The contest is for undergraduate students at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and the deadline is Wednesday, April 30, 2025 at 6 pm PT. I’ve got more about the contest from an April 23, 2025 Belkin Gallery (The Belkin) newsletter (received via email and it can be seen here for a limited time)
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Ars Scientia Essay Prize: The Art-Science Connection
Deadline: Wednesday, April 30 at 6 pm
$1,000 Prize for the Winning Entry
Ars Scientia, UBC’s interdisciplinary initiative at the intersection of art and science, welcomes all UBC undergraduate students across campus to participate in our 2025 Essay Prize. This is an opportunity to explore the profound and often catalyzing connections between these two fields. If we take the long view, art and science have been considered pursuits comfortably woven together for most of human history. Somehow over the past two centuries we lost sight of that holistic worldview and these disciplines became seemingly incompatible. You are invited to write an essay considering how art and science are inextricably linked in fundamental and generative ways, addressing specific examples you have encountered – in a lab, an experiment; in an exhibition, an artwork; perhaps a thought experiment.
Publication: The best essay will be published on the Ars Scientia website, featured in the Quantum Matter Institute’s newsletter, and shared through other relevant online platforms.
Length: 1000-word limit
Deadline: 6 PM PDT, Wednesday, 30 April, 2025
How to Submit: email your essay as a PDF attachment to: arsscientia@ubc.ca
As part of Ars Scientia’s mission to foster dialogue between artistic and scientific inquiry, this competition is an invitation for you to explore, challenge, and celebrate creative intersections of art and science. We look forward to your insights!
Good luck.
For anyone who’s curious about Ars Scientia, I have a lot more about this partnership between the University of British Columbia’s (UBC; Vancouver, Canada) Stewart Blusson Quantum Matter Institute (Blusson QMI), Morris & Helen Belkin Art Gallery (the Belkin), and its Department of Physics and Astronomy (UBC PHAS). Just search ‘Ars Scientia’ in this blog’s search engine.
I’m a little late to the party but there’s still time to make a submission (for Toronto-based artists in particular as there’s very little time left, also there’s no money to pay the artists or for shipping costs) for the 2025 edition of the SciArt Gallery event included as part of the cross-Canada Science Rendezvous festival.
Here’s more from an April 10, 2025 note I received (via email),
… We are the SciArt Gallery team and we are reaching out on behalf of Science Rendezvous. Science Rendezvous is a registered charitable organization dedicated to bringing exciting research, STEM experiences, and programming to the public. As the SciArt Gallery team, we work together with artists and organizations to create an exhibition inspired by science and the theme provided each year. Artists are welcome to sell their works, but we kindly ask that no baked goods be sold. Here is a link to our website for previous SciArt Gallery exhibitions: https://www.sciencerendezvousuoft.ca/2023-festival/sciart-gallery/ (might want to see if it can be updated to include the 2024 event).
… If you have any STEM [science, technology, engineering, and mathematics] inspired artwork to showcase, please sign-up through this link: https://forms.gle/zYCyeYUFEz34wcoJA. We welcome artists with interactive artwork, especially pieces designed to engage family audiences. The event is being held on May 10th, 2025 at the University of Toronto, St. George campus from 11 am to 5 pm. Deadline for the application is April 25th, 2025.
I found more information from the Open Call for artists – U of T [University of Toronto] Science Rendezvous SciArt Gallery 2025 page (accessed via this link: https://forms.gle/zYCyeYUFEz34wcoJA,
Open Call for artists – U of T Science Rendezvous SciArt Gallery 2025
Thank you for your interest in participating in this year’s sci-art gallery! Science-Rendezvous (SR) is a one-day festival that happens simultaneously at sites across Canada, showcasing local scientific research and programs. It is family-friendly and highly interactive, to promote interest in science and research. Best of all, it is FREE! Downtown Toronto is Canada’s largest festival, with over 40,000 attendees last year. If you’d like to learn more about SR and its different activities, please visit http://www.sciencerendezvous.ca/ and http://www.sciencerendezvousuoft.ca/ .
This year, our event will be on May 10, 2025 from 11 am – 5 pm, Front Campus (King’s College Circle).
Part of this wonderful celebration is the display of local science art, or sci-art at our SciArt Gallery. This can be in any medium, with any kind of subject relating to nature and/or science. The theme of this year’s Science Rendezvous is Wonder! While we, unfortunately, cannot pay our artists, we invite and encourage participating artists to sell their work.
At the conclusion of the event, a prize will be presented to the artist that receives the most public votes!
If you think you’d like to participate, please fill out the form below. We have volunteers that can help with set-up and clean-up, and we provide a free pizza lunch! We will follow up with more information as it becomes available.
The deadline for applying is 11:59 PMon Apr. 25th, 2025. If you apply after this date, there is no guarantee we will be able to accommodate you. If you’d like to contact us before applying for any reason, please email us at uoftsr.sciartgallery@gmail.com
Natural materials that have evolved in plants and animals often display spectacular mechanical and optical properties. For example, spider silk is as strong as steel and tougher than Kevlar, which is used in bullet-proof vests. Inspired by nature, chemists are now synthesizing materials that mimic the structures and properties of shells, bones, muscle, leaves, feathers, and other natural materials. In this talk, I will discuss our recent discovery of a new type of coloured glass that is a mimic of beetle shells. [emphasis mine] These new materials have intriguing optical properties that arise from their twisted internal structure, and they may be useful for emerging applications..
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At the talk, MacLachlan mentioned that his new structurally iridescent material received great interest from the architectural community but since producing it was a painstaking process for a minute quantity, it would not be suitable as a building material.
A few years later I stumbled across some work at Cornell University where material scientists and Korean artist Kimsooja were working on what looks like an iridescent art/science piece, from a September 15, 2014 posting,
For her newest work, Korean artist Kimsooja wanted to explore a “shape and perspective that reveals the invisible as visible, physical as immaterial, and vice versa.” As artist-in-residence for the Cornell Council for the Arts’ (CCA) 2014 Biennial, she has realized that objective with “A Needle Woman: Galaxy was a Memory, Earth is a Souvenir,” to be installed on the Arts Quad next week [Sept. 15 – 19, 2014]. It will be one of several installations on campus for the semester-long biennial, “Intimate Cosmologies: The Aesthetics of Scale in an Age of Nanotechnology,” beginning Sept. 18 [2014] with a talk by Kimsooja.
Here’s how ‘Needle Woman’ looked after fabrication,
Jaeho Chong Pieces of Kimsooja’s “Needle Woman” artwork during fabrication in Shanghai show the polymer film developed by Cornell researchers
Creating materials that change color based on viewing angle represents a significant challenge at the intersection of art and science. Natural examples of this phenomenon, called iridescence, appear in butterfly wings, peacock feathers, and opals. Unlike traditional pigments that absorb specific wavelengths of light, these natural materials use microscopic structures to split light into different colors. This “structural color” approach creates pure, vibrant hues that don’t fade over time and require no potentially toxic pigments.
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A collaboration between Cornell University materials scientists and Korean-American artist Kimsooja has now yielded a practical solution to this challenge. The team developed a method for creating large-scale, durable iridescent coatings, demonstrated through a 46-foot-tall architectural installation titled A Needle Woman: Galaxy was a Memory, Earth is a Souvenir. Initially exhibited at Cornell under the auspices of the Cornell Council for the Arts, the installation now stands as part of the permanent collection at Yorkshire Sculpture Park in Wakefield, UK, where it has maintained its striking optical properties for over a decade.
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The breakthrough relies on custom-designed plastic molecules that automatically arrange themselves into regular patterns. These molecules consist of two different types of plastic chemically bonded together – polystyrene and poly(tert-butyl methacrylate). When properly designed, thousands of these dual-component molecules spontaneously stack into alternating layers, creating a natural grating that splits light into different colors.
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The key innovation came in synthesizing these molecules at unprecedented sizes – about 1000 times longer than typical plastic molecules. At this scale, the self-assembled layers naturally form patterns around 300-400 nanometers in spacing, large enough to interact with visible light. The researchers then developed a precise coating method to apply these materials while maintaining their self-organized structure.
The scale-up process presented numerous challenges. Each production batch yielded only about 35-40 grams of usable material, with half the attempts failing due to the extreme sensitivity to air and water during synthesis. The installation required roughly 500 grams of material to coat all panels. The team developed a custom two-liter reactor equipped with specialized mixing equipment to increase production scale while maintaining precise control over reaction conditions.
Color consistency posed another challenge. Different batches of the polymer produced slightly different colors due to variations in molecular size. The researchers developed two solutions: blending multiple batches to achieve consistent colors and adding precise amounts of shorter polymer chains to fine-tune the optical properties.
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The team also solved the challenge of applying these coatings to curved surfaces through a specialized lamination technique. They first created the color-shifting layer on flat, flexible plastic sheets, then sandwiched it between protective layers before carefully adhering it to curved acrylic panels. This approach preserved the optical properties while protecting the coating from environmental damage.
Molecules to Masterpieces: Bridging Materials Science and the Arts by Ferdinand F. E. Kohle, Hiroaki Sai, William R. T. Tait, Peter A. Beaucage, Ethan M. Susca, R. Paxton Thedford, Ulrich B. Wiesner. Advanced Materials DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.202413939. First published online: 05 December 2024
From a March 10, 2025 ArtSci Salon notice (received via email and visible here as of March 13, 2025), Note: I have reorganized this notice to put the events in date order and clarified for which event you are registering,
The ArtSci Salon (The Fields Institute) in collaboration with the NewONE program (U of T [University of Toronto]) are pleased to invite you to 3 engagements with Berlin-based interdisciplinary artist Kaethe Wenzel
Urban Pictograms Workshop March 20, 2025, 2:30-4:00 pm [ET[ William Doo Auditorium, 45 Willcocks street [sic]
A workshop to challenge the urban rules and cultural stereotypes of street signs
This workshop is part of the programming of the NewONE: learning without borders, New College, University of Toronto. Throughout the academic year, our classes have been exploring important issues pertaining to social justice. During this workshop, we invite students and members of the community to work together to create urban pictograms (or urban stickers) that challenge inequalities and reaffirm principles of social justice. A selected number of pictograms will be displayed on the windows of the D.G Ivey New College Library and will be launched on April 3 [2025] at 4:30 pm [ET].
Public talk: Urban organisms. Re-imagining urban ecologies and collective futures March 27 [2025], 5 pm [ET], Room 230 The Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences 222 College Street
After all, the world is being produced collectively, across the borders of time and geography as well as across the boundaries of the individual. –Kaethe Wenzel
Join us in welcoming Berlin-based interdisciplinary artist Kaethe Wenzel. Wenzel has used a diverse variety of media and material such as textiles, found items, animal bones, plants, soil and other organic material, as well as small electronics to produce urban interventions and objects of speculative fiction at the intersection of art, science and technology. Wenzel challenges the notion of the artwork as an object to be observed in a gallery or museum, and the gallery as a constrained space with relatively limited interactions. Her extensive body of work extends to building facades, billboards, entire neighborhoods and the city, translating into urban interventions to explore the collective production of culture and the creation and negotiation of public space.
Public launch of Urban Pictograms Thursday, April 3, 2025, 4 pm [ET] onwards Windows of D.G Ivey Library, 20 Willcocks Street, New College, University of Toronto
Speculative Meteorology: Weather Channeled Feb 3-7, [2-25] 10-4pm [ET]
opening reception : Feb 5, [2025] 5-7pm [ET] Special Projects Gallery, Goldfarb Centre for the Arts York University [Toronto, Ontario, Canada]
Curated by Aftab Mirzaei (Science and Technology Studies) with Mark-David Hosale (Digital Media) and showcases the work of artists and researchers including, Chris Beaulieu, Kwame Kyei-Boateng, Nava Waxman, Mark-David Hosale, Hiro Kubayashi, Grace Grothaus, Leo Liu, Winnie Luo, Aftab Mirzaei, and Colin Tucker.
DESCRIPTION Speculative Meteorology: Weather Channeled emerges from a series of interdisciplinary experiments conducted by members of the nd:studiolab between 2023 and 2024. This exhibit invites artists and researchers to explore imaginative and multidimensional accounts of atmospheres and climates across past, present, and future. Drawing on Donna Haraway’s concept of SF—speculative fabulation as a mode of attention, a theory of history, and a practice of worlding—the works collectively reimagine our relationship to the weather, engaging it as a site of both knowledge-making and creative practice.
Sponsored by the nD::StudioLab at York University
Environmental Monitoring for Art a workshop as part of the Speculative Meteorology: Weather Channeled interdisciplinary art exhibition, with Grace Grothaus
Feb 7, 2025, 12 -3 PM [ET] ACW 103, The Transmedia Lab York University [Toronto, Ontario, Canada]
In this three-hour workshop, we will fabricate sensors that can detect environmental data using some readily available materials and electronics. We will fabricate sensors that can detect animal footsteps, record raindrops, or measure wind and then learn to read their values using Arduino. The data from these sensors can be used as input for actuators in physical computing projects, or they can be triggers for screen-based animation or music – the options are wide and varied.
Here’s the second exhibition and its associated events, from the January 25, 2025 notice,
Afterglow Exhibition Feb 4-7, [2-25] 10-3pm [ET]
opening reception : Feb 5, [2025] 5-7pm [ET] Gales Gallery, York University [Toronto, Ontario, Canada]
Curated by : Nina Czegledy & Joel Ong, featuring international and local artists Raphael Arar, Nagy Molnar, Laszlo Zsolt Bordos, Jennifer Willet, Joel Ong (with Khaled Eilouti, Zhino Yousefi, Shelby Murchie and Oliver Debski-Tran)
AFTERGLOW [ af-ter-gloh, ahf- ] is an exhibition envisioned around the graphic quality of light, as well as its traces and incandescence both real and metaphorical. The participating artists explore cross-cultural practices via a variety of analog and digital media, relating light to unfolding contemporary considerations in the global Light Art panorama. At the same time, Afterglow references a deep resonance with the past, paying tribute to historical ideas that have illuminated our current understandings of interconnected systems of values and beliefs that underly the complementary artistic practices today.
In the words of pioneering Hungarian artist György Kepes (1906-2001) : “Our human nature is profoundly phototropic”. The exhibition is a reminder of the integral nature of light to human and more-than-human life, but also to the notion of light as a sensory environment within which we remain rooted, transfixed and nourished. The exhibiting artists take up these ideas in various formations, alluding to the physical, metaphorical and ecological implications of light. As an initial exhibition prototype, Afterglow is presented first at the Gales Gallery at York University in Toronto as it grows towards future touring exhibitions and symposia. The exhibition is integrated with a virtual Symposium that features exhibiting artists as well as International artists/theorists in conversation. Please proceed to our Eventbrite page for more details and registration [see below]. – Nina Czegledy, Joel Ong.
Afterglow Symposium Feb 6 [2025] 1-3pm [ET] Symposium Presenters: Andrea Polli, Jennifer Willet, Joel Ong, Karolina Halatek, Marton Orostz, Nina Czegledy and Raphael Arar.
If you’re in Toronto, you’re spoiled for choices. As for the rest of us, the Afterglow Symposium, as a hybrid event, offers an opportunity to hear from the artists.
This must have been some high school physics class. A November 5, 2024 news item on ScienceDaily explains how physics topological insulators and dance intersected for three classes,
Science can be difficult to explain to the public. In fact, any subfield of science can be difficult to explain to another scientist who studies in a different area. Explaining a theoretical science concept to high school students requires a new way of thinking altogether.
This is precisely what researchers at the University of California San Diego did when they orchestrated a dance with high school students at Orange Glen High School in Escondido as a way to explain topological insulators.
The experiment, led by former graduate student Matthew Du and UC San Diego Associate Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Joel Yuen-Zhou, was published in Science Advances.
“I think the concept is simple,” stated Yuen-Zhou. “But the math is much harder. We wanted to show that these complex ideas in theoretical and experimental physics and chemistry are actually not as impossible to understand as you might initially think.”
Topological insulators are a relatively new type of quantum material that has insulating properties on the inside, but have conductive properties on the outside. To use a Southern California staple, if a topological insulator was a burrito, the filling would be insulating and the tortilla would be conducting.
Since topological insulators are able to withstand some disorder and deformation, they can be synthesized and used under conditions where imperfections can arise. For this reason, they hold promise in the areas of quantum computing and lasers, and in creating more efficient electronics.
To bring these quantum materials to life, the researchers made a dance floor (topological insulator) by creating a grid with pieces of blue and red tape. Then to choreograph the dance, Du created a series of rules that governed how individual dancers moved.
These rules are based on what is known as a Hamiltonian in quantum mechanics. Electrons obey rules given by a Hamiltonian, which represents the total energy of a quantum system, including kinetic and potential energy. The Hamiltonian encodes the interactions of the electron in the potential energy of the material.
Each dancer (electron) had a pair of flags and was given a number that corresponded to a movement:
1 = wave flags with arms pointing up
0 = stand still
-1 = wave flags with arms pointing down
Subsequent moves were based on what a neighboring dancer did and the color of the tape on the floor. A dancer would mimic a neighbor with blue tape, but do the opposite of a neighbor with red tape. Individual mistakes or dancers leaving the floor didn’t disrupt the overall dance, exhibiting the robustness of topological insulators.
In addition to topology, Yuen-Zhou’s lab also studies chemical processes and photonics, and it was in thinking of light waves that they realized the movement of a group of people also resembled a wave. This gave Yuen-Zhou the idea of using dance to explain a complex topic like topological insulators. Implementing this idea seemed like a fun challenge to Du, who is currently a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Chicago and takes salsa lessons in his free time.
Du, who comes from a family of educators and is committed to scientific outreach, says the project gave him an appreciation for being able to distill science into its simplest elements.
“We wanted to demystify these concepts in a way that was unconventional and fun,” he stated. “Hopefully, the students were able to see that science can be made understandable and enjoyable by relating it to everyday life.”
Full list of authors: Matthew Du, Juan B. Pérez-Sánchez, Jorge A. Campos-Gonzalez-Angulo, Arghadip Koner, Federico Mellini, Sindhana Pannir-Sivajothi, Yong Rui Poh, Kai Schwennicke, Kunyang Sun, Stephan van den Wildenberg, Alec Barron and Joel Yuen-Zhou (all UC San Diego); and Dylan Karzen (Orange Glen High School).
This research was supported by an National Science Foundation CAREER grant (CHE 1654732).
Here’s what it looked like,
Snapshots showing dancers on the edge of the topological insulator moving in a clockwise direction. Courtesy of University of California at San Diego
You may find this helps you to understand what’s happening in the pictures,
Before getting to a link and citation for the paper, here’s the paper’s abstract,
Topological insulators are insulators in the bulk but feature chiral energy propagation along the boundary. This property is topological in nature and therefore robust to disorder. Originally discovered in electronic materials, topologically protected boundary transport has since been observed in many other physical systems. Thus, it is natural to ask whether this phenomenon finds relevance in a broader context. We choreograph a dance in which a group of humans, arranged on a square grid, behave as a topological insulator. The dance features unidirectional flow of movement through dancers on the lattice edge. This effect persists when people are removed from the dance floor. Our work extends the applicability of wave physics to dance. [emphasis mine]
I wonder if we’re going to see some ‘wave physics’ inspired dance performances.
Finally, here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,
Chiral edge waves in a dance-based human topological insulator by Matthew Du, Juan B. Pérez-Sánchez, Jorge A. Campos-Gonzalez-Angulo, Arghadip Koner, Federico Mellini, Sindhana Pannir-Sivajothi, Yong Rui Poh, Kai Schwennicke, Kunyang Sun, Stephan van den Wildenberg, Dylan Karzen, Alec Barron, and Joel Yuen-Zhou. Science Advances 28 Aug 2024 Vol 10, Issue 35 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adh7810
Caption: Iron Skulls Co dancers Adrian Vega (left) and Diego Garrido performed the dance duet Un último recuerdo for the spectators participating in the study. Photo Credit: Juanmi Ponce
An October 2, 2024 University of Helsinki press release (also on EurekAlert but published October 15, 2024) describes research exploring the differences in brain activity between audience members with extensive dance or music experience and audiences with little of experience of either,
University of Helsinki researchers measured the brain activity of people watching a live dance performance in a real-world setting. They invited spectators with extensive experience of either dance or music as well as novices with no particular background in either of these areas.
The spectators’ brain activity was measured using EEG while they watched the live dance duet Un último recuerdo, a piece created by the Spanish Iron Skulls Co that combines contemporary dance and breakdance.
Experienced dancers respond more strongly than novices
The results showed that dance experience is detectable in spectators’ brain activity during a dance performance. The experienced dancers watching the performance displayed stronger synchronisation than the novices at the low theta frequency.
Experience of dance affects brain functions associated with the visualisation of movement in the mind, the simultaneous integration of several sensory stimuli (listening to music and watching dance) and social interaction.
When musicians watched the live dance performance, they had stronger synchrony in the delta band, which is even lower than theta. This may be associated with the musicians’ trained ability to observe rhythmic bodily movements.
Watching dance in a real-world environment is unique for our brain
The effect of watching a dance performance on brain activity has previously been studied by having subjects watch a video recording on their own in a brain research laboratory.
The present study was conducted in a real-world performance environment and shows that watching a live dance performance in a full venue activates the brain more extensively than the above setting.
“As our interaction increasingly moves to online platforms and the virtual world, it’s important to know that real-world interaction is unique – for our body and brain,” says Hanna Poikonen, the lead author of the study.
The results also emphasise the effect of a background in creative movement on the spectator experience.
“If we have practised our bodily skills, we may better understand the body language of others, which makes social interaction smoother,” Poikonen notes.
Way back in time (see my March 6, 2012 posting), I featured some research into how experienced ballet watchers (not dancers or musicians) experienced a ballet performance.
First, thank you to anyone who’s dropped by to read any of my posts. Second, I didn’t quite catch up on my backlog in what was then the new year (2024) despite my promises. (sigh) I will try to publish my drafts in a more timely fashion but I start this coming year as I did 2024 with a backlog of two to three months. This may be my new normal.
As for now, here’s an overview of FrogHeart’s 2024. The posts that follow are loosely organized under a heading but many of them could fit under other headings as well. After my informal review, there’s some material on foretelling the future as depicted in an exhibition, “Oracles, Omens and Answers,” at the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford.
Human enhancement: prosthetics, robotics, and more
Within a year or two of starting this blog I created a tag ‘machine/flesh’ to organize information about a number of converging technologies such as robotics, brain implants, and prosthetics that could alter our concepts of what it means to be human. The larger category of human enhancement functions in much the same way also allowing a greater range of topics to be covered.
Here are some of the 2024 human enhancement and/or machine/flesh stories on this blog,
As for anyone who’s curious about hydrogels, there’s this from an October 20, 2016 article by D.C.Demetre for ScienceBeta, Note: A link has been removed,
Hydrogels, materials that can absorb and retain large quantities of water, could revolutionise medicine. Our bodies contain up to 60% water, but hydrogels can hold up to 90%.
It is this similarity to human tissue that has led researchers to examine if these materials could be used to improve the treatment of a range of medical conditions including heart disease and cancer.
These days hydrogels can be found in many everyday products, from disposable nappies and soft contact lenses to plant-water crystals. But the history of hydrogels for medical applications started in the 1960s.
Scientists developed artificial materials with the ambitious goal of using them in permanent contact applications , ones that are implanted in the body permanently.
For anyone who wants a more technical explanation, there’s the Hydrogel entry on Wikipedia.
Science education and citizen science
Where science education is concerned I’m seeing some innovative approaches to teaching science, which can include citizen science. As for citizen science (also known as, participatory science) I’ve been noticing heightened interest at all age levels.
It’s been another year where artificial intelligence (AI) has absorbed a lot of energy from nearly everyone. I’m highlighting the more unusual AI stories I’ve stumbled across,
As you can see, I’ve tucked in two tangentially related stories, one which references a neuromorphic computing story ((see my Neuromorphic engineering category or search for ‘memristors’ in the blog search engine for more on brain-like computing topics) and the other is intellectual property. There are many, many more stories on these topics
Art/science (or art/sci or sciart)
It’s a bit of a surprise to see how many art/sci stories were published here this year, although some might be better described as art/tech stories.
There may be more 2024 art/sci stories but the list was getting long. In addition to searching for art/sci on the blog search engine, you may want to try data sonification too.
Moving off planet to outer space
This is not a big interest of mine but there were a few stories,
I expect to be delighted, horrified, thrilled, and left shaking my head by science stories in 2025. Year after year the world of science reveals a world of wonder.
More mundanely, I can state with some confidence that my commentary (mentioned in the future-oriented subsection of my 2023 review and 2024 look forward) on Quantum Potential, a 2023 report from the Council of Canadian Academies, will be published early in this new year as I’ve almost finished writing it.
Some questions are hard to answer and always have been. Does my beloved love me back? Should my country go to war? Who stole my goats?
Questions like these have been asked of diviners around the world throughout history – and still are today. From astrology and tarot to reading entrails, divination comes in a wide variety of forms.
Yet they all address the same human needs. They promise to tame uncertainty, help us make decisions or simply satisfy our desire to understand.
Anthropologists and historians like us study divination because it sheds light on the fears and anxieties of particular cultures, many of which are universal. Our new exhibition at Oxford’s Bodleian Library, Oracles, Omens & Answers, explores these issues by showcasing divination techniques from around the world.
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1. Spider divination
In Cameroon, Mambila spider divination (ŋgam dù) addresses difficult questions to spiders or land crabs that live in holes in the ground.
Asking the spiders a question involves covering their hole with a broken pot and placing a stick, a stone and cards made from leaves around it. The diviner then asks a question in a yes or no format while tapping the enclosure to encourage the spider or crab to emerge. The stick and stone represent yes or no, while the leaf cards, which are specially incised with certain meanings, offer further clarification.
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2. Palmistry
Reading people’s palms (palmistry) is well known as a fairground amusement, but serious forms of this divination technique exist in many cultures. The practice of reading the hands to gather insights into a person’s character and future was used in many ancient cultures across Asia and Europe.
In some traditions, the shape and depth of the lines on the palm are richest in meaning. In others, the size of the hands and fingers are also considered. In some Indian traditions, special marks and symbols appearing on the palm also provide insights.
Palmistry experienced a huge resurgence in 19th-century England and America, just as the science of fingerprints was being developed. If you could identify someone from their fingerprints, it seemed plausible to read their personality from their hands.
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3. Bibliomancy
If you want a quick answer to a difficult question, you could try bibliomancy. Historically, this DIY [do-it-yourself] divining technique was performed with whatever important books were on hand.
Throughout Europe, the works of Homer or Virgil were used. In Iran, it was often the Divan of Hafiz, a collection of Persian poetry. In Christian, Muslim and Jewish traditions, holy texts have often been used, though not without controversy.
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4. Astrology
Astrology exists in almost every culture around the world. As far back as ancient Babylon, astrologers have interpreted the heavens to discover hidden truths and predict the future.
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5. Calendrical divination
Calendars have long been used to divine the future and establish the best times to perform certain activities. In many countries, almanacs still advise auspicious and inauspicious days for tasks ranging from getting a haircut to starting a new business deal.
In Indonesia, Hindu almanacs called pawukon [calendar] explain how different weeks are ruled by different local deities. The characteristics of the deities mean that some weeks are better than others for activities like marriage ceremonies.
6 December 2024 – 27 April 2025 ST Lee Gallery, Weston Library
The Bodleian Libraries’ new exhibition, Oracles, Omens and Answers, will explore the many ways in which people have sought answers in the face of the unknown across time and cultures. From astrology and palm reading to weather and public health forecasting, the exhibition demonstrates the ubiquity of divination practices, and humanity’s universal desire to tame uncertainty, diagnose present problems, and predict future outcomes.
Through plagues, wars and political turmoil, divination, or the practice of seeking knowledge of the future or the unknown, has remained an integral part of society. Historically, royals and politicians would consult with diviners to guide decision-making and incite action. People have continued to seek comfort and guidance through divination in uncertain times — the COVID-19 pandemic saw a rise in apps enabling users to generate astrological charts or read the Yijing [I Ching], alongside a growth in horoscope and tarot communities on social media such as ‘WitchTok’. Many aspects of our lives are now dictated by algorithmic predictions, from e-health platforms to digital advertising. Scientific forecasters as well as doctors, detectives, and therapists have taken over many of the societal roles once held by diviners. Yet the predictions of today’s experts are not immune to criticism, nor can they answer all our questions.
Curated by Dr Michelle Aroney, whose research focuses on early modern science and religion, and Professor David Zeitlyn, an expert in the anthropology of divination, the exhibition will take a historical-anthropological approach to methods of prophecy, prediction and forecasting, covering a broad range of divination methods, including astrology, tarot, necromancy, and spider divination.
Dating back as far as ancient Mesopotamia, the exhibition will show us that the same kinds of questions have been asked of specialist practitioners from around the world throughout history. What is the best treatment for this illness? Does my loved one love me back? When will this pandemic end? Through materials from the archives of the Bodleian Libraries alongside other collections in Oxford, the exhibition demonstrates just how universally human it is to seek answers to difficult questions.
Highlights of the exhibition include: oracle bones from Shang Dynasty China (ca. 1250-1050 BCE); an Egyptian celestial globe dating to around 1318; a 16th-century armillary sphere from Flanders, once used by astrologers to place the planets in the sky in relation to the Zodiac; a nineteenth-century illuminated Javanese almanac; and the autobiography of astrologer Joan Quigley, who worked with Nancy and Ronald Reagan in the White House for seven years. The casebooks of astrologer-physicians in 16th- and 17th-century England also offer rare insights into the questions asked by clients across the social spectrum, about their health, personal lives, and business ventures, and in some cases the actions taken by them in response.
The exhibition also explores divination which involves the interpretation of patterns or clues in natural things, with the idea that natural bodies contain hidden clues that can be decrypted. Some diviners inspect the entrails of sacrificed animals (known as ‘extispicy’), as evidenced by an ancient Mesopotamian cuneiform tablet describing the observation of patterns in the guts of birds. Others use human bodies, with palm readers interpreting characters and fortunes etched in their clients’ hands. A sketch of Oscar Wilde’s palms – which his palm reader believed indicated “a great love of detail…extraordinary brain power and profound scholarship” – shows the revival of palmistry’s popularity in 19th century Britain.
The exhibition will also feature a case study of spider divination practised by the Mambila people of Cameroon and Nigeria, which is the research specialism of curator Professor David Zeitlyn, himself a Ŋgam dù diviner. This process uses burrowing spiders or land crabs to arrange marked leaf cards into a pattern, which is read by the diviner. The display will demonstrate the methods involved in this process and the way in which its results are interpreted by the card readers. African basket divination has also been observed through anthropological research, where diviners receive answers to their questions in the form of the configurations of thirty plus items after they have been tossed in the basket.
Dr Michelle Aroney and Professor David Zeitlyn, co-curators of the exhibition, say:
Every day we confront the limits of our own knowledge when it comes to the enigmas of the past and present and the uncertainties of the future. Across history and around the world, humans have used various techniques that promise to unveil the concealed, disclosing insights that offer answers to private or shared dilemmas and help to make decisions. Whether a diviner uses spiders or tarot cards, what matters is whether the answers they offer are meaningful and helpful to their clients. What is fun or entertainment for one person is deadly serious for another.
Richard Ovenden, Bodley’s [a nickname? Bodleian Libraries were founded by Sir Thomas Bodley] Librarian, said:
People have tried to find ways of predicting the future for as long as we have had recorded history. This exhibition examines and illustrates how across time and culture, people manage the uncertainty of everyday life in their own way. We hope that through the extraordinary exhibits, and the scholarship that brings them together, visitors to the show will appreciate the long history of people seeking answers to life’s biggest questions, and how people have approached it in their own unique way.
The exhibition will be accompanied by the book Divinations, Oracles & Omens, edited by Michelle Aroney and David Zeitlyn, which will be published by Bodleian Library Publishing on 5 December 2024.
Courtesy: Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford
I’m not sure why the preceding image is used to illustrate the exhibition webpage but I find it quite interesting. Should you be in Oxford, UK and lucky enough to visit the exhibition, there are a few more details on the Oracles, Omens and Answers event webpage, Note: There are 26 Bodleian Libraries at Oxford and the exhibition is being held in the Weston Library,
EXHIBITION
Oracles, Omens and Answers
6 December 2024 – 27 April 2025
ST Lee Gallery, Weston Library
Free admission, no ticket required
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Note: This exhibition includes a large continuous projection of spider divination practice, including images of the spiders in action.
Exhibition tours
Oracles, Omens and Answers exhibition tours are available on selected Wednesdays and Saturdays from 1–1.45pm and are open to all.
A November 4, 2024 ArtSci Salon notice (received via email and visible here, along with some embedded images, for a limited time) announces a series of events and a book launch,
Fall 2024 has brought us climate and political uncertainty. In November, we bring you some food for thought: join us at these events to reflect on uncertainty, shapeshifting Matter, Unstable Universes and Viral Phenomena .
Mark Your calendars on November 14, November 18 and November 21 see details below (in reverse chronological order)
Shapeshifting Matter for an Unstable Universe artist talk and discussion with Daniela Brill Estrada Thursday, November 21, [2024] 5:30-7:30 pm The Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Science
Shapeshifting matter for an unstable universe is an in-disciplinary artistic project that challenges taxonomies and categories that divide nature into different boxes, not allowing bodies to exist freely, simply as part of the shapeshifting matter that inhabits this universe. The research tackles topics from astrophysics to origin of life research, and is based on daniela’s own experiences in understanding her own existence outside of these categories.
DANIELA BRILL ESTRADAis and artist and researcher from Bogotá based in vVenna [?]. inspired by origin of life research and astrobiology, she explores chemical trajectories, particularly those based on carbon. Currently, Daniela is an artist in residence at the SETI [search for extraterrestrial intelligence] institute and at the University at Buffalo, and a PhD candidate at the art x science school for transformation in Linz, Austria.
Join us at Celebrate Research Week and ORIHI launch (Osler Centre Institute for Health Innovation)
November 18, 2024 1. 11:00 am -12:00 pm Opening of Art and Science Exhibition with Daniela Brill Estrada and others 2. 2:00-3:30 pm Discussion and artist talk with Daniela Brill Estrada and Roberta Buiani
Osler Centre Institute for Health Innovation Brampton Civic Hospital Atrium 2100 Bovaird Drive East Brampton, ON L6R 3J7
Stay tuned for the the link to the Hybrid Event see more information and full program below
In a new era of global virology that requires novel methodologies to improve the comprehension of viruses and viral phenomena, Viral Behaviors explores the cultural, material, and artistic significance of viruses and viral phenomena.
The book contains a decade of research across art, science and technology and examines the struggles and successes of science and technology to tame the elusive nature and behavior of viruses, and the potential of art-based and cross-disciplinary collaborations to better communicate their complex making and intense entanglement with the world at large. Combining perspectives from art, philosophy, science and technology, it places biological and informational viruses alongside each other, revealing that, while the two types of agents affect the world in very different ways, their histories and manifestations contain surprising similarities that speak to a cultural continuum.
The book can be also borrowed from the University of Toronto Library and York University Library. don’t forget to tell your library to get a copy!
I wonder why they’re using the US spelling for ‘behaviours’. Leaving that aside, I’m sure it’s possible to enjoy one or more of the events and/or the book.
Not exactly an art/science (or sciart) story. let’s call it an art/technology (or techno art) story. The SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute issued an October 22, 2024 news release (also on EurekAlert but published October 23, 2024) announcing the six nominees for SETI’s new artist in residency (AIR) program ‘Algorithmic Imaginings’,
The SETI Artist in Residency (AIR) program announced Algorithmic Imaginings, a new residency that explores how AI technologies affect science and society. The residency focuses on creative research topics such as imaginary life, human-AI collaboration, AI futures, posthumanism, AI and consciousness, and the ethics of AI data. It also connects with current SETI Institute research, including exoplanet studies, astrobiology, signal detection, and advanced computing. The two-year program offers $30,000 in funding and an exhibition at the ZKM | Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany.
“AI is on everyone’s mind right now, be it ChatGPT4, text-to-video generators such as Sora, and discussions surrounding fake news and copyright,” said Bettina Forget, Director of the AIR program. “AI is a phenomenal tool, but it also comes with opportunities and concerns that should be addressed. This residency allows artists working at the intersection of art and technology to explore new avenues of thinking and connect them to SETI Institute research.”
Internationally recognized media art curator Zhang Ga, SETI AIR program Director Bettina Forget, and SETI AIR program Founder and Senior Advisor Charles Lindsay lead the SETI AIR Algorithmic Imaginings residency. Andrew Siemion, the SETI Institute’s Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI Research, and AI researcher Robert Alvarez, who collaborates with the SETI Institute as a mentor for its Frontier Development Lab program, bring their science and technology expertise to this residency.
The residency’s team of advisors selected six outstanding media artists and invited them to submit a project proposal for the SETI AIR Algorithmic Imaginings residency.
“These artists are notable voices with a solid track record of critically and inventively confronting the pressing issues raised by a pervasively technological world,” said Zhang Ga.
“SETI AIR is uniquely poised to participate in the AI zeitgeist that is exploding in San Francisco and Silicon Valley,” said Charles Lindsay. “We will support the most innovative artists of our time. It is time. Now.”
The SETI Institute will announce the winning artist later this fall.
The six nominees of the Art and AI residency are:
Tega Brain Tega Brain’s work examines ecology, data, automation, and infrastructure. She has created projects such as digital networks controlled by environmental phenomena, schemes for obfuscating personal data, and a wildly popular online smell-based dating service.
Dominique Gonzalez Foerster An experimental artist based in Paris, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster explores the different modalities of sensory and cognitive relationships between bodies and spaces, real or fictitious, up to the point of questioning the distance between organic and inorganic life.
Laurent Grasso French-born artist Laurent Grasso has developed a fascination with the visual possibilities related to the science of electromagnetic energy, radio waves, and naturally occurring phenomena.
HeHe (Helen Evans, Heiko Hansen) HeHe is an artist duo consisting of Helen Evans (French, British) and Heiko Hansen (German), based in Le Havre, France. Their works are about the social, industrial, and ecological paradoxes found in today’s technological landscapes. Their practice explores the relationship between art, media, and the environment.
Terike Haapoja Terike Haapoja is an interdisciplinary visual artist, writer, and researcher. Haapoja’s work investigates our world’s existential and political boundaries, specifically focusing on issues arising from the anthropocentric worldview of Western traditions. Animality, multispecies politics, cohabitation, time, loss, and repairing connections are recurring themes in Haapoja’s work.
Wang Yuyang Wang Yuyang is a renowned contemporary Chinese artist teaching at the Central Academy of Fine Arts. Focused on techno-art, his work explores the relationships between technology and art, nature and artificiality, and material and immaterial through an interdisciplinary and multimedia approach.
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About the SETI Institute
Founded in 1984, the SETI Institute is a non-profit, multi-disciplinary research and education organization whose mission is to lead humanity’s quest to understand the origins and prevalence of life and intelligence in the Universe and to share that knowledge with the world. Our research encompasses the physical and biological sciences and leverages expertise in data analytics, machine learning and advanced signal detection technologies. The SETI Institute is a distinguished research partner for industry, academia and government agencies, including NASA and NSF.
Caption: The six nominees for the SETI Institute’s Algorithmic Imaginings residency. Credit: SETI Institute [top row, left to right: Dominique Gonzalez Foerster; HeHe (Helen Evans, Heiko Hansen); Laurent Grasso; bottom row, left to the right: Tega Brain; Terike Haapoja; and Wang Yuyang]
