The University of British Columbia (UBC; Vancouver, Canada) partnership between its Stewart Blusson Quantum Matter Institute (Blusson QMI), its Morris & Helen Belkin Art Gallery (the Belkin), and its Department of Physics and Astronomy (UBC PHAS) is known as Ars Scientia. (See my September 6, 2021 posting for more; scroll down to the Ars Scientia subhead.)
It’s been a while since I’ve seen any notices about Ars Scientia events but the Belkin Gallery announced three in a February 15, 2023 notice (received via email),
Ars Scientia Artist Talks
Room 311, Brimacombe Building, 2355 East Mall, UBC
Join us for a series of artist talks hosted at UBC’s Stewart Blusson Quantum Matter Institute (Blusson QMI). Our current cohort of Ars Scientia artists-in-residence have formed collaborative partnerships with scientists and engineers while embedded at Blusson QMI.
Tuesday, February 21 [2023] at 2 pm
JG Mair
Tuesday, March 28 [2023] at 1 pm
Scott Billings
Tuesday, April 2 [2023] at 2 pm
Timothy Taylor
I have found more details about the upcoming talk here on the Belkin Gallery’s Artist Talks: JG Mair, Scott Billings and Timothy Taylor events page,
Artist Talk with JG Mair, Tuesday, 21 February [2023] at 2 pm
Please join visual and media artist JG Mair for a discussion about his art practice and experiences as a collaborative participant in the Ars Scientia residency. As part of his talk, Mair will present one of his major works, Chroma Chamber, a web-based new media art installation that investigates human expectations of vision and machine algorithms by programmatically collating real-time Google image results to surround the viewer with the distilled colour of the words they speak. Visit Blusson QMI for more details. [Note 1: On the Blusson QMI page, the talk is titled: Algorithmic allegories by JG Mair; Note 2: You’ll find a map showing the Brimacombe building location.]
I wasn’t able to find out more about the other talks but I did get more information about the three artists, Belkin Gallery’s Artist Talks: JG Mair, Scott Billings and Timothy Taylor events page.
JG Mair is a Vancouver-based multidisciplinary artist and media designer specializing in mixed media, web and audio. He has a BFA from the University of Victoria and a BEd from the University of British Columbia. Mair has been working in the areas of both traditional and digital contemporary art and as a sound designer for various game studios developing titles for publishers including Apple, Electronic Arts, Microsoft and Netflix. Mair has had exhibitions and residencies in Canada, USA, South Korea and Japan.
Scott Billings is a visual artist, industrial designer and engineer based in Vancouver. His sculptures and video installations have been described as existing somewhere between cinema and automata. Centering on issues of animality, mobility and spectatorship, Billings’s work examines the mimetic relationship between the physical apparatus and the virtual motion it delivers. In what ways does the apparatus itself reveal both the mechanisms of causality and its own dormant animal quality? Billings addresses this question under the pursuit of the technological conundrum and a preoccupation with precise geometry and logic. Billings holds an MFA from the University of British Columbia, a BFA from Emily Carr University and a BASc in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Waterloo. He teaches at UBC and Emily Carr as a sessional instructor. Billings is represented by Wil Aballe Art Projects.
Timothy Taylor is an Associate Professor and Graduate Advisor at the School of Creative Writing. He is also a bestselling and award-winning author of eight book-length works of fiction and nonfiction, a prolific journalist, and creative nonfiction writer. In addition to his writing and teaching at UBC, Taylor travels widely, having in recent years spent time on assignment in China, Tibet, Japan, Dubai, Brazil, the Canadian arctic and other places. He lives in Point Grey Vancouver with his wife, his son, and a pair of Brittany Spaniels named Keaton and Murphy.
Hopefully, the talk is a little more accessible than its description.