SciArt Magazine Volume 30
April 2018
Table of Contents

Cover image: Detail from "Why Do you Stay in Prison When the Door is Wide Open,"
​Octopus Meditations, by Ed Kerns.
Letter from the Editor

Dear readers,
​I am excited to introduce two new sections in our magazine this issue which represent partnerships with organizations that we've come to know and admire over the past few years - organizations which foster the successful, generative, unique, and infinite interactions between science, art, technology, society, and culture.

The first is our "On Screen" section - now called "On Screen from Labocine"; Labocine is a platform for independent films borne from the nonprofit Imagine Science Films. Each issue, we'll be choosing one of our favorite Labocine films to highlight for its excellence in the artistic treatment of scientific and technological subject matter. This month staff writer Allison Palenske reviews A.D.A.M., a film about a drone who gains autonomy and travels Earth's industrial landscapes. The second new section - "In the Lab" - highlights the work of members at Genspace, the first ever community biotechnology laboratory based in Brooklyn, New York. Genspace is well known for engaging the community in science through its variety of programming. This month we spoke with member and citizen scientist Craig Trester who is working to use fungi to degrade persistent environmental pollutants.

As for the rest of our April issue, we have some amazing stories from around the world - in Massachusetts, slime mold are suggesting policy decisions on border control; in Brazil, science is translated through dance and virtual reality; in Baltimore, 3D printed prosthetics are innovating medicine; in Pennsylvania, visual explorations of the intelligence of Octopuses and science-art incubator spaces take hold; from the U.K., we have a new treatise on the importance of drawing as a way of knowing, and a reflection on The Two Cultures debate; also chiming in on The Two Cultures, from South Carolina we hear a reframe of the SciArt field in socio-ecological terms; and in the tri-state U.S., three artists' subjects span the Carolina Bays to the polar regions to the inside of human body. 

As always, thank you for your continued readership, and I hope you enjoy our April issue.

Sincerely, 
Julia Buntaine | Founder, Editor-in-Chief

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COLLABORATION
The Plasmodium Consortium at Hampshire College

In the spring semester of 2017, Hampshire College announced the arrival of the world’s first non-human scholars-in-residence: plasmodial slime molds known as Physarum polycephalum, traveling all the way from Carolina Biological Supply to take up an office in the College’s science center...

ON VIEW
Consider the Octopus: 
​Neuroscience, biology, and art merge in Ed Kerns’ project  

Ed Kerns has been exploring levels of consciousness for years and using layers of paint to create an abstract understanding of awareness.  
​His Octopus Meditations exhibition, which opens at 6 p.m. on April 7 at Brick and Mortar Gallery in Easton, Pa., is another manifestation of his perception of consciousness...

QUICK VIEW
Topographies with Michael Davias

For the past decade Michael Davias has combined his background in computer science with the capabilities of aerial photography and LiDAR (Light Image Detecting And Ranging) to present a deeper understanding of the enigmatic Carolina Bays of the Atlantic Coastal Plain. Davias has produced almost 100,000 images that explore and expose both the abundance and “splatter” pattern that the Carolina Bays landforms exhibit...

STRAIGHT TALK
The Art-Science Fusions of Joao Silveira

...The challenge to educators, scientists, and artists is to find a way to incorporate cross-disciplinary perspectives and experiences - not as an ancillary amusement - but as part of conventional learning and professional processes. A good example of how to do that, is the work of João Silveira. Balancing roles as researcher and performer, Silveira has established an impressive and ambitious portfolio. He has participated in many national and international productions...

ON SCREEN from Labocine 
A.D.A.M.

Every day new advances in technology make ideas that were once deemed impossible a reality. Self-driving cars, artificial intelligence, and life-like robots are becoming commonplace, while issues of ethics, regulation, and the limits of technology remain at the center of the debate surrounding these innovations. These issues reveal themselves in A.D.A.M., an 11-minute experimental film directed by Vladislav Knezevic and produced by Vanja Andrijevic...

REFLECTION
​Resilience Goggles & the SciArt Conference

Resilience thinking is a framework that I use more and more in exploring environmental issues because of its focus on recognizing and adapting to change. As I listened remotely to the six roundtable sessions at the SciArt Center and The Helix Center New York conference in December 2017, I began thinking about the SciArt transdiscipline as a case study for this approach. During the second collaboration roundtable, Edgar Choureiri used the metaphor of wearing “new goggles” that expand one’s way of understanding...

SPOTLIGHT
Ice-Time by Clea T. Waite

Ice-Time presents a singular cinematic portrait of ice – from vast glaciers to individual crystals, manifesting time and revealing the phenomenon of ice through contrasting physical scales and speeds of observation. The immersive cine-installation conveys the quintessence of ice and its intimations, eliciting the poetics contained within frozen water as revealed by current geological research...

IN THE LAB
with Genspace member Craig Trester

SF: Can you tell us more about the project Mycoremedation and the process involved?

CT: The focus of the project is to adapt species of fungi native to New York City to remediate common environmental contaminants. In the first phases of the project we'll be focusing on contaminants that are predominantly present in urban areas... 

SPACES & PLACES
Arts and Design Research Incubator

Nestled in a valley surrounded by central Pennsylvania’s rolling hills is a space where research transcends tradition to probe uncharted knowledge. It’s called the Arts and Design Research Incubator (ADRI), and it’s housed within the College of Arts and Architecture at The Pennsylvania State University. Here, artists become researchers who collaborate with experts in other domains to formulate fresh questions and reshape investigative approaches. These cross-disciplinary researchers work hand-in-hand to explore possibilities, with the goal of unearthing new meaning.

QUICK VIEW
Medical portraits with Johnny Thornton

Johnny Thornton’s paintings and site-specific installations explore corporeality through the lens of the degrading body. Thornton’s bold and visceral work depicts the deterioration of the human body while examining the physical and psychological effects of illness. His immersive installations, Regarding Pain and Cells, have show in New York numerous times since 2011 at Parsons, The Kitchen, and chashama. Cells is currently on view at Spaceworks studio in Brooklyn...

FROM THE LIBRARY
Drawing as a Way of Knowing in Art and Science

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) wrote, “all our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.” While da Vinci’s insight is timeless, our perceptions and the knowledge that flows from them are very time-dependent. There are, for example, the times in which we live, an era when attention is not only split, but diffracted by media and multitasking alike. Given contemporary life’s tempo, how much time is there to look at anything in detail? In the 15th century, da Vinci might have inspected an insect in the palm of his hand, but in our century...

SPACES & PLACES
Danae Prosthetics

...Officially, Danae, Inc. as a company has been in development for approximately 25 months. It was originally apart of my thesis while I was finishing undergrad, at the Maryland Institute College of Art. I was later encouraged to bring this idea to the world because the amputation community needed a fresh perspective in an industry that lacked diversity, variety, and flair...

DISCUSSION
"The Two Cultures" 55 Years On: A Personal Evaluation

More than half a century after its coinage by C. P. Snow, the expression “The Two Cultures” remains in common use. In May 2016 the University of St. Andrews held a conference called “Are there still two cultures?” in order “to celebrate the 60th anniversary of one of the most influential essays of all time,” and a few months later Interdisciplinary Science Reviews published a special issue on “Some Significances of the Two Cultures Debate.” More recently still, a SciArt conference held in Manhattan in December 2017 had the title “Art & Science: The Two Cultures Converging.”...
Founder, Editor in Chief: Julia Buntaine
Contributing & Guest Writers: Tara Caimi, Sarah Allen Eagen, Joe Ferguson, Sofia Fortunato, Amy Halliday, Bryan Hay, Kathryn M. Nock, Allison Palenske, Kaye Savage, Andrew S. Yang, Michael Yudkin

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