glow remained surprisingly strong.
Finally Dr. Woods trained his pointer on the second black disk, and suddenly the laser’s brilliant beam, its brash photonic probe, simply — disappeared. Trillions of light particles were striking the black disk, and virtually none were winking back up again. It was like watching a circus performer swallow a sword, or a husband “share” your plate of French fries: Hey, where did it all go?
N.I.S.T. disk number two was an example of advanced ultra-black technology: elaborately engineered arrays of tiny carbon cylinders, or nanotubes, designed to capture and muzzle any light they encounter. Blacker is the new black, and researchers here and abroad are working to create ever more efficient light traps, which means fabricating materials that look ever darker, ever flatter, ever more ripped from the void.
The N.I.S.T. ultra-black absorbs at least 99.99 percent of the light that stumbles into its nanotube forest. But scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reported in September the creation of a carbon nanotube coating that they claim captures better than 99.995 of the incident light.
…
… The more fastidious and reliable the ultra-black, the more broadly useful it will prove to be — in solar power generators, radiometers, industrial baffles and telescopes primed to detect the faintest light fluxes as a distant planet traverses the face of its star.
Psychology and metaphors
It’s not all technical, Angier goes on to mention the psychological and metaphorical aspects,
Psychologists have gathered evidence that black is among the most metaphorically loaded of all colors, and that we absorb our often contradictory impressions about black at a young age.
Reporting earlier this year in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, Robin Kramer and Joanne Prior of the University of Lincoln in the United Kingdom compared color associations in a group of 104 children, aged 5 to 10, with those of 100 university students.
The researchers showed subjects drawings in which a lineup of six otherwise identical images differed only in some aspect of color. The T-shirt of a boy taking a test, for example, was switched from black to blue to green to red to white to yellow. The same for a businessman’s necktie, a schoolgirl’s dress, a dog’s collar, a boxer’s gloves.
Participants were asked to link images with traits. Which boy was likeliest to cheat on the test? Which man was likely to be in charge at work? Which girl was the smartest in her class, which dog the scariest?
Again and again, among both children and young adults, black pulled ahead of nearly every color but red. Black was the color of cheating, and black was the color of cleverness. A black tie was the mark of a boss, a black collar the sign of a pit bull. Black was the color of strength and of winning. Black was the color of rage.
…
Art
Then, there is the world of art,
For artists, black is basal and nonnegotiable, the source of shadow, line, volume, perspective and mood. “There is a black which is old and a black which is fresh,” Ad Reinhardt, the abstract expressionist artist, said. “Lustrous black and dull black, black in sunlight and black in shadow.”
So essential is black to any aesthetic act that, as David Scott Kastan and Stephen Farthing describe in their scholarly yet highly entertaining book, “On Color,” modern artists have long squabbled over who pioneered the ultimate visual distillation: the all-black painting.
Was it the Russian Constructivist Aleksandr Rodchenko, who in 1918 created a series of eight seemingly all-black canvases? No, insisted the American artist Barnett Newman: Those works were very dark brown, not black. He, Mr. Newman, deserved credit for his 1949 opus, “Abraham,” which in 1966 he described as “the first and still the only black painting in history.”
But what about Kazimir Malevich’s “Black Square” of 1915? True, it was a black square against a white background, but the black part was the point. Then again, the English polymath Robert Fludd had engraved a black square in a white border back in 1617.
Clearly, said Alfred H. Barr, Jr., the first director of the Museum of Modern Art, “Each generation must paint its own black square.”
…
Structural colour
Solomon and his NIST colleagues and the MIT scientists are all trying to create materials with structural colour, in this case, black. Angier goes on to discuss structural colour in nature mentioning bird feathers and spiders as examples of where you might find superblacks. For anyone unfamiliar with structural colour, the colour is not achieved with pigment or dye but with tiny structures, usually measured at the nanoscale, on a bird’s wing, a spider’s belly, a plant leaf, etc. Structural colour does not fade or change . Still, it’s possible to destroy the structures, i.e., the colour, but light and time will not have any effect since it’s the tiny structures and their optical properties which are producing the colour . (Even after all these years, my favourite structural colour story remains a Feb. 1, 2013 article, Color from Structure, by Cristina Luiggi for The Scientist magazine. For a shorter version, I excerpted parts of Luiggi’s story for my February 7, 2013 posting.)
The examples of structural colour in Angier’s article were new to me. However, there are many, many examples elsewhere,. You can find some here by using the terms ‘structural colour’ or ‘structural color’ in the blog’s search engine.
Angier’s is a really good article and I strongly recommend reading it if you have time but I’m a little surprised she doesn’t mention Vantablack and the artistic feud. More about that in a moment,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a ‘blacker black’
According to MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), they have the blackest black. It too is courtesy of carbon nanotubes.
The Redemption of Vanity, is a work of art by MIT artist in residence Diemut Strebe that has been realized together with Brian L. Wardle, Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Director of necstlab and Nano- Engineered Composite aerospace STructures (NECST) Consortium and his team Drs. Luiz Acauan and Estelle Cohen. Strebe’s residency at MIT is supported by the Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST). Image: Diemut Strebe
What you see in the above ‘The Redemption of Vanity’ was on show at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) from September 13 – November 29, 2019. It’s both an art piece and a demonstration of MIT’s blackest black.
With apologies to “Spinal Tap,” it appears that black can, indeed, get more black.
MIT engineers report today that they have cooked up a material that is 10 times blacker than anything that has previously been reported. The material is made from vertically aligned carbon nanotubes, or CNTs — microscopic filaments of carbon, like a fuzzy forest of tiny trees, that the team grew on a surface of chlorine-etched aluminum foil. The foil captures at least 99.995 percent* of any incoming light, making it the blackest material on record.
The researchers have published their findings today in the journal ACS-Applied Materials and Interfaces. They are also showcasing the cloak-like material as part of a new exhibit today at the New York Stock Exchange, titled “The Redemption of Vanity.”
The artwork, conceived by Diemut Strebe, an artist-in-residence at the MIT Center for Art, Science, and Technology, in collaboration with Brian Wardle, professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT, and his group, and MIT Center for Art, Science, and Technology artist-in-residence Diemut Strebe, features a 16.78-carat natural yellow diamond from LJ West Diamonds, estimated to be worth $2 million, which the team coated with the new, ultrablack CNT material. The effect is arresting: The gem, normally brilliantly faceted, appears as a flat, black void.
Wardle says the CNT material, aside from making an artistic statement, may also be of practical use, for instance in optical blinders that reduce unwanted glare, to help space telescopes spot orbiting exoplanets.
“There are optical and space science applications for very black materials, and of course, artists have been interested in black, going back well before the Renaissance,” Wardle says. “Our material is 10 times blacker than anything that’s ever been reported, but I think the blackest black is a constantly moving target. Someone will find a blacker material, and eventually we’ll understand all the underlying mechanisms, and will be able to properly engineer the ultimate black.”
Wardle’s co-author on the paper is former MIT postdoc Kehang Cui, now a professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
Into the void
Wardle and Cui didn’t intend to engineer an ultrablack material. Instead, they were experimenting with ways to grow carbon nanotubes on electrically conducting materials such as aluminum, to boost their electrical and thermal properties.
But in attempting to grow CNTs on aluminum, Cui ran up against a barrier, literally: an ever-present layer of oxide that coats aluminum when it is exposed to air. This oxide layer acts as an insulator, blocking rather than conducting electricity and heat. As he cast about for ways to remove aluminum’s oxide layer, Cui found a solution in salt, or sodium chloride.
At the time, Wardle’s group was using salt and other pantry products, such as baking soda and detergent, to grow carbon nanotubes. In their tests with salt, Cui noticed that chloride ions were eating away at aluminum’s surface and dissolving its oxide layer.
“This etching process is common for many metals,” Cui says. “For instance, ships suffer from corrosion of chlorine-based ocean water. Now we’re using this process to our advantage.”
Cui found that if he soaked aluminum foil in saltwater, he could remove the oxide layer. He then transferred the foil to an oxygen-free environment to prevent reoxidation, and finally, placed the etched aluminum in an oven, where the group carried out techniques to grow carbon nanotubes via a process called chemical vapor deposition.
By removing the oxide layer, the researchers were able to grow carbon nanotubes on aluminum, at much lower temperatures than they otherwise would, by about 100 degrees Celsius. They also saw that the combination of CNTs on aluminum significantly enhanced the material’s thermal and electrical properties — a finding that they expected.
What surprised them was the material’s color.
“I remember noticing how black it was before growing carbon nanotubes on it, and then after growth, it looked even darker,” Cui recalls. “So I thought I should measure the optical reflectance of the sample.
“Our group does not usually focus on optical properties of materials, but this work was going on at the same time as our art-science collaborations with Diemut, so art influenced science in this case,” says Wardle.
Wardle and Cui, who have applied for a patent on the technology, are making the new CNT process freely available to any artist to use for a noncommercial art project.
“Built to take abuse”
Cui measured the amount of light reflected by the material, not just from directly overhead, but also from every other possible angle. The results showed that the material absorbed at least 99.995 percent of incoming light, from every angle. In other words, it reflected 10 times less light than all other superblack materials, including Vantablack. If the material contained bumps or ridges, or features of any kind, no matter what angle it was viewed from, these features would be invisible, obscured in a void of black.
The researchers aren’t entirely sure of the mechanism contributing to the material’s opacity, but they suspect that it may have something to do with the combination of etched aluminum, which is somewhat blackened, with the carbon nanotubes. Scientists believe that forests of carbon nanotubes can trap and convert most incoming light to heat, reflecting very little of it back out as light, thereby giving CNTs a particularly black shade.
“CNT forests of different varieties are known to be extremely black, but there is a lack of mechanistic understanding as to why this material is the blackest. That needs further study,” Wardle says.
The material is already gaining interest in the aerospace community. Astrophysicist and Nobel laureate John Mather, who was not involved in the research, is exploring the possibility of using Wardle’s material as the basis for a star shade — a massive black shade that would shield a space telescope from stray light.
“Optical instruments like cameras and telescopes have to get rid of unwanted glare, so you can see what you want to see,” Mather says. “Would you like to see an Earth orbiting another star? We need something very black. … And this black has to be tough to withstand a rocket launch. Old versions were fragile forests of fur, but these are more like pot scrubbers — built to take abuse.”
[Note] An earlier version of this story stated that the new material captures more than 99.96 percent of incoming light. That number has been updated to be more precise; the material absorbs at least 99.995 of incoming light.
Here’s an August 29, 2019 news release from MIT announcing the then upcoming show. Usually I’d expect to see a research paper associated with this work but this time it seems to an art exhibit only,
The MIT Center for Art, Science &Technology (CAST) and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) will present The Redemption of Vanity,created by artist Diemut Strebe in collaboration with MIT scientist Brian Wardle and his lab, on view at the New York Stock Exchange September 13, 2019 -November 25, 2019. For the work, a 16.78 carat natural yellow diamond valued at $2 million from L.J.West was coated using a new procedure of generating carbon nanotubes (CNTs), recently measured to be the blackest black ever created, which makes the diamond seem to disappear into an invisible void. The patented carbon nanotube technology (CNT) absorbs more than 99.96% of light and was developed by Professor Wardle and his necstlablab at MIT.
“Any object covered with this CNT material loses all its plasticity and appears entirely flat, abbreviated/reduced to a black silhouette. In outright contradiction to this we see that a diamond,while made of the very same element (carbon) performs the most intense reflection of light on earth.Because of the extremely high light absorbtive qualities of the CNTs, any object, in this case a large diamond coated with CNT’s, becomes a kind of black hole absent of shadows,“ explains Strebe.“The unification of extreme opposites in one object and the particular aesthetic features of the CNTs caught my imagination for this art project.”
“Strebe’s art-science collaboration caused us to look at the optical properties of our new CNT growth, and we discovered that these particular CNTs are blacker than all other reported materials by an order of magnitude across the visible spectrum”, says Wardle. The MIT team is offering the process for any artist to use. “We do not believe in exclusive ownership of any material or idea for any artwork and have opened our method to any artist,” say Strebe and Wardle.“
The project explores material and immaterial value attached to objects and concepts in reference to luxury, society and to art. We are presenting the literal devaluation of a diamond, which is highly symbolic and of high economic value.It presents a challenge to art market mechanisms on the one hand, while expressing at the same time questions of the value of art in a broader way. In this sense it manifests an inquiry into the significance of the value of objects of art and the art market,” says Strebe. “We are honored to present this work at The New York Stock Exchange, which I believe to be a most fitting location to consider the ideas embedded in The Redemption of Vanity.”
“The New York Stock Exchange, a center of financial and technological innovation for 227 years, is the perfect venue to display Diemut Strebe and Professor Brian Wardle’s collaboration. Their work brings together cutting-edge nanotube technology and a natural diamond, which is a symbol of both value and longevity,” said John Tuttle, NYSE Group Vice Chairman & Chief Commercial Officer.
“We welcome all scientists and artists to venture into the world of natural color diamonds. The Redemption of Vanity exemplifies the bond between art, science, and luxury. The 16-carat vivid yellow diamond in the exhibit spent millions of years in complete darkness, deep below the earth’s surface. It was only recently unearthed —a once-in-a-lifetime discovery of exquisite size and color. Now the diamond will relive its journey to darkness as it is covered in the blackest of materials. Once again, it will become a reminder that something rare and beautiful can exist even in darkness,”said Larry West.
The “disappearing” diamond in The Redemption of Vanity is a $2 Million Fancy Vivid Yellow SI1 (GIA), Radiant shape, from color diamond specialist, L.J. West Diamonds Inc. of New York.
The Redemption of Vanity, conceived by Diemut Strebe, has been realized with Brian L. Wardle, Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Director of necstlab and Nano-Engineered Composite aerospace STructures (NECST) Consortium and his team Drs. Luiz Acauan and Estelle Cohen, in conjunction with Strebe’s residency at MIT supported by the Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST).
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Diemut Strebe is a conceptual artist based in Boston, MA and a MIT CAST Visiting Artist. She has collaborated with several MIT faculty, including Noam Chomsky and Robert Langer on Sugababe (2014), Litmus (2014) and Yeast Expression(2015); Seth Lloyd and Dirk Englund on Wigner’s Friends(2014); Alan Guth on Plötzlich! (2018); researchers in William Tisdale’s Lab on The Origin of the Works of Art(2018); Regina Barzilay and Elchanan Mossel on The Prayer (2019); and Ken Kamrin and John Brisson on The Gymnast (2019). Strebe is represented by the Ronald Feldman Gallery.
Brian L. Wardle is a Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT and the director of the necstlab research group and MIT’s Nano-Engineered Composite aerospace STructures (NECST) Consortium. Wardle previously worked with CAST Visiting Artist Trevor Paglen on The Last Picturesproject (2012).
ABOUT THE MIT CENTER FOR ART, SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
A major cross-school initiative, the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) creates new opportunities for art, science and technology to thrive as interrelated, mutually informing modes of exploration, knowledge and discovery. CAST’s multidisciplinary platform presents performing and visual arts programs, supports research projects for artists working with science and engineering labs, and sponsors symposia, classes, workshops, design studios, lectures and publications. The Center is funded in part by a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Evan Ziporyn is the Faculty Director and Leila W. Kinney is the Executive Director.Since its inception in 2012, CAST has been the catalyst for more than 150 artist residencies and collaborative projects with MIT faculty and students, including numerous cross-disciplinary courses, workshops, concert series, multimedia projects, lectures and symposia. The visiting artists program is a cornerstone of CAST’s activities, which encourages cross-fertilization among disciplines and intensive interaction with MIT’s faculty and students. More info at https://arts.mit.edu/cast/ .
HISTORY OF VISITING ARTISTS AT MIT
Since the late 1960s, MIT has been a leader in integrating the arts and pioneering a model for collaboration among artists, scientists and engineers in a research setting. CAST’s Visiting Artists Program brings internationally acclaimed artists to engage with MIT’s creative community in ways that are mutually enlightening for the artists and for faculty, students and research staff at the Institute. Artists who have worked extensively at MIT include Mel Chin, Olafur Eliasson, Rick Lowe, Vik Muniz, Trevor Paglen, Tomás Saraceno, Maya Beiser, Agnieszka Kurant, and Anicka Yi.
ABOUT L.J. WEST DIAMONDS
L.J. West Diamonds is a three generation natural color diamond whole sale rfounded in the late 1970’s by Larry J. West and based in New York City. L.J. West has established itself as one of the world’s prominent houses for some of the most rare and important exotic natural fancy color diamonds to have ever been unearthed. This collection includes a vast color spectrum of rare pink, blue, yellow, green, orange and red diamonds. L.J. West is an expert in every phase of the jewelry process –from sourcing to the cutting, polishing and final design. Each exceptional jewel is carefully set to become a unique work of art.The Redemption of Vanity is on view at the New York Stock Exchange by appointment only.
Press viewing: September 13, 2019 at 3pmNew York Stock Exchange, 11 Wall Street, New York, NY 10005RSVP required. Please check-in at the blue tent at 2 Broad Street(at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets). All guests are required to show a government issued photo ID and go through airport-like security upon entering the NYSE.NYSE follows a business casual dress code -jeans & sneakers are not permitted.
No word yet if there will be other showings.
An artistic feud (of sorts)
Earlier this year, I updated a story on Vantablack. It was the blackest black, blocking 99.8% of light when I featured it in a March 14, 2016 posting. The UK company making the announcement, Surrey NanoSystems, then laid the groundwork for an artistic feud when it granted exclusive rights to their carbon nanotube-based coating, Vantablack, to Sir Anish Kapoor mentioned here in an April 16, 2016 posting.
This exclusivity outraged some artists notably, Stuart Semple. In his first act of defiance, he created the pinkest pink. Next, came a Kickstarter campaign to fund Semple’s blackest black, which would be available to all artists except Anish Kapoor. You can read all about the pinkest pink and blackest black as per Semple in my February 21, 2019 posting. You can also get a bit of an update in an Oct. 17, 2019 Stuart Semple proffile by Berenice Baker for Verdict,
… so I managed to hire a scientist, Jemima, to work in the studio with me. She got really close to a super black, and we made our own pigment to this recipe and it was awesome, but we couldn’t afford to put it into manufacture because it cost £25,000.”
Semple launched a Kickstarter campaign and was amazed to raise half a million pounds, making it the second most-supported art Kickstarter of all time.
…
The ‘race to the blackest’ is well underway, with MIT researchers recently announcing a carbon nanotube-based black whose light absorption they tested by coasting a diamond. But Semple is determined that his black should be affordable by all artists and work like a paint, not only perform in laboratory conditions. He’s currently working with Jemima and two chemists to upgrade the recipe for Black 3.2.
…
I don’t know how Semple arrived at his blackest black. I think it’s unlikely that he achieved the result by working with carbon nanotubes since my understanding is that CNTs aren’t that easy to produce.
Finally
Interesting, eh? In just a few years scientists have progressed from achieving a 99.8% black to 99.999%. It doesn’t seem like that big a difference to me but with Solomon Woods, at the beginning of this post, making the point that our eyes are very sensitive to light, an artistic feud, and a study uncovering deep emotions, getting the blackest black is a much more artistically fraught endeavour than I had imagined.
I first featured science slams in a July 17, 2013 posting when they popped up in the UK although I think they originated in Germany. As for Science Slam Canada, I think they started in 2016, (t least, that’s when they started their twitter feed).
Science Slam YVR at Fox It’s beginning to look a lot like … it’s time to have another Science Slam at the Fox!
For those of you who have never experienced the wonder of Science Slam, welcome! We are Vancouver’s most epic science showdown. Sit back, relax, and watch as our competitors battle to achieve science communication fame and glory.
What exactly is a science slam? Based on the format of a poetry slam, a science slam is a competition where speakers gather to share their science with you – the audience. Competitors have five minutes to present on any science topic without the use of a slideshow and are judged based on communication skills, audience impact and scientific content. Props and creative presentation styles are encouraged!
Whether you’re a researcher, student, educator, artist, or communicator, our stage is open to you. If you’ve got a science topic you’re researching, or just a topic you’re excited about, send in an application! If you’re not sure about an idea, just ask!
*Early Bird Tickets are $10, Regular are $12. [emphasis mine] Purchase them here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/science-slam-at-fox-tickets-80868462749
Doors open at 7pm, event begins at 7:30pm. We’ll see you there!
Accessibility Notes:
Science Slam acknowledges that this event takes place on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Squamish, Sto:lo, Musqueam, and Tsleil Waututh Nation. Many of our attendees, Science Slam included, are are guests of these territories and must act accordingly.
Science Slam is an inclusive event, as a result hate speech and abuse will not be tolerated. This includes anti-blackness, anti-indigenous, transphobia, homophobia, biphobia, islamophobia, xenophobia, fatphobia, ableism, transmisogyny, misogyny, femmephobia, cissexism, and anti-immigrant attitudes.
I went to the eventbrite website where you can purchase tickets and the prices reflect the first set in the announcement. Early bird tickets are sold out, which leaves you with General Admission at $12.
Collider Cafe in Vancouver on December 4, 2019
I think they were tired when they (CuriosityCollider.org) came up with the title for the upcoming Collider Cafe December 2019 event. Unfortunately, the description isn’t too exciting either. On the plus side, their recent Invasive Systems Collisions Festival was pretty interesting and one of the exhibits from that festival is being featured (artist: Laara Cerman; scientist: Scott Pownell)..
Here’s more about the upcoming Collider Cafe from their November 27, 2019 announcement (received via email),
Art. Science. Analogies.
Let analogies guide us through exploring the art and science in chemistry, nature, genetics, and technology.
Our #ColliderCafe is a space for artists, scientists, makers, and anyone interested in art+science to meet, discover, and connect. Are you curious? Join us at “Collider Cafe: Art. Science. Analosiges.” to explore how art and science intersect in the exploration of curiosity.
When: 8:00pm on Wednesday, December 4, 2019. Doors open at 7:30pm. Where: Pizzeria Barbarella. 654 E Broadway, Vancouver, BC (Google Map). Cost: $5-10 (sliding scale) cover at the door. Proceeds will be used to cover the cost of running this event, and to fund future Curiosity Collider events.
//Special thanks to Pizzeria Barbarella for hosting the upcoming Collider Cafe!//
With speakers: Vance Williams (Chemistry) – Crystalline Landscapes Laara Cerman (Art & Nature) and Scott Pownell (Genetics) – Flora’s Song (DNA Sonification) Chris Dunnett (Multidisciplinary Art) – Poetry of Technology
Plus, interact with Laara and Scott’s work “Flora’s Song No. 1 in C Major” – a hand-cranked music box that plays a tune created from the DNA of local invasive plants.
Back to me, I’m still struggling with this hugely changed Word Press, which they claim is an ‘improvement’. In any case, for this second event, I decided that choosing a larger font size was superior to putting everything into a single block as I did for the Science Slam event. Please let me know if you have any opinions on the matter in the comments section.
Moving on, don’t expect Chris Dunnett’s presentation ‘Poetry of Technology’ to necessarily feature any poetry, if his website is any indication of his work. Also, I notice that Vance Williams is associated with 4D Labs at Simon Fraser University. At one time, 4D Labs was a ‘nanotechnology’ lab but at this time (November 29, 2019), it seems they are a revenue-producing group selling their materials expertise and access to their lab equipment to industry and other academic institutions. Still, Williams may feature some nanoscale work as part of his presentation.
This time it’s the performing arts. I have one theatre and psychiatry production in Toronto and a music and medical science event in Vancouver.
Toronto’s Here are the Fragments opening on November 19, 2019
From a November 2, 2019 ArtSci Salon announcement (received via email),
An immersive theatre experience inspired by the psychiatric writing of Frantz Fanon
Here are the Fragments. Co-produced by The ECT Collective and The Theatre Centre November 19-December 1, 2019 Tickets: Preview $17 | Student/senior/arts worker $22 | Adult $30 Service charges may apply Book 416-538-0988 | PURCHASE ONLINE
An immigrant psychiatrist develops psychosis and then schizophrenia. He walks a long path towards reconnection with himself, his son, and humanity.
Walk with him.
Within our immersive design (a fabric of sound, video, and live actors) lean in close to the possibilities of perceptual experience.
Schizophrenics ‘hear voices’. Schizophrenics fear loss of control over their own thoughts and bodies. But how does any one of us actually separate internal and external voices? How do we trust what we see or feel? How do we know which voices are truly our own?
Within the installation find places of retreat from chaos. Find poetry. Find critical analysis.
Explore archival material, Fanon’s writings and contemporary interviews with psychiatrists, neuroscientists, artists, and people living with schizophrenia, to reflect on the relationships between identity, history, racism and mental health.
I was able to find out more in a November 6, 2019 article at broadwayworld.com (Note: Some of this is repetitive),
How do we trust what we see or feel? How do we know which voices are truly our own? THE THEATRE CENTRE and THE ECT COLLECTIVE are proud to Co-produce HERE ARE THE FRAGMENTS., an immersive work of theatre written by Suvendrini Lena, Theatre Centre Residency artist and CAMH [ Centre for Addiction and Mental Health] Neurologist. Based on the psychiatric writing of famed political theorist Frantz Fanon and combining narratives, sensory exploration, and scientific and historical analysis, HERE ARE THE FRAGMENTS. reflects on the relationships between identity, history, racism, and mental health. FRAGMENTS. will run November 19 to December 1 at The Theatre Centre (Opening Night November 21).
HERE ARE THE FRAGMENTS. consists of live performances within an interactive installation. The plot, told in fragments, follows a psychiatrist early in his training as he develops psychosis and ultimately, treatment resistant schizophrenia. Eduard, his son, struggles to connect with his father, while the young man must also make difficult treatment decisions.
The Theatre Centre’s Franco Boni Theatre and Gallery will be transformed into an immersive interactive installation. The design will offer many spaces for exploration, investigation, and discovery, bringing audiences into the perceptual experience of Schizophrenia. The scenes unfold around you, incorporating a fabric of sound, video, and live actors. Amidst the seeming chaos there will also be areas of retreat; whispering voices, Fanon’s own books, archival materials, interviews with psychiatrists, neuroscientists, and people living with schizophrenia all merge to provoke analysis and reflection on the intersection of racism and mental health.
…
Suvendrini Lena (Writer) is a playwright and neurologist. She works as the staff neurologist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health and at the Centre for Headache at Women’s College Hospital [Toronto]. She is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Neurology at the University of Toronto where she teaches medical students, residents, and fellows. She also teaches a course called Staging Medicine, a collaboration between The Theatre Centre and University of Toronto Postgraduate Medical Education.
…
Frantz Fanon (1925-1961), was a French West Indian psychiatrist, political philosopher, revolutionary, and writer, whose works are influential in the fields of post-colonial studies, critical theory, and Marxism. Fanon published numerous books, including Black Skin, White Masks (1952) and The Wretched of the Earth (1961).
…
In addition to performances, The Theatre Centre will host a number of panels and events. Highlights include a post-show talkback with Ngozi Paul (Development Producer, Artist/Activist) and Psychiatrist Collaborator Araba Chintoh on November 22. Also of note is Our Patients and Our Selves: Experiences of Racism Among Health Care Workers with facilitator Dr. Fatimah Jackson-Best of Black Health Alliance on November 23rd and Fanon Today: A Creative Symposium on November 24th, a panel, reading, and creative discussion featuring David Austin, Frank Francis, Doris Rajan and George Elliot Clarke [formerly Toronto’s Poet Laureate and Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate; emphasis and link mine].
Sounds and Science: Vienna meets Vancouver on November 30, 2019
‘Sounds and Science’ originated at the Medical University of Vienna (Austria) as the November 6, 2019 event posting on the University of British Columbia’s (UBC) Faculty of Medicine website,
The University of British Columbia will host the first Canadian concert bringing leading musical talents of Vienna together with dramatic narratives from science and medicine.
“Sounds and Science: Vienna Meets Vancouver” is part of the President’s Concert Series, to be held Nov. 30, 2019 on UBC campus. The event is modeled on a successful concert series launched in Austria in 2014, in cooperation with the Medical University of Vienna.
“Basic research tends to always stay within its own box, yet research is telling the most beautiful stories,” says Dr. Josef Penninger, director of UBC’s Life Sciences Institute, a professor of medical genetics and a Canada 150 Chair. “With this concert, we are bringing science out of the ivory tower, using the music of great composers such as Mozart, Schubert or Strauss to transport stories of discovery and insight into the major diseases that affected the composers themselves, and continue to have a significant impact on our society.”
Famous composers of the past are often seen as icons of classical music, but in fact, they were human beings, living under enormous physical constraints – perhaps more than people today, according to Dr. Manfred Hecking, an associate professor of internal medicine at the Medical University of Vienna.
“But ‘Sounds and Science’ is not primarily about suffering and disease,” says Dr. Hecking, a former member of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra who will be playing double bass during the concert. “It is a fun way of bringing music and science together. Combining music and thought, we hope that we will reach the attendees of the ‘Sounds and Science’ concert in Vancouver on an emotional, perhaps even personal level.”
A showcase for Viennese music, played in the tradition of the Vienna Philharmonic by several of its members, as well as the world-class science being done here at UBC, “Sounds and Science” will feature talks by UBC clinical and research faculty, including Dr. Penninger. Their topics will range from healthy aging and cancer research to the historical impact of bacterial infections.
Combining music and thought, we hope that we will reach the attendees of the ‘Sounds and Science’ concert in Vancouver on an emotional, perhaps even personal level. Dr. Manfred Hecking
Faculty speaking at “Sounds and Science” will be: Dr. Allison Eddy, professor and head, department of pediatrics, and chief, pediatric medicine, BC Children’s Hospital and BC Women’s Hospital; Dr. Troy Grennan, clinical assistant professor, division of infectious diseases, UBC faculty of medicine; Dr. Poul Sorensen, professor, department of pathology and laboratory medicine, UBC faculty of medicine; and Dr. Roger Wong, executive associate dean, education and clinical professor of geriatric medicine, UBC faculty of medicine UBC President and Vice-Chancellor Santa J. Ono and Vice President Health and Dr. Dermot Kelleher, dean, faculty of medicine and vice-president, health at UBC will also speak during the evening.
The musicians include two outstanding members of the Vienna Philharmonic – violinist Prof. Günter Seifert and violist-conductor Hans Peter Ochsenhofer, who will be joined by violinist-conductor Rémy Ballot and double bassist Dr. Manfred Hecking, who serves as a regular substitute in the orchestra.
For those in whose lives intertwine music and science, the experience of cross-connection will be familiar. For Dr. Penninger, the concert represents an opportunity to bring the famous sound of the Vienna Philharmonic to UBC and British Columbia, to a new audience. “That these musicians are coming here is a fantastic recognition and acknowledgement of the amazing work being done at UBC,” he says.
“Like poetry, music is a universal language that all of us immediately understand and can relate to. Science tells the most amazing stories. Both of them bring meaning and beauty to our world.”
“Sounds and Science” – Vienna Meets Vancouver is part of the President’s Concert Series | November 30, 2019 on campus at the Old Auditorium from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m.
To learn more about the Sounds and Science concert series hosted in cooperation with the Medical University of Vienna, visit www.soundsandscience.com.
I found more information regarding logistics,
Saturday, November 30, 2019 6:30 pm The Old Auditorium, 6344 Memorial Road, UBC Box office and Lobby: Opens at 5:30 pm (one hour prior to start of performance) Old Auditorium Concert Hall: Opens at 6:00 pm
Tickets are also available in person at UBC concert box-office locations: – Old Auditorium – Freddie Wood Theatre – The Chan Centre for the Performing Art
General admission: $10.00 Free seating for UBC students Purchase tickets for both President’s Concert Series events to make it a package, and save 10% on both performances
Transportation Public and Bike Transportation Please visit Translink for bike and transit information. Parking Suggested parking in the Rose Garden Parkade.
The idea of combining music and medicine into the “Sounds & Science” – scientific concert series started in 2008, when the Austrian violinist Rainer Honeck played Bach’s Chaconne in d-minor directly before a keynote lecture, held by Nobel laureate Peter Doherty, at the Austrian Society of Allergology and Immunology’s yearly meeting in Vienna. The experience at that lecture was remarkable, truly a special moment. “Sounds & Science” was then taken a step further by bringing several concepts together: Anton Neumayr’s medical histories of composers, John Brockman’s idea of a “Third Culture” (very broadly speaking: combining humanities and science), and finally, our perception that science deserves a “Red Carpet” to walk on, in front of an audience. Attendees of the “Sounds & Science” series have also described that music opens the mind, and enables a better understanding of concepts in life and thereby science in general. On a typical concert/lecture, we start with a chamber music piece, continue with the pathobiography of the composer, go back to the music, and then introduce our main speaker, whose talk should be genuinely understandable to a broad, not necessarily scientifically trained audience. In the second half, we usually try to present a musical climax. One prerequisite that “Sounds & Science” stands for, is the outstanding quality of the principal musicians, and of the main speakers. Our previous concerts/lectures have so far covered several aspects of medicine like “Music & Cancer” (Debussy, Brahms, Schumann), “Music and Heart” (Bruckner, Mahler, Wagner), and “Music and Diabetes” (Bach, Ysaÿe, Puccini). For many individuals who have combined music and medicine or music and science inside of their own lives and biographies, the experience of a cross-connection between sounds and science is quite familiar. But there is also this “fun” aspect of sharing and participating, and at the “Sounds & Science” events, we usually try to ensure that the event location can easily be turned into a meeting place.
At a guess, Science and Sounds started informally in 2008 and became a formal series in 2014.
There is a video but it’s in German. It’s enjoyable viewing with beautiful music but unless you have German language skills you won’t get the humour. Also it runs for over 9 minutes (a little longer than most of videos you’ll find here on FrogHeart),
Markus Buehler at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has been working with music and science for a number of years. My December 9, 2011 posting, Music, math, and spiderwebs, was the first one here featuring his work. My November 28, 2012 posting, Producing stronger silk musically, was a followup to Buehler’s previous work.
Composers string notes of different pitch and duration together to create music. Similarly, cells join amino acids with different characteristics together to make proteins.
Now, researchers have bridged these two seemingly disparate processes by translating protein sequences into musical compositions and then using artificial intelligence to convert the sounds into brand-new proteins. …
Caption: Researchers at MIT have developed a system for converting the molecular structures of proteins, the basic building blocks of all living beings, into audible sound that resembles musical passages. Then, reversing the process, they can introduce some variations into the music and convert it back into new proteins never before seen in nature. Credit: Zhao Qin and Francisco Martin-Martinez
To make proteins, cellular structures called ribosomes add one of 20 different amino acids to a growing chain in combinations specified by the genetic blueprint. The properties of the amino acids and the complex shapes into which the resulting proteins fold determine how the molecule will work in the body. To better understand a protein’s architecture, and possibly design new ones with desired features, Markus Buehler and colleagues wanted to find a way to translate a protein’s amino acid sequence into music.
The researchers transposed the unique natural vibrational frequencies of each amino acid into sound frequencies that humans can hear. In this way, they generated a scale consisting of 20 unique tones. Unlike musical notes, however, each amino acid tone consisted of the overlay of many different frequencies –– similar to a chord. Buehler and colleagues then translated several proteins into audio compositions, with the duration of each tone specified by the different 3D structures that make up the molecule. Finally, the researchers used artificial intelligence to recognize specific musical patterns that corresponded to certain protein architectures. The computer then generated scores and translated them into new-to-nature proteins. In addition to being a tool for protein design and for investigating disease mutations, the method could be helpful for explaining protein structure to broad audiences, the researchers say. They even developed an Android app [Amino Acid Synthesizer] to allow people to create their own bio-based musical compositions.
Want to create a brand new type of protein that might have useful properties? No problem. Just hum a few bars.
In a surprising marriage of science and art, researchers at MIT have developed a system for converting the molecular structures of proteins, the basic building blocks of all living beings, into audible sound that resembles musical passages. Then, reversing the process, they can introduce some variations into the music and convert it back into new proteins never before seen in nature.
Although it’s not quite as simple as humming a new protein into existence, the new system comes close. It provides a systematic way of translating a protein’s sequence of amino acids into a musical sequence, using the physical properties of the molecules to determine the sounds. Although the sounds are transposed in order to bring them within the audible range for humans, the tones and their relationships are based on the actual vibrational frequencies of each amino acid molecule itself, computed using theories from quantum chemistry.
The system was developed by Markus Buehler, the McAfee Professor of Engineering and head of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT, along with postdoc Chi Hua Yu and two others. As described in the journal ACS Nano, the system translates the 20 types of amino acids, the building blocks that join together in chains to form all proteins, into a 20-tone scale. Any protein’s long sequence of amino acids then becomes a sequence of notes.
While such a scale sounds unfamiliar to people accustomed to Western musical traditions, listeners can readily recognize the relationships and differences after familiarizing themselves with the sounds. Buehler says that after listening to the resulting melodies, he is now able to distinguish certain amino acid sequences that correspond to proteins with specific structural functions. “That’s a beta sheet,” he might say, or “that’s an alpha helix.”
Learning the language of proteins
The whole concept, Buehler explains, is to get a better handle on understanding proteins and their vast array of variations. Proteins make up the structural material of skin, bone, and muscle, but are also enzymes, signaling chemicals, molecular switches, and a host of other functional materials that make up the machinery of all living things. But their structures, including the way they fold themselves into the shapes that often determine their functions, are exceedingly complicated. “They have their own language, and we don’t know how it works,” he says. “We don’t know what makes a silk protein a silk protein or what patterns reflect the functions found in an enzyme. We don’t know the code.”
By translating that language into a different form that humans are particularly well-attuned to, and that allows different aspects of the information to be encoded in different dimensions — pitch, volume, and duration — Buehler and his team hope to glean new insights into the relationships and differences between different families of proteins and their variations, and use this as a way of exploring the many possible tweaks and modifications of their structure and function. As with music, the structure of proteins is hierarchical, with different levels of structure at different scales of length or time.
The team then used an artificial intelligence system to study the catalog of melodies produced by a wide variety of different proteins. They had the AI system introduce slight changes in the musical sequence or create completely new sequences, and then translated the sounds back into proteins that correspond to the modified or newly designed versions. With this process they were able to create variations of existing proteins — for example of one found in spider silk, one of nature’s strongest materials — thus making new proteins unlike any produced by evolution.
Although the researchers themselves may not know the underlying rules, “the AI has learned the language of how proteins are designed,” and it can encode it to create variations of existing versions, or completely new protein designs, Buehler says. Given that there are “trillions and trillions” of potential combinations, he says, when it comes to creating new proteins “you wouldn’t be able to do it from scratch, but that’s what the AI can do.”
“Composing” new proteins
By using such a system, he says training the AI system with a set of data for a particular class of proteins might take a few days, but it can then produce a design for a new variant within microseconds. “No other method comes close,” he says. “The shortcoming is the model doesn’t tell us what’s really going on inside. We just know it works.
This way of encoding structure into music does reflect a deeper reality. “When you look at a molecule in a textbook, it’s static,” Buehler says. “But it’s not static at all. It’s moving and vibrating. Every bit of matter is a set of vibrations. And we can use this concept as a way of describing matter.”
The method does not yet allow for any kind of directed modifications — any changes in properties such as mechanical strength, elasticity, or chemical reactivity will be essentially random. “You still need to do the experiment,” he says. When a new protein variant is produced, “there’s no way to predict what it will do.”
The team also created musical compositions developed from the sounds of amino acids, which define this new 20-tone musical scale. The art pieces they constructed consist entirely of the sounds generated from amino acids. “There are no synthetic or natural instruments used, showing how this new source of sounds can be utilized as a creative platform,” Buehler says. Musical motifs derived from both naturally existing proteins and AI-generated proteins are used throughout the examples, and all the sounds, including some that resemble bass or snare drums, are also generated from the sounds of amino acids.
The researchers have created a free Android smartphone app, called Amino Acid Synthesizer, to play the sounds of amino acids and record protein sequences as musical compositions.
I’ve already written about October 2019 science and art/science events in Canada (see my Sept. 26, 2019 posting), but more event notices for Octoberhave come my way. These events are all art/science (or sciart as it’s sometimes called).
… on the future of life forms … a two-night (Oct./Nov.) discussion in Toronto, Canada
Here’s more from the ArtSci Salon’s October 3, 2019 announcement (received via email)
“…now they were perfecting a pigoon that could grow five or six kidneys at a time. Such a host animal could be reaped of its extra kidneys; then, rather than being destroyed, it could keep on living and grow more organs, much as a lobster could grow another claw to replace a missing one. That would be less wasteful, as it took a lot of food and care to grow a pigoon. A great deal of investment money had gone into OrganInc Farms…” (Margaret Atwood – Oryx & Crake 2003)
In Oryx and Crake Margaret Atwood describes a not-too-distant future where humans have perfected the art of fabricating and modifying a variety of creatures to improve and prolongue their own lives and wellbeing.
As Atwood has stated in various occasions, this is not science fiction.
It is in fact already happening. New forms of life appear not only as the product of lab fabrication or gene editing, but also as the result of toxic pollutants and climate change induced adaptation.
what to make of them?
how to cope with a world where extinction, adaptation and mutation risk to make traditional categories and taxonomies obsolete?
or not?
Join us to this two-parts series to discuss the ethics and implications of these transformations with artists, scientists and bioethicists.
this is a “double date”! Please, note the two dates please, RSVP here https://bit.ly/2AH1Pe8
Part 1 Thursday, October 17, 6:00-8:00 pm The Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences
Altered Inheritance: extinction, recreation or transformation? a dialogue and discussion on the implications of genome editing on humans and other organisms
with Francoise Baylis – Research Professor, Bioethicist, Dalhousie University
Karen Maxwell – Dept. of Biochemistry, Maxwell Lab, University of Toronto
emergent artists from OCADU [Ontario College of Art and Design University] and YorkU [York University, Toronto]
——————-
Part 2 Thursday, November 21, 6:00-8:00 pm The Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences
Classifying the new? why do we classify? what is it good for? what is the limit of taxonomy and classification in a transforming world?
with Richard Pell – Centre for PostNatural History, Pittsburgh, PA
Laurence Packer – Mellitologist, Professor of biology and environmental studies, York University
Stefan Herda – earth science artist
Cole Swanson – artist and educator (Art Foundation and Visual and Digital Arts, Humber college)
Anna Marie O’Brien – Frederickson, Rochman, and Sinton labs, University of Toronto
—————————
BIOS
Françoise Baylis is University Research Professor at Dalhousie University. She is a member of the Order of Canada and the Order of Nova Scotia, as well as a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. Baylis was one of the organizers of, and a key participant in, the 2015 International Summit on Human Gene Editing. She is a member of the WHO expert advisory committee on Developing Global Standards for Governance and Oversight of Human Genome Editing. Her new book “Altered Inheritance. CRISPR and the Ethics of Human Genome Editing” is published by Harvard University Press
Karen Maxwell is a research professor in the dept of biochemistry at the university of toronto, where she runs the Maxwell Lab. Among other topics, the lab’s three branches “Anti-CRISPR”, “Phage morons” and “Anti-Phage defences” study the interplay of phages with their bacterial hosts, with a focus on phage mediated bacterial virulence mechanisms and inhibitors of anti-phage bacterial defenses.
Richard Pell works at the intersections of science, engineering, and culture. He has worked in a variety of electronic media from documentary video to robotics to bioart to museum exhibition. He is the founder and director of the Center for PostNatural History (CPNH), an organization dedicated to the collection and exposition of life-forms that have been intentionally and heritably altered through domestication, selective breeding, tissue culture or genetic engineering. The CPNH operates a permanent museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and produces traveling exhibitions that have appeared in science and art museums throughout Europe and the United States, including being the subject of a major exhibition at the Wellcome Collection in London.
Laurence Packer is a mellitologist, ie a scholar whose main subject of study is wild bees. his research primarily involves the systematics of the bee subfamily Xeromelissinae – an obscure, but fascinating group of bees, restricted to the New World south of central Mexico. he has also expended considerable energy leading the global campaign to barcode the bees of the world. his work is concerned with promulgating the importance of bees: for genetic reasons, it seems that bees are more extinction prone than are almost all other organisms
Stefan Herda‘s practice explores our troubling relationship to the natural world through drawing, sculpture and video. Inspired by the earth sciences, Herda’s work navigates the space between truth and fiction. His material and process-based investigations fuse elements of authenticity, façade, the natural and the manufactured together. He received his BAH from the University of Guelph in 2010. His work in both sculpture and video has been included in exhibitions nationally and has been featured by CBC Arts and Daily VICE. Recently, Stefan has held solo shows at Patel Projects (Toronto) and Wil Kucey Gallery (Toronto), participated in group shows such as Cultivars: Possible Worlds at InterAccess (Toronto) and was featured as one of 12 artists in the Cabinet Project at the University of Toronto
Cole Swanson is an artist and educator based in Toronto, Canada. He has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions across Canada and throughout international venues in North America, South America, Europe, and Asia. At the heart of recent work is a cross-disciplinary exploration of materials and their sociocultural and biological histories. Embedded within art media and commonplace resources are complex relations between nature and culture, humans and other agents, consumers and the consumed. Swanson has engaged in a broad material practice using sound, installation, painting, and sculpture to explore interspecies relationships.
Anna Marie O’Brien is a post doc in the Frederickson, Rochman, and Sinton labs at University of Toronto, working on duckweeds, microbes, urban contaminants, and phenotypes.her PhD work was at Davis, with thesis advisors Dr. Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra and Dr. Sharon Strauss. she also collaborated closely with Dr. Ruairidh Sawers at LANGEBIO-CINVESTAV in Guanajuato, Mexico.
The first highlighted speaker, Françoise Baylis, has been mentioned here twice before, in a May 17, 2019 posting (scroll down to the ‘Global plea for moratorium on heritable genome editing’ subheading) and in an April 26, 2019 posting (scroll down to the ‘Finally’ subheading, the second paragraph). Both postings touch on the topic of CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) and germline editing (genetic editing that will affect all of your descendents).
Cartooney in New Westminster (near Vancouver, Canada) starting October 18, 2019
I like physics but I love cartoons Stephen Hawking
There you have it from one of the 20th/early 21st century’s most famous physicists. The quote is the opening line for the New Westminster (near Vancouver, Canada) New Media Gallery’s latest event webpage, Cartooney,
The impact of animated cartoons has been profound. In the early 20th century, we began exploiting the possibilities of the animated frame. The seven artists in this exhibition don’t create cartoons, they deconstruct those that already exist; from Looney Tunes, to The Simpsons to Charlie Brown. They exploit this potent material to reveal the inner and outer workings of our human world. The original cartoon is ever-present, haunting us with suggestive content.
The artists in this exhibition reframe our world. Here we are asked to consider the laws, systems and iconographies of the cartoon world while drawing parallels with our human world; physical laws, the laws of gravitation, matter + light, the physics of motion, and societal psychologies & behaviours. We are presented with fascinating catalogues and overlaying systems of symbolic language. The purposeful demolition of expectation in these works, mirrors the instabilities and dreams of modern life. They remind us that the pervasive medium of the cartoon can reflect and influence how we navigate the world. If there is a paradox here, it might be that dismantling a cartoon can throw open the doors of perception.
Artist Andy Holden becomes a cartoon avatar in Laws of Motion in a Cartoon Landscape.
Photograph By contributed [downloaded from https://www.newwestrecord.ca/entertainment/what-can-cartoons-tell-us-about-the-state-of-the-universe-find-out-in-new-west-1.23969740]
An Oct. 7, 2019 article in the New Westminster Record provides a few more details about the show,
The New Westminster New Media Gallery’s next exhibition is exploring the impact of animated cartoons.
Cartooney opens at the gallery on Friday, Oct. 18 and runs until Dec. 8 [2019], then again from Jan. 7 to Feb. 2 [2020].
Artist Kevin McCoy, one-half of the duo of Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, will be on hand for an artist talk on opening night, Friday, Oct. 18. The talk will run from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m., with a reception and open exhibition from 7:30 to 9 p.m.
…
Laws of Motion in a Cartoon Landscape, by Andy Holden (U.K.):
In his two-channel audiovisual installation, 57 minutes long, Holden becomes a cartoon avatar, giving both a lecture on cartoons and a cartoon lecture, describing how our world is best now understood as a cartoon. The project incorporates Greek philosophy, Stephen Hawking, critical theory, physics, art, the financial crisis and Donald Trump, while adapting 10 laws of cartoon physics to create a theory of the world and a prophetic glimpse of the world we live in.
…
CB-MMXVIII (I’ve been thinking of giving sleeping lessons), by Patten (U.K.):
In this multi-screen audiovisual installation, the artist duo Patten subjects Charlie Brown to all the digital stresses, distortions and manipulations available in 2018, testing his plasticity.
“Sampled texts from philosophy, science and critical theory criss-cross the screens and are linked with scrolling images related to the natural world, DNA, systems, multiples; all serving to influence our reading of the cartoon character and the texts,” says the release. The ambient soundtrack is a dramatically slowed down Linus and Lucy theme.
You can find the New Westminster New Media Gallery on the third floor at the Anvil Centre, 777 Columbia St. See www.newmediagallery.ca for more details.
Collisions Festival: Invasive Systems in Vancouver, November 2019
Curiosity Collider, a Vancouver-based not-for-profit organization, will be hosting its inaugural art-science Collisions Festival: Invasive Systems at the VIVO Media Arts Centre from November 8 to 10, 2019. The festival features an art-science exhibition showcasing independent works and collaborative works by artist/scientist pairs, a hands-on DNA sonification workshop, an opening reception with performances, and guided discussions and tours.
Curated by Curiosity Collider’s Creative Director Char Hoyt, the theme of the festival focuses on the “invasive systems” that surround us – from technology and infections, to pollution and invasive species. “We want to create a space to explore the influence of the invasive aspects of our world on our inner and outer lives” said Char. “We will examine our observations from both scientific and artistic perspectives- are these influences beneficial, inevitable, or preventable?” Attendees can anticipate a deep dive into the delicate and complicated nature of how both living and inanimate things redefine our lives and environments – through visual art, multimedia installations, and interactive experiences.
“I am not a scientist and do not come from a family of scientists, but I have always appreciated knowing how things work, how things are connected and how things evolve – collaboration between art and science feel natural to me,” said Vancouver artist Dzee Lousie. “Both artists and scientists are curious, perform experiments and are driven by questions.” Dzee’s work Crossing, an interactive puzzle painting that examines how microbial colonies can impact our behaviours and processes in our body, is the result of a collaboration with UBC PhD candidate Linda Horianopoulos. “As scientists, we often want people to take notice of our work and engage with it. I think that art attracts people to do exactly that,” said Linda.
The sculptural work Invasion by Prince George artist Twyla Exner explores the remnants of technology. “My artworks propose hybrids of technological structures and living organisms. They take form as abandoned technologies that have sprouted with new life, clever artificialities that imitate nature, or biotechnological fixtures of the not-so-distant future,” Twyla shared. Like Dzee, she feels that artists and scientists share the sense of curiosity, experimentation, and creative problem solving. “Both art and science have the ability to tell stories and shape how people see and interpret the world around them.”
The festival is hosted in collaboration with the VIVO Media Arts Centre (2625 Kaslo Street, Vancouver, BC V5M 3G9). It will open on the evening of November 8th, with a reception and a live performance by local sound artist Edzi’u, during which her sculptural installation Moose are Life will be brought to life. On Saturday, artist Laara Cerman will co-host a DNA sonification workshop with scientist Scott Pownall. Their work Flora’s Song No. 1 in C Major – a hand-cranked music box that plays a tune created from the DNA of local invasive plants – will be on exhibit during the festival. The festival will also include tours by the curator at 3:30pm and guided discussions at 4pm on both Saturday and Sunday. Visit https://collisionsfestival2019.eventbrite.ca for festival tickets and http://bit.ly/collisionsfestival2019 for festival information.
Other participating artists and collaborating scientists include: Christian Dahlberg (Photography/ Painting / New Media Artist), Chris Dunnett (Multidisciplinary Artist), Garth Covernton (PhD Candidate, University of Victoria), Joanne Hastie (Artist / Mechanical Engineer), Kathryn Wadel (Interdisciplinary Mixed Media Artist), and Katrina Vera Wong (Artist / Writer / Editor).
Curiosity Collider and VIVO Media Arts Centre gratefully acknowledge the support of BC Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, City of Vancouver, Metro Vancouver Regional Cultural Project Grants Program, UBC Faculty of Science, and our printing sponsor Jukebox, for making Collisions Festival: Invasive Systems possible.
About Curiosity Collider Art-Science Foundation
Curiosity Collider Art-Science Foundation is a Vancouver based non-profit organization that is committed to providing opportunities for artists whose work expresses scientific concepts and scientists who collaborate with artists. We challenge the perception and experience of science in our culture, break down the walls between art and science, and engage our growing community to bringing life to the concepts that describe our world.
Are you curious about data sonification? Wondering how music theory and DNA sequences could converge to create a work of art and science? Join us to explore more!
In this DNA sonification workshop, participants will learn the process of DNA barcoding of invasive plant species, and how to sonify DNA sequences with basic music theory and MIDI freeware. Participants will also get hands-on experience in amplying specific genetic regions in plants through polymerase chain reaction (PCR), a step necessary in preparing samples for DNA barcoding.
This workshop will be led by artist Laara Cerman and scientist Scott Pownall, whose art-science collaborative work “Flora’s Song No. 1 in C Major” will be on exhibit during Collisions Festival: Invasive Systems. Laara and Scott will also share their process of working together, and how decisions were made to arrive at their collaborative work of art and science.
We acknowledge that Collisions Festival and its events take place on the traditional, ancestral, unceded territories of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil- Waututh) Nations. We are grateful for the opportunity to live and work on this land.
I asked the Curiosity Collider folks (@CCollider on Twitter) if you needed to bring any equipment or have any knowledge of music. The answer was: no, you don’t need to bring anything (unless you want to) and you don’t need to know about music.
Uncorked at Science World at TELUS World of Science in Vancouver on November 14, 2019
This is not a cheap night out. An October 10, 2019 article by Lindsay William-Ross for the Daily Hive website gives you reasons to go anyway (Note: Links have been removed),
A new wine-themed event will have Vancouverites swirling with nerdy glee. Uncorked: A Celebration of the Science of Wine is an evening of sipping and learning that will bring together world-renown winemakers, chefs, and science experts for an unforgettable event.
…
Participating wineries are:
Mission Hill Family Estate CedarCreek Estate Winery CheckMate Artisanal Winery Martin’s Lane Winery Road 13 Vineyards
The wines will be paired with bites from Chef Patrick Gayler from Mission Hill’s Terrace Restaurant and Chef Neil Taylor from CedarCreek’s new Home Block Restaurant.
Programming for the evening includes seminars on the science of blending wine, the science of aging wine, the role of technology at modern vineyards, and the science of soil and terroir.
…
Proceeds from Uncorked will support Science World’s On the Road program, which last year brought live science performances to 41,500 students throughout B.C. who otherwise might not have had a chance to visit TELUS World of Science.
Tickets are $89 and can be purchased here. You may also want to reserve some money for the silent auction. Don’t forget, it’s November 14, 2019 from 7 pm to 10 pm at Science World in Vancouver. You can find directions and a map here.
One of Joseph Cohen’s painting incorporating carbon nanotubes photographed in normal light. Photo courtesy of Joseph Cohen. [downloaded from https://news.artnet.com/art-world/carbon-nanotube-cancer-paint-1638340?utm_content=from_&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Global%20September%202%20PM&utm_term=artnet%20News%20Daily%20Newsletter%20USE%20%2830%20Day%20Engaged%20Only%29]
The artist credited with the work seen in the above, Joseph Cohen, has done something remarkable with carbon nanotubes (CNTs). Something even more remarkable than the painting as Sarah Cascone recounts in her August 30, 2019 article for artnet.com (Note: A link has been removed),
Not every artist can say that his or her work is helping in the fight against cancer. But over the past several years, Joseph Cohen has done just that, working to develop a new, high-tech paint that can be used not only on canvas, but also to detect cancers and medical conditions such as hypertension and diabetes.
Sloan Kettering Institute scientist Daniel Heller first suggested that Cohen come work at his lab after seeing the artist’s work, which is often made with pigments that incorporate diamond dust and gold, at the DeBuck Gallery in New York.
“We initially thought that in working with an artist, we would make art to shed a little light on our science for the public,” Heller told the Memorial Sloan Kettering blog. “But the collaboration actually taught us something that could help us shine a light on cancer.”
For Cohen, the project was initially intended to develop a new way of art-making. In Heller’s lab, he worked with carbon nanotubes, which Heller was already employing in cancer research, for their optical properties. “They fluoresce in the infrared spectrum,” Cohen says. “That gives artists the opportunity to create paintings in a new spectrum, with a whole new palette of colors.”
Because human eyesight is limited, we can’t actually see infrared fluorescence. But using a special short-wave infrared camera, Cohen is able to document otherwise invisible effects, revealing the carbon nanotube paint’s hidden colors.
“What you’re perceiving as a static painting is actually in motion,” Cohen says. “I’m creating paintings that exist outside of the visible experience.”
Art Supplies—and a Diagnostic Tool
That same imaging technique can be used by doctors looking for microalbuminuria, a condition that causes the kidneys to leak trace amounts of albumin into urine, which is an early sign of of several cancers, diabetes, and high blood pressure.
Cohen helped co-author a paper published this month in Nature Communications about using the nanosensor paint in litmus paper tests with patient urine samples. The study found that the paint, when viewed through infrared light, was able to reveal the presence of albumin based on changes in the paint’s fluorescence after being exposed to the urine sample.
“It’s easy to detect albumen with a dipstick if there’s a lot of levels in the urine, but that would be like looking at stage four cancer,” Cohen says. “This is early detection.”
What’s more, a nanosensor paint can be easily used around the world, even in poor areas that don’t have access to the best diagnostic technologies. Doctors may even be able to view the urine samples using an infrared imaging attachments on their smartphones.
…
One of Joseph Cohen’s painting incorporating carbon nanotubes shown in both the visible light (left) and in UV fluorescence (right). Photo courtesy of Joseph Cohen. [downloaded from https://news.artnet.com/art-world/carbon-nanotube-cancer-paint-1638340?utm_content=from_&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Global%20September%202%20PM&utm_term=artnet%20News%20Daily%20Newsletter%20USE%20%2830%20Day%20Engaged%20Only%29]
Amazing, eh? If you have the time, do read Cascone’s article in its entirety and should your curiosity be insatiable, there’s also an August 22, 2019 posting by Jim Stallard on the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center blog,
Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,
Synthetic molecular recognition nanosensor paint for microalbuminuria by Januka Budhathoki-Uprety, Janki Shah, Joshua A. Korsen, Alysandria E. Wayne, Thomas V. Galassi, Joseph R. Cohen, Jackson D. Harvey, Prakrit V. Jena, Lakshmi V. Ramanathan, Edgar A. Jaimes & Daniel A. Heller. Nature Communicationsvolume 10, Article number: 3605 (2019) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-11583-1 Published: 09 August 2019
This paper is open access.
Joseph Cohen has graced this blog before in a May 3, 2019 posting titled, Where do I stand? a graphene artwork. It seems Cohen is very invested in using nanoscale carbon particles for his art.
