Tag Archives: Stewart Blusson Quantum Matter (Blusson QMI)

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)

More about …

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

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

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

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

Register for the Zoom link

This talk will be recorded and made available online.

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

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

Everyone is welcome and admission is free.

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

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

Caroline Delétoille

Artist

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

In French,

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

Programme de résidence Arts & Sciences « Quantum Studio »

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

…

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

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

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

Caroline Delétoille

Biographie de l’artiste :

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

…

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

…

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

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

Quantum Studio

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

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

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

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

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

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

The scientific topics to be explored during this residency include:

Fundamental concepts: quantum mechanics, light-

Matter and materials: low-dimensional materials, organic and optoelectronic materials, superconductors, atomic structures (2D, 3D)

Experimental techniques: spectroscopies, atomic imaging microscopy, x-ray scattering

Experimental conditions: ultra-low temperatures, ultra-high vacuum, ultra-fast dynamics

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

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

Learn more about Ars Scientia here.

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

One more point of interest

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

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

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

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

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

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

About the residency

Objectives

Foster or consolidate a creative project.

Share their work at arts and science seminars co-organized with the Stewart Blusson Quantum Matter Institute and the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery.

Encourage discovery of Western Canada’s scientific and artistic ecosystem, as well as forming collaborations.

Advantages

4 weeks of residence in Vancouver

Accommodation on the UBC campus and a working office at the Stewart Blusson Quantum Matter Institute

Round-trip airfare from France to Vancouver

A €2,000 residency grant (corresponding to per diem and participation in three half-day lectures/master classes during the residency)

Networking and connections with the local ecosystem

Participation in events in British Columbia during the residency.

Eligibility

Artist carrying an artistic project in writing or development

At least 18 years old

Resident in France for at least 5 years

Speaking English

Ideally, justifying first experiences of creation mixing arts and sciences (applications from artists who have already worked or are working in connection with physical sciences will be appreciated).

This program is open to artistic practices in all their diversity (writing, visual and plastic arts, digital arts, design, dance, performance, immersive realities, sound creation, etc.).

Application Process and Required Documents

The application submission:

Must be done in English

In a single PDF

Must be sent by email to culture@consulfrance-vancouver.org

Until May 26, 2024 (11h59pm, Paris time).

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.

Canadian Science Policy Centre panel on Sept. 6, 2023 [date changed to October 4, 2023]: Science, technology and innovation (STI) between Brazil and Canada plus a quantum panel on Sept. 13, 2023

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

Ars Scientia draws to a close?

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

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

SYMPOSIUM: ENCOU(N)TERS

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

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

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

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

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

De rerum natura (Latin: [deː ˈreːrʊn naːˈtuːraː]; On the Nature of Things) is a first-century BC didactic poem by the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius (c. 99 BC – c. 55 BC) with the goal of explaining Epicurean philosophy to a Roman audience. The poem, written in some 7,400 dactylic hexameters, is divided into six untitled books, and explores Epicurean physics through poetic language and metaphors.[1] Namely, Lucretius explores the principles of atomism [emphases mine]; the nature of the mind and soul; explanations of sensation and thought; the development of the world and its phenomena; and explains a variety of celestial and terrestrial phenomena. The universe described in the poem operates according to these physical principles, guided by fortuna (“chance”),[2] and not the divine intervention of the traditional Roman deities.
…
In 2011, the historian and literary scholar Stephen Greenblatt wrote a popular history book about the poem, entitled The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. In the work, Greenblatt argues that Poggio Bracciolini’s discovery of De rerum natura reintroduced important ideas that sparked the modern age.[98][99][100] The book was well-received, and later earned the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction and the 2011 National Book Award for Nonfiction.[101][102]

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

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

[second annual research symposium, encou(n)ters]
Monday, May 15 [2023] from 2-6 pm at UBC Botanical Garden
…
The symposium is free and open to the public, but space is limited; RSVP here.
Symposium Program
Building Momentum, 2-3 pm
Opening remarks by Ars Scientia research leads Shelly Rosenblum, Jeremy Heyl and Andrea Damascelli; Artist talks by jg mair with Alannah Hallas and Timothy Taylor
Experiments in Real Space, 3:15-4:30 pm
Introduction and audience participation experience by James Day; Artist talks by Josephine Lee, Kelly Lycan and Justine Chambers, and Scott Billings
Keynote Address: Kavita Philip, 5-6 pm
Introduction by Susan Sechrist; Keynote address by Kavita Philip
Please join us for a reception following the panels to continue the conversation and enjoy the garden

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

Dr. Kavita Philip has commenced her appointment as the President’s Excellence Chair in Network Cultures, joining UBC as Professor of English with the UBC Department of English Language and Literatures.
Dr. Philip received her Ph.D. in Science and Technology Studies from Cornell University in 1996. Her research and teaching in Global South histories and sociologies of science, computational technologies, environment, network cultures, media, and politics crosses geographic boundaries and ranges across scholarly disciplines. For 25 years, Dr. Philip has been engaged not only in the intellectual task of forging methods to connect techno-scientific, social scientific, and humanistic inquiry, but also in the institutional task of building these collaborative spaces. She seeks to develop public humanities research that acknowledges the intertwined material and social contexts of cultural production. These networked commitments make her the ideal candidate for this chair.
Dr. Philip most recently taught in the History department at the University of California, Irvine. In addition, she has taught in Literature programs as well as Media and Communication Studies, beginning her career at Georgia Tech’s School of Literature, Communication, and Culture (formerly an English Department). There, she participated in the creation of a Bachelor of Science degree in Science, Technology and Culture. Dr. Philip expanded and bridged legacy English department curricula from the 1980s with approaches from STS, eco-criticism, speculative fiction, and media studies. In addition, she founded and ran the “Science, Technology, and Race” project, which was heralded for its exemplary pedagogy and outreach. At Georgia Tech, she received the E. Roe Stamps award for excellence in teaching.
At UC Irvine, in addition to her role as a Professor in History, Dr. Philip was also an affiliated Faculty in Informatics, and the Director and co-founder (with Du Bois scholar Dr. Nahum Chandler) of the research group in Science, Technology and Race at the University of California, Irvine. During her time at UC Irvine, she also served as the Director of the Critical Theory Institute, Director of the Graduate Feminist Emphasis, and Director of Graduate Studies in History.

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

I write literary and speculative fiction as well as critical essays at the intersection of fiction, science, and mathematics. My feature, Go Figure, is a column about mathematical metaphor in fiction, for the online literary blog Bloom. My math-curious short story, A Desirable Middle, was published by the eclectic Journal of Humanistic Mathematics.
I live in Vancouver, Canada, on the unceded, ancestral territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam Indian Band), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish Nation), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh Nation). I’m a Creative Writing MFA student at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and a Public Scholar, awarded when I was working on a PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies. Before returning to graduate school, I worked as a technical writer and editor for over 20 years, freelancing for clients as varied as high-tech research organizations, academic institutions, software and hardware companies, and technology start-ups.
At a Society for Technical Communication (STC) conference in Las Vegas, I presented a paper on an idea that would become the core of my scholarly research: what if technical writers used figurative and metaphorical language to explicate difficult, complex, scientific ideas? What if technical documentation was actually… interesting? That question led to a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies at Skidmore College, where my thesis was about the connections between literature and mathematical breakthroughs.
…

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

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Commentary about nanotech, science policy and communication, society, and the arts

Tag Archives: Stewart Blusson Quantum Matter (Blusson QMI)

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)

Conversation with Weiyi Chang and Lisa Myers

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

Artist Talk with Caroline Delétoille

Wednesday, October 16 at 3 pm

More about …

Register for the Zoom link

Caroline Delétoille

In French,

Programme de résidence Arts & Sciences « Quantum Studio »

Caroline Delétoille

Quantum Studio

One more point of interest

About the residency

Eligibility

Application Process and Required Documents

Timeline

Contact

Canadian Science Policy Centre panel on Sept. 6, 2023 [date changed to October 4, 2023]: Science, technology and innovation (STI) between Brazil and Canada plus a quantum panel on Sept. 13, 2023

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

Ars Scientia draws to a close?