Tag Archives: art/science

FrogHeart’s 2024 comes to an end as 2025 comes into view

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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,

Other species are also being rendered ‘machine/flesh’,

The year of the hydrogel?

It was the year of the hydrogel for me (btw, hydrogels are squishy materials; I have more of a description after this list),

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.

Artificial intelligence

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,

A writer/blogger’s self-indulgences

Apparently books can be dangerous and not in a ‘ban [fill in the blank] from the library’ kind of way,

Then, there are these,

New uses for electricity,

Given the name for this blog, it has to be included,

  • Frog saunas published September 15, 2024, this includes what seems to be a mild scientific kerfuffle

I’ve been following Lomiko Metals (graphite mining) for a while,

Who would have guessed?

Another bacteria story,

New crimes,

Origins of life,

Dirt

While no one year features a large number of ‘dirt’ stories, it has been a recurring theme here throughout the years,

Regenerative medicine

In addition to or instead of using the ‘regenerative medicine’ tag, I might use ’tissue engineering’ or ’tissue scaffolding’,

To sum it up

It was an eclectic year.

Peering forward into 2025 and futurecasting

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.

As for more about the future, I’ve got this, from a December 3, 2024 essay (Five ways to predict the future from around the world – from spider divination to bibliomancy) about an exhibition by Michelle Aroney (Research Fellow in Early Modern History, University of Oxford) and David Zeitlyn (Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Oxford) in The Conversation (h/t December 3, 2024 news item on phys.org), Note: Links have been removed

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.

…

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.

…

You’ll find logistics for the exhibition in this September 23, 2024 Bodleian Libraries University of Oxford press release about the exhibit, Note: Links have been removed,

Oracles, Omens and Answers

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.

These free gallery tours are led by our dedicated volunteer team and places are limited. Check available dates and book your tickets.

You do not need to book a tour to visit the exhibition. Please meet by the entrance doors to the exhibition at the rear of Blackwell Hall.

…

Happy 2025! And, once again, thank you.

ArtSci Salon November 2024: shapeshifting matter and viral behaviors in Toronto, Canada

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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 ESTRADA is 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.

RSVP

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

Click Here to see program and to register

Book Launch
Viral Behaviors
by Roberta Buiani

Bloomsbury Visual Arts 
part of the series Biotechné. Interthinking Art, Science, and Design

Discussion and Q&A
Thursday November 14
5:00-7:00 pm
D.G. Ivey Library
20 Willcocks Street
Toronto

RSVP

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.

Find more information HERE

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.

Nominees for new SETI ‘Art and AI’ Artist in Residency (AIR) program announced

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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.

…

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]

Good luck to the artists.

UNESCO’s art/science exhibition at Art Basel Paris from October 18 – 20, 2024

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UNESCO triptych Resilience: Artistic Solutions for Human, Ocean and Biodiversity Challenges Downloaded from: https://hypeabis.id/read/42487/unesco-adakan-pameran-triptych-resilience-artistic-solutions-for-human-ocean-and-biodiversity-challenges-di-art-basel-paris

Thank you to the online magazine Hypeabis.id for the image,which accompanies an October 17, 2024 article by Yudi Supriyanto. For those interested in the article, you need Indonesian language skills.

For those with English language skills, here’s an October 16, 2024 UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) press release (also received via email),

At Art Basel Paris (18-20 October), UNESCO and Nautilus will present the triptych Resilience: Artistic Solutions for Human, Ocean and Biodiversity Challenges, an exhibition that brings
together art and science in the search for a new balance between human beings and their environment.

“The union of science and art is fundamental to questioning and reinventing our relationship with the planet. We need both scientists and artists to understand and witness the wonders of biodiversity, and the urgent need to protect them. After Art Basel Miami in December 2023,
UNESCO is delighted and proud to once again promoting this dialogue at Art Basel Paris,” said Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of UNESCO.

In collaboration with Nautilus, Dona Bertarelli Philanthropy, the Schmidt Ocean Institute and the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), the exhibition Resilience: Artistic Solutions to Human, Ocean and Biodiversity Challenges presented by UNESCO at Art
Basel Paris 2024 will consist of three collections:

* Tsunami: Sea Change for Resilience: a series of portraits by Matt Porteous dedicated to the survivors of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, twenty years after the tragedy. The photographer is also the co-founder of Ocean Culture Life, a network that brings together content creators and environmental activists.

* Biodiversity: Through the Lens: a stunning visual exploration of biodiversity devised by Discover Earth, a global community platform through which creators, institutions and partners join forces to raise awareness of the beauty and fragility of our planet, and cooperate to preserve it.

* The Artists-at-Sea collection: works by artists Taiji Terasaki and Rebecca Rutstein inspired by their time on board the R/V Falkor, the oceanographic research vessel of the Schmidt Ocean Institute.

This triptych will be presented in a mixed print and digital format at the UNESCO-Nautilus exhibition in the Grand Palais, which will also host a series of meetings and presentations on art and science over three days.

Members of the public will also be able to discover the Tsunami: Sea Change for Resilience and Biodiversity: Through the Lens collections at their leisure on the outside of UNESCO headquarters until 31 October [2024].

“Combining Nautilus’ innate story-telling mission, UNESCO’s mandate for culture, education and sciences, and a golden group of partners and artists, the exhibition invites us to contemplate the
enduring forces of human and natural resilience. Even as we face an era of unprecedented environmental loss, these works of art show us that survival is not just about enduring; it is about adapting, evolving, and thriving against the odds,” said John Steele, Founder and Publisher
of Nautilus.

This is UNESCO’s second participation in Art Basel. In December 2023, in Miami, the Organization highlighted the wonders of the deep sea and the importance of marine conservation alongside Nautilus and the Schmidt Ocean Institute. It also hosted several conferences bringing together artists and scientists. These initiatives testify to UNESCO’s determination to place art at the heart of sustainable development.

About UNESCO

With 194 Member States, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization contributes to peace and security by leading multilateral cooperation on education, science, culture, communication and information. Headquartered in Paris, UNESCO has offices in 54
countries and employs over 2300 people. UNESCO oversees more than 2000 World Heritage sites, Biosphere Reserves and Global Geoparks; networks of Creative, Learning, Inclusive and Sustainable Cities; and over 13 000 associated schools, university chairs, training and research
institutions. Its Director-General is Audrey Azoulay.

“Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed” – UNESCO Constitution, 1945.

Et, en français,

L’UNESCO et Nautilus présenteront à Art Basel Paris (18-20 octobre) le triptyque Résilience : solutions artistiques pour les défis humains, océaniques et de biodiversité, une exposition qui fait dialoguer l’art et la science à la recherche d’un nouvel équilibre entre les êtres humains et leur environnement.

“L’union de la science et de l’art est fondamentale pour interroger et réinventer notre relation à la planète. Nous avons besoin tout à la fois des scientifiques et des artistes pour comprendre et voir les merveilles de la biodiversité, et l’urgence à les protéger. Après Art Basel Miami, en décembre 2023, l’UNESCO est heureuse et fière de promouvoir ce dialogue à Art Basel Paris,” [dit] ]Audrey AzoulayDirectrice générale de l’UNESCO

En collaboration avec Nautilus, Dona Bertarelli Philanthropy, le Schmidt Ocean Institute et le Bureau des Nations Unies pour la réduction des risques de catastrophe (UNDRR), l’exposition Résilience : solutions artistiques pour les défis humains, océaniques et de biodiversité présentée par l’UNESCO à Art Basel Paris 2024 se composera de trois collections :

  • Tsunami : Changement radical pour la résilience :une série de portraits de Matt Porteous dédiés aux survivants du tsunami de 2004 dans l’océan Indien, vingt ans après la tragédie. Le photographe est aussi le cofondateur d’Ocean Culture Life, un réseau qui met en relation les créateurs de contenu et les défenseurs de l’environnement.
  • Biodiversité : à travers l’objectif : une étonnante exploration visuelle de la biodiversité imaginée par Discover Earth, plateforme communautaire mondiale par laquelle créateurs, institutions et partenaires s’allient pour sensibiliser à la beauté et à la fragilité de notre planète, et coopèrent pour la préserver.
  • La collection Artiste en mer : des œuvres des artistes Taiji Terasaki et Rebecca Rutstein inspirées de leur séjour à bord du R/V Falkor, le navire de recherche océanographique du Schmidt Ocean Institute.

Ce triptyque sera présenté dans un format mixte imprimé et numérique au salon UNESCO-Nautilus du Grand Palais qui accueillera également pendant trois jours une série de rencontres et de présentations sur l’art et la science.

Le public pourra également découvrir les collections Tsunami : Changement radical pour la résilience et Biodiversité : à travers l’objectif en accès libre sur les grilles extérieures du siège de l’UNESCO jusqu’au 31 octobre.

“Combinant la mission de Nautilus en matière de narration, le mandat de l’UNESCO pour la culture, l’éducation et les sciences, et l’implication d’un groupe exceptionnel de partenaires et d’artistes, cette exposition nous invite à contempler la résilience des êtres humains et de la nature. Alors même que nous sommes confrontés à un péril environnemental sans précédent, les œuvres exposées nous montrent que la survie n’est pas seulement une question d’endurance ; il s’agit de s’adapter, d’évoluer et de prospérer contre vents et marées,” [dit] John Steele Fondateur et éditeur de Nautilus

Il s’agit de la deuxième participation de l’UNESCO à Art Basel. En décembre 2023, à Miami, l’Organisation avait mis en évidence les merveilles des grands fonds marins et l’importance de la conservation marine aux côtés de Nautilus et du Schmidt Ocean Institute. Elle avait aussi animé plusieurs conférences réunissant artistes et scientifiques. Ces initiatives témoignent de la volonté de l’UNESCO de placer l’art au cœur du développement durable.

À propos de l’UNESCO

Avec 194 États membres, l’Organisation des Nations Unies pour l’éducation, la science et la culture contribue à la paix et à la sécurité en menant la coopération multilatérale dans les domaines de l’éducation, de la science, de la culture, de la communication et de l’information. Basée à Paris, l’UNESCO possède des bureaux dans 54 pays et emploie plus de 2300 personnes. L’UNESCO supervise plus de 2000 sites du patrimoine mondial, réserves de biosphère et géoparcs mondiaux ; des réseaux de villes créatives, apprenantes, inclusives et durables ; et plus de 13 000 écoles, chaires universitaires, établissements de formation et de recherche associés. Sa directrice générale est Audrey Azoulay.

“Puisque les guerres prennent naissance dans l’esprit des hommes, c’est dans l’esprit des hommes que doivent être construites les défenses de la paix” – Constitution de l’UNESCO, 1945.

For anyone who can’t attend Art Basel Paris 2024 but would like to see the exhibition at UNESCO headquarters in Paris, you can find location information and more at the UNESCO House webpage.

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

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

Conversation with Weiyi Chang and Lisa Myers

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

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

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Artist Talk with Caroline Delétoille

Wednesday, October 16 at 3 pm

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

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More about …

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

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

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

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

Register for the Zoom link

This talk will be recorded and made available online.

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

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

Everyone is welcome and admission is free.

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

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

Caroline Delétoille

Artist

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

In French,

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

Programme de résidence Arts & Sciences « Quantum Studio »

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

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

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

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

Caroline Delétoille

Biographie de l’artiste :

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

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

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

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

Quantum Studio

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

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

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

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

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

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

The scientific topics to be explored during this residency include:

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

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

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

Learn more about Ars Scientia here.

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

One more point of interest

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

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

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

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

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

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

About the residency

Objectives

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

Advantages

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

Eligibility

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

Application Process and Required Documents

The application submission:

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

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

Timeline

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

Contact

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

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

There you have it.

Climate measurements as music

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Given that it was Earth Day yesterday (April 22, 2024), this seems like a good second act. From an April 18, 2024 news item on phys.org,

A geo-environmental scientist from Japan has composed a string quartet using sonified climate data. The 6-minute-long composition—titled “String Quartet No. 1 “Polar Energy Budget”—is based on over 30 years of satellite-collected climate data from the Arctic and Antarctic and aims to garner attention on how climate is driven by the input and output of energy at the poles.

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This is a little longer video than I usually like to embed here at 6 mins. 29 secs. and it is one of the more aesthetically pleasing I’ve heard,

An April 18, 2024 Cell Press press release, which originated the news item, describes the data sonification work and its application to art/science projects, Note: A link has been removed,

“I strongly hope that this manuscript marks a significant turning point, transitioning from an era where only scientists handle data to one where artists can freely leverage data to craft their works,” writes author and composer Hiroto Nagai, a geo-environmental scientist at Rissho University.

Scientist-composer Hiroto Nagai asserts that music, as opposed to sound, evokes an emotional response and posits that “musification” (as opposed to sonification) of data requires some intervention by the composer to build tension and add dynamics. For this reason, Nagai was more liberal in adding a “human touch” compared to previous data-based musical compositions, aiming to meld sonification with traditional music composition.

“As a fundamental principle in music composition, it is necessary to combine temporal sequences from tension-building to resolution in various scales, from harmonic progressions to entire movements,” Nagai writes. “So far, there haven’t been published attempts and open discussion on sonification-based music composition, nor attempts to demonstrate the methodology required to intentionally affect the audience’s emotions with an artistic piece.”

To do this, he first used a program to sonify environmental data by assigning sounds to different data values. The publicly available data was collected from four polar locations between 1982 and 2022: an ice-core drilling site in the Greenland ice sheet, a satellite station in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago, and two Japanese-owned research stations in the Antarctic (Showa Station and Dome Fuji Station). For each of the sites, Nagai used data on monthly measurements of short- and longwave radiation, precipitation, surface temperature, and cloud thickness.

In the next step, he transformed this collection of sounds into a musical composition to be played by two violins, a viola, and a cello. This process involved many steps, including manipulating the pitch of different datapoints and assigning sections of data to the different instruments, overlaying passages created from different data, and introducing musical playing techniques such as pizzicato and staccato. Nagai also intervened in more artistic ways by introducing rhythm, deliberately removing certain sounds, and introducing handwritten (non-data derived) parts into the composition.

The quartet’s premiere live performance was shared at Waseda University in Tokyo in March 2023 followed by a panel discussion. A filmed performance of the piece by PRT Quartet, a Japanese professional string quartet, was also released on YouTube in March 2023.

“Upon listening, my initial reaction was like, ‘What is this?’ It felt like a typical contemporary piece,” said Haruka Sakuma, the professional violinist who performed 2nd violin. “The flow of the music was a bit hard to memorize quickly, and it was quite challenging at first.”

Nagai says that, in contrast to graphical representations of data, music elicits emotion before intellectual curiosity and suggests that using graphical and music representations of data in conjunction might be even more powerful.

“It grabs the audiences’ attention forcefully, while graphical representations require active and conscious recognition instead,” Nagai writes. “This reveals the potential for outreach in the Earth sciences through music.”

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

String Quartet No. 1 “Polar Energy Budget” – Music composition using Earth observation data of polar regions by Hiroto Nagai. iScience DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2024.109622 Published: April 18, 2024 Copyright © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. User license Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0)

As you may have guessed on seeing the Creative Commons licence, this is an open access paper,

Venice Biennale 2024 (April 20 – November 24, 2024)

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Every once in a while I get an email from a lawyer (Gale P. Eston) in New York City who specializes in the art and business communities. How I got on her list is a mystery to me but her missives are always interesting. The latest one was a little difficult to understand until I looked at the Venice Biennale website and saw the theme for this year’s exhibition,

Courtesy: Venice Biennale [downloaded from https://www.labiennale.org/en/news/biennale-arte-2024-stranieri-ovunque-foreigners-everywhere]

Biennale Arte 2024: Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere

The 60th International Art Exhibition, curated by Adriano Pedrosa, will be open from Saturday 20 April to Sunday 24 November at the Giardini and Arsenale venues.

The 60th International Art Exhibition, titled Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere, will open to the public from Saturday April 20 to Sunday November 24, 2024, at the Giardini and the Arsenale; it will be curated by Adriano Pedrosa and organised by La Biennale di Venezia. The pre-opening will take place on April 17, 18 and 19; the awards ceremony and inauguration will be held on 20 April 2024.

Since 2021, La Biennale di Venezia launched a plan to reconsider all of its activities in light of recognized and consolidated principles of environmental sustainability. For the year 2024, the goal is to extend the achievement of “carbon neutrality” certification, which was obtained in 2023 for La Biennale’s scheduled activities: the 80th Venice International Film Festival, the Theatre, Music and Dance Festivals and, in particular, the 18th International Architecture Exhibition which was the first major Exhibition in this discipline to test in the field a tangible process for achieving carbon neutrality – while furthermore itself reflecting upon the themes of decolonisation and decarbonisation

The Exhibition will take place in the Central Pavilion (Giardini) and in the Arsenale, and it will present two sections: the Nucleo Contemporaneo and the Nucleo Storico.

As a guiding principle, the Biennale Arte 2024 has favored artists who have never participated in the International Exhibition—though a number of them may have been featured in a National Pavilion, a Collateral Event, or in a past edition of the International Exhibition. Special attention is being given to outdoor projects, both in the Arsenale and in the Giardini, where a performance program is being planned with events during the pre-opening and closing weekend of the 60th Exhibition.

Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere, the title of the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, is drawn from a series of works started in 2004 by the Paris-born and Palermo-based Claire Fontaine collective. The works consist of neon sculptures in different colours that render in a growing number of languages the words “Foreigners Everywhere”. The phrase comes, in turn, from the name of a Turin collective who fought racism and xenophobia in Italy in the early 2000s.

«The expression Stranieri Ovunque – explains Adriano Pedrosa – has several meanings. First of all, that wherever you go and wherever you are you will always encounter foreigners— they/we are everywhere. Secondly, that no matter where you find yourself, you are always truly, and deep down inside, a foreigner.»

«The Italian straniero, the Portuguese estrangeiro, the French étranger, and the Spanish extranjero, are all etymologically connected to the strano, the estranho, the étrange, the extraño, respectively, which is precisely the stranger. Sigmund Freud’s Das Unheimliche comes to mind—The Uncanny in English, which in Portuguese has indeed been translated as “o estranho”– the strange that is also familiar, within, deep down side. According to the American Heritage and the Oxford Dictionaries, the first meaning of the word “queer” is precisely “strange”, and thus the Exhibition unfolds and focuses on the production of other related subjects: the queer artist, who has moved within different sexualities and genders, often being persecuted or outlawed; the outsider artist, who is located at the margins of the art world, much like the self-taught artist, the folk artist and the artista popular; the indigenous artist, frequently treated as a foreigner in his or her own land. The productions of these four subjects are the interest of this Biennale, constituting the Nucleo Contemporaneo.»

«Indigenous artists have an emblematic presence and their work greets the public in the Central Pavilion, where the Mahku collective from Brazil will paint a monumental mural on the building’s façade, and in the Corderie, where the Maataho collective from Aotearoa/New Zealand will present a large-scale installation in the first room. Queer artists appear throughout the exhibition, and are also the subject of a large section in the Corderie, and one devoted to queer abstraction in the Central Pavilion.»

The Nucleo Contemporaneo will feature a special section in the Corderie devoted to the Disobedience Archive, a project by Marco Scotini, which since 2005 has been developing a video archive focusing on the relationships between artistic practices and activism. In the Exhibition, the presentation of the Disobedience Archive is designed by Juliana Ziebell, who also worked in the exhibition architecture of the entire International Exhibition. This section is divided into two main parts especially conceived for our framework: Diaspora activism and Gender Disobedience. The Disobedience Archive will include works by 39 artists and collectives made between 1975 and 2023.»

«The Nucleo Storico gathering works from 20th century Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Much has been written about global modernisms and modernisms in the Global South, and a number of rooms will feature works from these territories, much like an essay, a draft, a speculative curatorial exercise that seeks to question the boundaries and definitions of modernism. We are all too familiar with the histories of modernism in Euroamerica, yet the modernisms in the Global South remain largely unknown. […]. European modernism itself travelled far beyond Europe throughout the 20th century, often intertwined with colonialism, and many artists in the Global South traveled to Europe to be exposed to it […].»

In the Central Pavilion three rooms are planned for the Nucleo Storico: one room is titled Portraits, one Abstractions and the third one is devoted to the the worldwide Italian artistic diaspora in the 20th century.

«The double-room named Portraits, includes works from 112 artists, mostly paintings but also works on paper and sculpture, spanning the years of 1905 and 1990. […] The theme of the human figure has been explored in countless different ways by artists in the Global South, reflecting on the crisis of representation around the that very figure that marked much of the art in 20th century art. In the Global South, many artists were in touch with European modernism, through travels, studies or books, yet they bring in their own highly personal and powerful reflections and contributions to their works […]. The room devoted to Abstractions includes 37 artists: most of them are being exhibited together for the first time, and we will learn from these unforeseen juxtapositions in the flesh, which will then hopefully point towards new connections, associations, and parallels much beyond the rather straightforward categories that I have proposed. […]»

Artists from Singapore and Korea have been brought into this section, given that at the time they were part of the so-called Third World. In a similar manner, Selwyn Wilson and Sandy Adsett, from Aotearoa/New Zealand, have been brought into this Nucleo Storico as they are historical Maori artists.

«[…] A third room in the Nucleo Storico is dedicated to the worldwide Italian artistic diaspora in the 20th century: Italian artists who travelled and moved abroad developing their careers in Africa, Asia, Latin America, as well as in the rest of Europe and the United States, becoming embedded in local cultures—and who often played significant roles in the development of the narratives of modernism beyond Italy. This room will feature works by 40 artists who are first or second generations Italians, exhibited in Lina Bo Bardi’s glass easel display system (Bo Bardi herself an Italian who moved to Brazil, and who won the 2021 Biennale Architettura’s Special Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in Memoriam).»

«Two quite different but related elements have emerged – underlines Pedrosa – rather organically in the research and have been developed, appearing as leitmotivs throughout the International Exhibition. The first one is textiles, which have been explored by many artists in the show in multiple, from key historical figures in the Nucleo Storico, to many artists in the Nucleo Contemporaneo. […] These works reveal an interest in craft, tradition, and the handmade, and in techniques that were at times considered other or foreign, outsider or strange in the larger field of fine arts. […] A second motif is artists—artists related by blood, many of them Indigenous. […] Again tradition plays an important role here: the transmission of knowledge and practices from father or mother to son or daughter or among siblings and relatives.»

…

There’s a lot more about this huge art exhibition on the Venice Biennale website but this is enough to give you a sense of the size and scope and how the work Eston describes fits into the 2024 exhibition theme.

Gale P. Eston‘s April 12, 2024 email announced an exhibition she curated and which is being held on site during the 2024 Venice Biennale (Note 1: I’ve published too late for the opening reception but there’s more to Eston’s curation than a reception; Note 2: There is an art/science aspect to the work from artist China Blue),

Hospitality in the Pluriverse, curated by Gale Elston during the 60th edition of the Venice Biennial from April 16 to May 4, 2024.

The Opening Reception will be held April 16th, 2024 from 5-7 pm

HOSPITALITY IN THE PLURIVERSE

JEREMY DENNIS

ANITA GLESTA

ANN MCCOY

WARREN NEIDICH

ILONA RICH

Corte de Ca’ Sarasina, Castello 1199, Venezia, IT, 30122

April 16 to May 4, 2024

OPENING RECEPTION: April 16, 5 to 7 PM

Gallery hours: Tuesday-Saturday 10-6 PM

Performances by CHINA BLUE curated by Elga Wimmer

April 16, 18 and 19 at 6 PM

RAINER GANAHL, Requiem, performed April 17 at 6 PM

This exhibition includes five artists who explore the political, historical, aesthetical, physical, and epistemological dimensions of hospitality and its’ conflicts. Based upon the analysis of Jacques Derrida, in his Of Hospitality, this exhibition scrutinizes the reaction of the host to alterity or otherness.

Each artist examines various questions surrounding the encounter of a foreigner and their host sovereign using a variety of media such as painting, photography, sculpture, and animation.

In discussion with Adriano Pedrosa’s exhibition Foreigners Everywhere, the exhibition Hospitality in the Pluriverse understands the complexity of immigration and begs the question of what hospitality is and when and how should it be extended to the stranger, the foreigner, the “other”.

On the one hand the devastating effects of global inequality, climate change (climate refugees) and the political pressures created have led to mass migration and political and chaos. In opposition, the richness of the contributions of the other in the form of cultural and epistemological multiplicity is invaluable.

Jeremy Dennis, First Nation artist and Tribal Member of the Shinnecock Indian Nation in Southampton, NY, uses staging and computer assisted techniques to create unusual color photographs which portray indigenous identity, culture, and assimilation. His photographs challenge how indigenous people have been presented in film in America Westerns as well as empowering them through the use of a haunting Zombie trope establishing the power of ancestral knowledge as a means of resistance.

Ann McCoy, a New York-based sculptor, painter, and art critic, and Editor-at- Large for the Brooklyn Rail includes a new drawing from her recent Guggenheim Fellowship exploring the fairy tale of a wolf in her father’s silver, gold and tungsten mill. The fairy tale is based on an historic site of many Irish immigrant workers’ deaths and expresses the tragedy using Jungian and alchemical references.

Warren Neidich’s work Pluriverse* engages with the concept of cognitive justice. As Bonaventure de Sousa Santos has said there can be no social justice without cognitive justice. Cognitive which includes the right of different traditions of knowledge and the cultural practices they are engaged with to co-exist without duress. Especially relevant for us here are those forms of knowledge that have evolved in the so-called enlightened global North, Indigenous Knowledges and those in the subaltern global South and Asia. Pluriverse is an expression that is inclusive of these diverse epistemologies. We don’t want to live in a normative, homogeneous Universe but rather a heterogeneous and multiplicitous Pluriverse.*

Anita Glesta, depicts the non-human foreigner (a corona virus moving through the body like a bug or a butterfly) set to a soundtrack from Hildegard von Bingen, the abbess and composer from the medieval ages. Glesta’s video was developed on a Fellowship with The ARC Laureate Felt Experience & Empathy Lab to research how anxiety affects our nervous system. As an extension of the pandemic series her animations invite the viewer to experience how humans process fear and anxiety in their bodies.

Spanish artist Ilona Rich work continues the theme of what it is to be a foreigner on a psychological level. Her colorful sculptures describe a dystopian view of the commonplace and the everyday.

Her work shows us a person who feels like a stranger in their own skin, anxious, precarious, not normative. Her dogs have two heads and the many feet of a centipede. Her sculpture Wheel of Fortune will be displayed which posits that fate is contingent on chance and our roles as host or foreigner are subject to rapid unexpected change.

The exhibition offers a dizzying study of alterity, on the biological (Glesta), the social (Dennis), the historical (McCoy), cognitive (Neidich) and personal levels (Rich).The viewer will come away with an expanded and enriched view of what it means to be a foreigner and asks what contingencies, if any, should accompany hospitality.

— Gale Elston

China Blue, Saturn Walk: Embodying Listening during the 2024 Venice Biennial with (Re)Create [emphasis mine]

Project Space Venice, curated by Elga Wimmer.

US/Canadian artist China Blue creates art performances that give a physical expression to sound based on her interest in connecting through art and science.

For her 2024 Venice exhibition, Saturn Walk: Embodying Listening by China Blue, performers and visitors walk in a labyrinth to a composition created by her and Lance Massey. This is a work based on the sonics in Saturn’s rings that China Blue and Dr. Seth Horowitz discovered as a result of a grant from NASA to explore Saturn’s rings.

In Saturn Walk: Embodying Listening for the (Re)Create Project Space Venice, the artist invites viewers to experience the sound walk following the dance performance. The dancers include Andrea Nann and Jennifer Dahl, Canada, and Laura Coloman, UK. A trace of China Blue’s performance, an artwork, Celestial Pearls, based on 16 of Saturn’s 100+ moons, will remain on view at (Re)Create Project Space Venice.

Austrian artist Rainer Ganahl performs his work, Requiem in memoriam for Russian dissident Alexei Navalny.

It seems like you might need the full seven months to fully appreciate the work on display at the 2024 Venice Biennale.

Dendritic painting: a physics story

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A March 4, 2024 news item on phys.org announces research into the physics of using paints and inks in visual art, Note: A link has been removed,

Falling from the tip of a brush suspended in mid-air, an ink droplet touches a painted surface and blossoms into a masterpiece of ever-changing beauty. It weaves a tapestry of intricate, evolving patterns. Some of them resemble branching snowflakes, thunderbolts or neurons, whispering the unique expression of the artist’s vision.

Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) researchers set out to analyze the physical principles of this fascinating technique, known as dendritic painting. They took inspiration from the artwork of Japanese media artist, Akiko Nakayama. The work is published in the journal PNAS Nexus.

…

Caption: Japanese artist Akiko Nakayama manipulates alcohol and inks to create tree-like dendritic patterns during a live painting session. Credit: Photo Credit: Akiko Nakayama

Yes, the ends definitely look tree-like (maybe cedar). A February 29, 2024 Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) press release (also on EurekAlert but published March 1, 2024), which originated the news item, goes on to describe the forces at work and provides instructions for creating your own dendritic paintings, Note: Links have been removed,

During her [Akiko Nakayama] live painting performances, she applies colourful droplets of acrylic ink mixed with alcohol atop a flat surface coated with a layer of acrylic paint. Beautiful fractals – tree-like geometrical shapes that repeat at different scales and are often found in nature – appear before the eyes of the audience. This is a captivating art form driven by creativity, but also by the physics of fluid dynamics.

“I have a deep admiration for scientists, such as Ukichiro Nakaya and Torahiko Terada, who made remarkable contributions to both science and art. I was very happy to be contacted by OIST physicist Chan San To. I am envious of his ability ‘to dialogue’ with the dendritic patterns, observing how they change shape in response to different approaches. Hearing this secret conversation was delightful,” explains Nakayama.

“Painters have often employed fluid mechanics to craft unique compositions. We have seen it with David Alfaro Siqueiros, Jackson Pollock, and Naoko Tosa, just to name a few. In our laboratory, we reproduce and study artistic techniques, to understand how the characteristics of the fluids influence the final outcome,” says OIST Professor Eliot Fried of OIST’s Mechanics and Materials Unit, who likes looking at dendritic paintings from artistic and scientific angles.

…

In dendritic painting, the droplets made of ink and alcohol experience various forces. One of them is surface tension – the force that makes rain droplets spherical in shape, and allows leaves to float on the surface of a pond. In particular, as alcohol evaporates faster than water, it alters the surface tension of the droplet. Fluid molecules tend to be pulled towards the droplet rim, which has higher surface tension compared to its centre. This is called the Marangoni effect and is the same phenomenon responsible for the formation of wine tears – the droplets or streaks of wine that form on the inside of a wine glass after swirling or tilting.

Secondly, the underlying paint layer also plays an important part in this artistic technique. Dr. Chan tested various types of liquids. For fractals to emerge, the liquid must be a fluid that decreases in viscosity under shear strain, meaning it has to behave somewhat like ketchup. It’s common knowledge that it’s hard to get ketchup out of the bottle unless you shake it. This happens because ketchup’s viscosity changes depending on shear strain. When you shake the bottle, the ketchup becomes less viscous, making it easier to pour it onto your dish. How is this applied to dendritic painting?

“In dendritic painting, the expanding ink droplet shears the underlying acrylic paint layer. It is not as strong as the shaking of a ketchup bottle, but it is still a form of shear strain. As with ketchup, the more stress there is, the easier it is for the ink droplets to flow,” explains Dr. Chan.

“We also showed that the physics behind this dendritic painting technique is similar to how liquid travels in a porous medium, such as soil. If you were to look at the mix of acrylic paint under the microscope, you would see a network of microscopic structures made of polymer molecules and pigments. The ink droplet tends to find its way through this underlying network, travelling through paths of least resistance, that leads to the dendritic pattern,” adds Prof. Fried.

Each dendritic print is one-of-a-kind, but there are at least two key aspects that artists can take into consideration to control the outcome of dendritic painting. The first and most important factor is the thickness of the paint layer spread on the surface. Dr. Chan observed that well-refined fractals appear with paint layer thinner than a half millimetre.

The second factor to experiment with is the concentration of diluting medium and paint in this paint layer. Dr. Chan obtained the most detailed fractals using three parts diluting medium and one part paint, or two parts diluting medium and one part paint. If the concentration of paint is higher, the droplet cannot spread well. Conversely, if the concentration of paint is lower, fuzzy edges will form. 

This is not the first science-meets-art project that members of the Mechanics and Materials Unit have embarked on. For example, they designed and installed a mobile sculpture on the OIST campus. The sculpture exemplifies a family of mechanical devices, called Möbius kaleidocycles, invented in the Unit, which may offer guidelines for designing chemical compounds with novel electronic properties.

Currently, Dr. Chan is also developing novel methods of analysing how the complexity of a sketch or painting evolves during its creation. He and Prof. Fried are optimistic that these methods might be applied to uncover hidden structures in experimentally captured or numerically generated images of flowing fluids.

“Why should we confine science to just technological progress?” wonders Dr. Chan. “I like exploring its potential to drive artistic innovation as well. I do digital art, but I really admire traditional artists. I sincerely invite them to experiment with various materials and reach out to us if they’re interested in collaborating and exploring the physics hidden within their artwork.”

Instructions to create dendritic painting at home

Everybody can have fun creating dendritic paintings. The materials needed include a non-absorbent surface (glass, synthetic paper, ceramics, etc.), a brush, a hairbrush, rubbing alcohol (iso-propyl alcohol), acrylic ink, acrylic paint and pouring medium.

  1. Dilute one part of acrylic paint to two or three parts of  pouring medium, or test other ratios to see how the result changes
  2. Apply this to the non-absorbent surface uniformly using a hairbrush. OIST physicists have found out that the thickness of the paint affects the result. For the best fractals, a layer of paint thinner than half millimetre is recommended.
  3. Mix rubbing alcohol with acrylic ink. The density of the ink may differ for different brands: have a try mixing alcohol and ink in different ratios
  4. When the white paint is still wet (hasn’t dried yet), apply a droplet of the ink with alcohol mix using a brush or another tool, such as a bamboo stick or a toothpick.
  5. Enjoy your masterpiece as it develops before your eyes. 

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Marangoni spreading on liquid substrates in new media art by San To Chan and Eliot Fried. PNAS Nexus, Volume 3, Issue 2, February 2024, pgae059 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae059 Published: 08 February 2024

This paper is open access.

FrogHeart’s 2023 comes to an end as 2024 comes into view

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My personal theme for this last year (2023) and for the coming year was and is: catching up. On the plus side, my 2023 backlog (roughly six months) to be published was whittled down considerably. On the minus side, I start 2024 with a backlog of two to three months.

2023 on this blog had a lot in common with 2022 (see my December 31, 2022 posting), which may be due to what’s going on in the world of emerging science and technology or to my personal interests or possibly a bit of both. On to 2023 and a further blurring of boundaries:

Energy, computing and the environment

The argument against paper is that it uses up resources, it’s polluting, it’s affecting the environment, etc. Somehow the part where electricity which underpins so much of our ‘smart’ society does the same thing is left out of the discussion.

Neuromorphic (brainlike) computing and lower energy

Before launching into the stories about lowering energy usage, here’s an October 16, 2023 posting “The cost of building ChatGPT” that gives you some idea of the consequences of our insatiable desire for more computing and more ‘smart’ devices,

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In its latest environmental report, Microsoft disclosed that its global water consumption spiked 34% from 2021 to 2022 (to nearly 1.7 billion gallons , or more than 2,500 Olympic-sized swimming pools), a sharp increase compared to previous years that outside researchers tie to its AI research. [emphases mine]

“It’s fair to say the majority of the growth is due to AI,” including “its heavy investment in generative AI and partnership with OpenAI,” said Shaolei Ren, [emphasis mine] a researcher at the University of California, Riverside who has been trying to calculate the environmental impact of generative AI products such as ChatGPT.

…

Why it matters: Microsoft’s five WDM [West Des Moines in Iowa] data centers — the “epicenter for advancing AI” — represent more than $5 billion in investments in the last 15 years.

Yes, but: They consumed as much as 11.5 million gallons of water a month for cooling, or about 6% of WDM’s total usage during peak summer usage during the last two years, according to information from West Des Moines Water Works.

The focus is AI but it doesn’t take long to realize that all computing has energy and environmental costs. I have more about Ren’s work and about water shortages in the “The cost of building ChatGPT” posting.

This next posting would usually be included with my other art/sci postings but it touches on the issues. My October 13, 2023 posting about Toronto’s Art/Sci Salon events, in particular, there’s the Streaming Carbon Footprint event (just scroll down to the appropriate subhead). For the interested, I also found this 2022 paper “The Carbon Footprint of Streaming Media:; Problems, Calculations, Solutions” co-authored by one of the artist/researchers (Laura U. Marks, philosopher and scholar of new media and film at Simon Fraser University) who presented at the Toronto event.

I’m late to the party; Thomas Daigle posted a January 2, 2020 article about energy use and our appetite for computing and ‘smart’ devices for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s online news,

For those of us binge-watching TV shows, installing new smartphone apps or sharing family photos on social media over the holidays, it may seem like an abstract predicament.

The gigabytes of data we’re using — although invisible — come at a significant cost to the environment. Some experts say it rivals that of the airline industry. 

And as more smart devices rely on data to operate (think internet-connected refrigerators or self-driving cars), their electricity demands are set to skyrocket.

“We are using an immense amount of energy to drive this data revolution,” said Jane Kearns, an environment and technology expert at MaRS Discovery District, an innovation hub in Toronto.

“It has real implications for our climate.”

…

Some good news

Researchers are working on ways to lower the energy and environmental costs, here’s a sampling of 2023 posts with an emphasis on brainlike computing that attest to it,

If there’s an industry that can make neuromorphic computing and energy savings sexy, it’s the automotive indusry,

On the energy front,

Most people are familiar with nuclear fission and some its attendant issues. There is an alternative nuclear energy, fusion, which is considered ‘green’ or greener anyway. General Fusion is a local (Vancouver area) company focused on developing fusion energy, alongside competitors from all over the planet.

Part of what makes fusion energy attractive is that salt water or sea water can be used in its production and, according to that December posting, there are other applications for salt water power,

More encouraging developments in environmental science

Again, this is a selection. You’ll find a number of nano cellulose research projects and a couple of seaweed projects (seaweed research seems to be of increasing interest).

All by myself (neuromorphic engineering)

Neuromorphic computing is a subset of neuromorphic engineering and I stumbled across an article that outlines the similarities and differences. My ‘summary’ of the main points and a link to the original article can be found here,

Oops! I did it again. More AI panic

I included an overview of the various ‘recent’ panics (in my May 25, 2023 posting below) along with a few other posts about concerning developments but it’s not all doom and gloom..

Governments have realized that regulation might be a good idea. The European Union has a n AI act, the UK held an AI Safety Summit in November 2023, the US has been discussing AI regulation with its various hearings, and there’s impending legislation in Canada (see professor and lawyer Michael Geist’s blog for more).

A long time coming, a nanomedicine comeuppance

Paolo Macchiarini is now infamous for his untested, dangerous approach to medicine. Like a lot of people, I was fooled too as you can see in my August 2, 2011 posting, “Body parts nano style,”

In early July 2011, there were reports of a new kind of transplant involving a body part made of a biocomposite. Andemariam Teklesenbet Beyene underwent a trachea transplant that required an artificial windpipe crafted by UK experts then flown to Sweden where Beyene’s stem cells were used to coat the windpipe before being transplanted into his body.

It is an extraordinary story not least because Beyene, a patient in a Swedish hospital planning to return to Eritrea after his PhD studies in Iceland, illustrates the international cooperation that made the transplant possible.

The scaffolding material for the artificial windpipe was developed by Professor Alex Seifalian at the University College London in a landmark piece of nanotechnology-enabled tissue engineering. …

Five years later I stumbled across problems with Macchiarini’s work as outlined in my April 19, 2016 posting, “Macchiarini controversy and synthetic trachea transplants (part 1 of 2)” and my other April 19, 2016 posting, “Macchiarini controversy and synthetic trachea transplants (part 2 of 2)“.

This year, Gretchen Vogel (whose work was featured in my 2016 posts) has written a June 21, 2023 update about the Macchiarini affair for Science magazine, Note: Links have been removed,

Surgeon Paolo Macchiarini, who was once hailed as a pioneer of stem cell medicine, was found guilty of gross assault against three of his patients today and sentenced to 2 years and 6 months in prison by an appeals court in Stockholm. The ruling comes a year after a Swedish district court found Macchiarini guilty of bodily harm in two of the cases and gave him a suspended sentence. After both the prosecution and Macchiarini appealed that ruling, the Svea Court of Appeal heard the case in April and May. Today’s ruling from the five-judge panel is largely a win for the prosecution—it had asked for a 5-year sentence whereas Macchiarini’s lawyer urged the appeals court to acquit him of all charges.

Macchiarini performed experimental surgeries on the three patients in 2011 and 2012 while working at the renowned Karolinska Institute. He implanted synthetic windpipes seeded with stem cells from the patients’ own bone marrow, with the hope the cells would multiply over time and provide an enduring replacement. All three patients died when the implants failed. One patient died suddenly when the implant caused massive bleeding just 4 months after it was implanted; the two others survived for 2.5 and nearly 5 years, respectively, but suffered painful and debilitating complications before their deaths.

In the ruling released today, the appeals judges disagreed with the district court’s decision that the first two patients were treated under “emergency” conditions. Both patients could have survived for a significant length of time without the surgeries, they said. The third case was an “emergency,” the court ruled, but the treatment was still indefensible because by then Macchiarini was well aware of the problems with the technique. (One patient had already died and the other had suffered severe complications.)

…

A fictionalized tv series ( part of the Dr. Death anthology series) based on Macchiarini’s deceptions and a Dr. Death documentary are being broadcast/streamed in the US during January 2024. These come on the heels of a November 2023 Macchiarini documentary also broadcast/streamed on US television.

Dr. Death (anthology), based on the previews I’ve seen, is heavily US-centric, which is to be expected since Adam Ciralsky is involved in the production. Ciralsky wrote an exposé about Macchiarini for Vanity Fair published in 2016 (also featured in my 2016 postings). From a December 20, 2023 article by Julie Miller for Vanity Fair, Note: A link has been removed,

Seven years ago [2016], world-renowned surgeon Paolo Macchiarini was the subject of an ongoing Vanity Fair investigation. He had seduced award-winning NBC producer Benita Alexander while she was making a special about him, proposed, and promised her a wedding officiated by Pope Francis and attended by political A-listers. It was only after her designer wedding gown was made that Alexander learned Macchiarini was still married to his wife, and seemingly had no association with the famous names on their guest list.

Vanity Fair contributor Adam Ciralsky was in the midst of reporting the story for this magazine in the fall of 2015 when he turned to Dr. Ronald Schouten, a Harvard psychiatry professor. Ciralsky sought expert insight into the kind of fabulist who would invent and engage in such an audacious lie.

“I laid out the story to him, and he said, ‘Anybody who does this in their private life engages in the same conduct in their professional life,” recalls Ciralsky, in a phone call with Vanity Fair. “I think you ought to take a hard look at his CVs.”

That was the turning point in the story for Ciralsky, a former CIA lawyer who soon learned that Macchiarini was more dangerous as a surgeon than a suitor. …

Here’s a link to Ciralsky’s original article, which I described this way, from my April 19, 2016 posting (part 2 of the Macchiarini controversy),

For some bizarre frosting on this disturbing cake (see part 1 of the Macchiarini controversy and synthetic trachea transplants for the medical science aspects), a January 5, 2016 Vanity Fair article by Adam Ciralsky documents Macchiarini’s courtship of an NBC ([US] National Broadcasting Corporation) news producer who was preparing a documentary about him and his work.

[from Ciralsky’s article]

“Macchiarini, 57, is a magnet for superlatives. He is commonly referred to as “world-renowned” and a “super-surgeon.” He is credited with medical miracles, including the world’s first synthetic organ transplant, which involved fashioning a trachea, or windpipe, out of plastic and then coating it with a patient’s own stem cells. That feat, in 2011, appeared to solve two of medicine’s more intractable problems—organ rejection and the lack of donor organs—and brought with it major media exposure for Macchiarini and his employer, Stockholm’s Karolinska Institute, home of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Macchiarini was now planning another first: a synthetic-trachea transplant on a child, a two-year-old Korean-Canadian girl named Hannah Warren, who had spent her entire life in a Seoul hospital. … “

Other players in the Macchiarini story

Pierre Delaere, a trachea expert and professor of head and neck surgery at KU Leuven (a university in Belgium) was one of the first to draw attention to Macchiarini’s dangerous and unethical practices. To give you an idea of how difficult it was to get attention for this issue, there’s a September 1, 2017 article by John Rasko and Carl Power for the Guardian illustrating the issue. Here’s what they had to say about Delaere and other early critics of the work, Note: Links have been removed,

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Delaere was one of the earliest and harshest critics of Macchiarini’s engineered airways. Reports of their success always seemed like “hot air” to him. He could see no real evidence that the windpipe scaffolds were becoming living, functioning airways – in which case, they were destined to fail. The only question was how long it would take – weeks, months or a few years.

Delaere’s damning criticisms appeared in major medical journals, including the Lancet, but weren’t taken seriously by Karolinska’s leadership. Nor did they impress the institute’s ethics council when Delaere lodged a formal complaint. [emphases mine]

Support for Macchiarini remained strong, even as his patients began to die. In part, this is because the field of windpipe repair is a niche area. Few people at Karolinska, especially among those in power, knew enough about it to appreciate Delaere’s claims. Also, in such a highly competitive environment, people are keen to show allegiance to their superiors and wary of criticising them. The official report into the matter dubbed this the “bandwagon effect”.

With Macchiarini’s exploits endorsed by management and breathlessly reported in the media, it was all too easy to jump on that bandwagon.

And difficult to jump off. In early 2014, four Karolinska doctors defied the reigning culture of silence [emphasis mine] by complaining about Macchiarini. In their view, he was grossly misrepresenting his results and the health of his patients. An independent investigator agreed. But the vice-chancellor of Karolinska Institute, Anders Hamsten, wasn’t bound by this judgement. He officially cleared Macchiarini of scientific misconduct, allowing merely that he’d sometimes acted “without due care”.

For their efforts, the whistleblowers were punished. [emphasis mine] When Macchiarini accused one of them, Karl-Henrik Grinnemo, of stealing his work in a grant application, Hamsten found him guilty. As Grinnemo recalls, it nearly destroyed his career: “I didn’t receive any new grants. No one wanted to collaborate with me. We were doing good research, but it didn’t matter … I thought I was going to lose my lab, my staff – everything.”

This went on for three years until, just recently [2017], Grinnemo was cleared of all wrongdoing.

…

It is fitting that Macchiarini’s career unravelled at the Karolinska Institute. As the home of the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine, one of its ambitions is to create scientific celebrities. Every year, it gives science a show-business makeover, picking out from the mass of medical researchers those individuals deserving of superstardom. The idea is that scientific progress is driven by the genius of a few.

It’s a problematic idea with unfortunate side effects. A genius is a revolutionary by definition, a risk-taker and a law-breaker. Wasn’t something of this idea behind the special treatment Karolinska gave Macchiarini? Surely, he got away with so much because he was considered an exception to the rules with more than a whiff of the Nobel about him. At any rate, some of his most powerful friends were themselves Nobel judges until, with his fall from grace, they fell too.

…

The September 1, 2017 article by Rasko and Power is worth the read if you have the interest and the time. And, Delaere has written up a comprehensive analysis, which includes basic information about tracheas and more, “The Biggest Lie in Medical History” 2020, PDF, 164 pp., Creative Commons Licence).

I also want to mention Leonid Schneider, science journalist and molecular cell biologist, whose work the Macchiarini scandal on his ‘For Better Science’ website was also featured in my 2016 pieces. Schneider’s site has a page titled, ‘Macchiarini’s trachea transplant patients: the full list‘ started in 2017 and which he continues to update with new information about the patients. The latest update was made on December 20, 2023.

Promising nanomedicine research but no promises and a caveat

Most of the research mentioned here is still in the laboratory. i don’t often come across work that has made its way to clinical trials since the focus of this blog is emerging science and technology,

*If you’re interested in the business of neurotechnology, the July 17, 2023 posting highlights a very good UNESCO report on the topic.

Funky music (sound and noise)

I have couple of stories about using sound for wound healing, bioinspiration for soundproofing applications, detecting seismic activity, more data sonification, etc.

Same old, same old CRISPR

2023 was relatively quiet (no panics) where CRISPR developments are concerned but still quite active.

Art/Sci: a pretty active year

I didn’t realize how active the year was art/sciwise including events and other projects until I reviewed this year’s postings. This is a selection from 2023 but there’s a lot more on the blog, just use the search term, “art/sci,” or “art/science,” or “sciart.”

While I often feature events and projects from these groups (e.g., June 2, 2023 posting, “Metacreation Lab’s greatest hits of Summer 2023“), it’s possible for me to miss a few. So, you can check out Toronto’s Art/Sci Salon’s website (strong focus on visual art) and Simon Fraser University’s Metacreation Lab for Creative Artificial Intelligence website (strong focus on music).

My selection of this year’s postings is more heavily weighted to the ‘writing’ end of things.

Boundaries: life/nonlife

Last year I subtitled this section, ‘Aliens on earth: machinic biology and/or biological machinery?” Here’s this year’s selection,

Canada’s 2023 budget … military

2023 featured an unusual budget where military expenditures were going to be increased, something which could have implications for our science and technology research.

Then things changed as Murray Brewster’s November 21, 2023 article for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s (CBC) news online website comments, Note: A link has been removed,

There was a revelatory moment on the weekend as Defence Minister Bill Blair attempted to bridge the gap between rhetoric and reality in the Liberal government’s spending plans for his department and the Canadian military.

Asked about an anticipated (and long overdue) update to the country’s defence policy (supposedly made urgent two years ago by Russia’s full-on invasion of Ukraine), Blair acknowledged that the reset is now being viewed through a fiscal lens.

“We said we’re going to bring forward a new defence policy update. We’ve been working through that,” Blair told CBC’s Rosemary Barton Live on Sunday.

“The current fiscal environment that the country faces itself does require (that) that defence policy update … recognize (the) fiscal challenges. And so it’ll be part of … our future budget processes.”

…

One policy goal of the existing defence plan, Strong, Secure and Engaged, was to require that the military be able to concurrently deliver “two sustained deployments of 500 [to] 1,500 personnel in two different theaters of operation, including one as a lead nation.”

In a footnote, the recent estimates said the Canadian military is “currently unable to conduct multiple operations concurrently per the requirements laid out in the 2017 Defence Policy. Readiness of CAF force elements has continued to decrease over the course of the last year, aggravated by decreasing number of personnel and issues with equipment and vehicles.”

Some analysts say they believe that even if the federal government hits its overall budget reduction targets, what has been taken away from defence — and what’s about to be taken away — won’t be coming back, the minister’s public assurances notwithstanding.

…

10 years: Graphene Flagship Project and Human Brain Project

“Graphene and Human Brain Project win biggest research award in history (& this is the 2000th post)” on January 28, 2013 was how I announced the results of what had been a a European Union (EU) competition that stretched out over several years and many stages as projects were evaluated and fell to the wayside or were allowed onto the next stage. The two finalists received €1B each to be paid out over ten years.

…

Future or not

As you can see, there was plenty of interesting stuff going on in 2023 but no watershed moments in the areas I follow. (Please do let me know in the Comments should you disagree with this or any other part of this posting.) Nanotechnology seems less and less an emerging science/technology in itself and more like a foundational element of our science and technology sectors. On that note, you may find my upcoming (in 2024) post about a report concerning the economic impact of its National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) from 2002 to 2022 of interest.

Following on the commercialization theme, I have noticed an increase of interest in commercializing brain and brainlike engineering technologies, as well as, more discussion about ethics.

Colonizing the brain?

UNESCO held events such as, this noted in my July 17, 2023 posting, “Unveiling the Neurotechnology Landscape: Scientific Advancements, Innovations and Major Trends—a UNESCO report” and this noted in my July 7, 2023 posting “Global dialogue on the ethics of neurotechnology on July 13, 2023 led by UNESCO.” An August 21, 2023 posting, “Ethical nanobiotechnology” adds to the discussion.

Meanwhile, Australia has been producing some very interesting mind/robot research, my June 13, 2023 posting, “Mind-controlled robots based on graphene: an Australian research story.” I have more of this kind of research (mind control or mind reading) from Australia to be published in early 2024. The Australians are not alone, there’s also this April 12, 2023 posting, “Mind-reading prosthetic limbs” from Germany.

My May 12, 2023 posting, “Virtual panel discussion: Canadian Strategies for Responsible Neurotechnology Innovation on May 16, 2023” shows Canada is entering the discussion. Unfortunately, the Canadian Science Policy Centre (CSPC), which held the event, has not posted a video online even though they have a youtube channel featuring other of their events.

As for neurmorphic engineering, China has produced a roadmap for its research in this area as noted in my March 20, 2023 posting, “A nontraditional artificial synaptic device and roadmap for Chinese research into neuromorphic devices.”

Quantum anybody?

I haven’t singled it out in this end-of-year posting but there is a great deal of interest in quantum computer both here in Canada and elsewhere. There is a 2023 report from the Council of Canadian Academies on the topic of quantum computing in Canada, which I hope to comment on soon.

Final words

I have a shout out for the Canadian Science Policy Centre, which celebrated its 15th anniversary in 2023. Congratulations!

For everyone, I wish peace on earth and all the best for you and yours in 2024!