Discovery Channel
Discovery Channel
Kianoosh Motallebi, Maarten Vanden Eynde & Edith Dekyndt
The clichéd dichotomy of art as mendacious fiction and science as the seeker of truth is something we no longer hear about. The work of a new generation of artists reveals that the relationship between the two domains is much more fluid.The ball is brown and no larger than a fist, with a surface that appears grainy. The object is presented as a jewel in a raised, custom-made display case in a clinically white, otherwise almost empty space. Just a blackboard is placed next to the sculpture. On it is noted the title of the work and, in random order, the names of the chemical elements, from neon to sodium and bismuth to tin. All of the elements in the Periodic Table, which are naturally found on Earth, are incorporated in Terrestrial Ball (2010), as Kianoosh Motallebi, the maker of the work presented last year at the Amsterdam Rijksakademie, explains. He collected the elements in an incubator and added argon gas, which is used in welding and serves as a protective atmosphere, and iron chloride. He kneaded the mixture by hand. Elements that are difficult to obtain in their pure state were extracted from objects in which they had been incorporated. In this way, Motallebi dismantled light bulbs purchased on eBay in order to get the element xenon. His knowledge of the elements and their physical and chemical characteristics also came from the Internet. Motallebi prefers to collaborate with hobbyists or experts who are willing to spend their free time on an experiment rather than to work with an established institute. His studio also includes the first experimental arrangements for a new work, with sketches pinned to the wall here and there. Has this artist’s studio been transformed into an old-fashioned hobbyist’s attic, an unorthodox do-it-yourself laboratory?Today, more and more visual artists are working right on the divide that separates the ‘hard’ sciences from fine art. Projects are being produced in close collaboration with mathematicians, biologists, astrophysicists, neuroscientists and so on. In addition to such artists as Motallebi, who work independently, there are artists who consciously seek contact with scientific or commercial research institutes, often in order to professionally develop a long-term project. Alicia Framis, for example, completed Moon Academy (2010), a part of her Moon Life Foundation, which envisions the development of art, design and architecture for a future life beyond the planet Earth, in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA). Artist Bradley Pitts, a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), completed his Singular Oscillations (2008-2009) project in collaboration with experts affiliated with the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre (GCTC). From the other side, (university) research centres, laboratories and think tanks are inviting collaborations with artists because, as the CO-OPS (2006-2008) art and science project financed by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) explained, ‘Scientific practice can profit from knowledge that ideally belongs in the artistic domain.’What is the specific nature and meaning of the current mutual approach between art and science? How does it differ from earlier collaborations, such as Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), established in the mid-1960s and described in the previous issue of Metropolis M? Is there a question of a convergence of the two distinct domains of art and science? Or, as Robert Zwijnenberg, director of The Arts & Genomics Centre in Leiden, recently argued, is it just the way the collaboration is established and its function in a society that is undergoing comprehensive change?1
Broaching the Subject
According to artist Maarten Vanden Eynde, there is no strict division between art and science. Art is science, as he sees it. He invented the ‘scientific’ discipline of genetology, or the science of first things. In contrast to eschatology, the existing science of final things or extremes, he asks how we in the future will look back on the past. His research is based on existing fields, such as archaeology and mathematics. He uses these to group works of art created by his fellow artists. Toril Johannessen’s Expansion in Finance and Physics (2010) and Tomás Saraceno’s Iridescent Plant Medium with Lamp (2009), for example, fall in the category of ‘cosmology’. In this way, Vanden Eynde wants to understand and describe genetology as a separate discipline. He compares his approach to that of Michel Foucault, the French philosopher whose influential book Les mots et les choses. Une archéologie des sciences humaines (1966) analyzes the gradual development of the ideas underlying grammar, economy and biology.Vanden Eynde’s visual work evolves from his genetology research. In Preservation of IKEA Teacup (2005), for example, he buried a teacup in one of the Forum Romanum ruins in Italy. In Industrial Evolution (2007), he collected 100 objects from the last 20 remaining factories in Digbeth, a neighbourhood in Birmingham, UK. The city flourished during the Industrial Revolution and is facing an uncertain future, as work that was previously done there has now been moved to low-wage countries. In creating his works, Vanden Eynde approaches scientists, technologists, researchers and specialists. He spoke with researcher Charles Moore, affiliated with the Algalita Marine Research Foundation in California, about the ‘Garbage Patch’, a gigantic accumulation of plastic refuse floating between the coasts of California and Japan. For his ever-growing sculpture Plastic Reef, Vanden Eynde collects and melts down plastic from the Garbage Patch. The nature of this and his other projects, the themes that are broached here, and the way in which he visualizes or expresses what are often global problems, means that as an artist he is also being approached by other specialists. For example, the Generali Group Innovation Academy, part of the German-Italian insurance corporation, Generali, asked him to join a think tank in order to come up with and develop alternative scenarios for the future for the company. His contribution resulted in the sculpture Mo(NU)mentum (2008), an almost 4.5 metre high pillar in which such diverse materials as marble and epoxy visualize the layers of history. In his work, Vanden Eynde intends to identify issues that affect our well-being and the continued existence of the Earth, issues that are otherwise unseen or only made visible in covert terms.
Hands-on
‘Bio Art’, as it is called, is closely allied with the sciences.2 It is characterized by a direct, physical approach to biological phenomena and processes normally studied by the ‘hard’ sciences, as Jenny Boulboullé explains. This fall, she hopes to complete her doctorate with a study of art allied to the life sciences. She goes on to explain that Bio artists adopt scientific methods, using scientific techniques and instruments in artistic experiments. This can mean that artists single-handedly conduct experiments that are normally conducted by laboratory researchers. Often, miniscule amounts of fluids are used, which are colourless and odourless, and the environments in which the experiments are carried out are sterile. Boulboullé admits that visually, the results are not always interesting, but the discussions generated by these works definitely are. The famous, now classic work in the area of Bio Art is GFP Bunny (2000) by the artist Eduardo Kac. Kac implanted a gene from a jellyfish into an albino rabbit, causing the animal to light up in the dark. The rabbit itself has hardly been exhibited: there is even a question of whether it ever existed at all, but because the artist had moved a process that was standard to microbiologists into the exhibition arena, the discourse about the methods and the consequences of genetic technology reached a broader public. Boulboullé also questions the sustainability of a strict division between science and visual art. Until the 19th century, there was primarily a question of knowledge practice in which art and the sciences were not seen as separate domains. Boulboullé refers here to the ‘Cartesian Ghost’, the split between body and spirit as described by René Descartes, one of the key figures in the scientific revolution of the 17th century. Descartes placed ‘real’ knowledge in the mind or spirit (res cogitans) and in concepts, while describing human perception and matter (res extensa) as unreliable. From that moment on, knowledge was something derived from rational thinking. If we actually read Descartes’ Meditations (1641), concludes Boulboullé, then we realize that his claim came after a transformation of wax, which he physically experienced by manipulating the substance, a process that he subsequently described in very plastic terms. Descartes’ own revolutionary thinking was consequently the result of a hands-on experience. By means of their own explicitly hands-on approach, Bio artists and other artists continue the debate on the triumph of reason (Descartes’ Cogito, ergo sum). The insularly conducted scientific experiment and the accompanying discourse on which modern science is based, are made public and democratic in their works of art. It is this physical, personal experience and subsequent democratization of knowledge that Motallebi and Vanden Eynde are investigating. In their projects, they question the conditions and foundations of scientific knowledge and generate a critical awareness of that knowledge.
Not Simply Critical
Other artists, however, have intentionally stepped back from an all too critical approach to science and technology. They see no advantage in simply exposing an experiment, nor in the debates that result, as is the case with Eduardo Kac. Edith Dekyndt, for example, is purely interested in the aesthetic quality of natural phenomena that are created by means of scientific experiment and testing. To investigate this, she does not personally infiltrate a scientific field, nor does she take part in a given scientific discourse. She is moreover not in search of a direct, active involvement on the part of the viewer. Dekyndt’s work bears witness to the wonder of empirically produced phenomena. She wants to share her astonishment at their beauty with her viewers. In her videos Provisory Object 01, 02 and 03 (1997, 2000 and 2004), we see iridescent colours and whirlpools that can be perceived on the membrane formed when soap bubbles are held at room temperature between the hands. Another video, Martial M (2007), shows two hands that knead iron dust, while those same hands hold a magnet. The focus shifts from the functionality of the phenomenon to the poetry of the image. Art also investigates and reflects on scientific method, as Boulboullé demonstrates. She adds that there are scientists who are not especially happy about this. On the other hand, Vanden Eynde experiences the hospitality and openness with which he is received by scientists as a breath of fresh air. In his opinion, it is sooner the artists who are still condescending about collaborations with research facilities or scientific institutes. The growing interest in PhDs amongst artists also underscores that the importance of closer collaboration between artists and scientists is being recognized, albeit perhaps with some reluctance. Scientific and technological institutes have the know-how that artists do not, and vice versa, says artist Karen Lancel, who decided to do her own PhD work under the auspices of the Technical University in Delft. Collaborations of this kind are undoubtedly contributing to the gradual dissolution of the line of distinction between art and science. If, not so long ago, the relationship between art and science depended on ‘accidental’ encounters between individuals from two distinctly divided domains, today, ambitious artists and scientists are participating in well-considered collaborative projects from their very earliest stages. One’s own specialisation and that of the other are put to discussion. Initiatives like these are being encouraged and stimulated by both the sciences and the arts. Many of the collaborative undertakings have meanwhile already been structurally incorporated in museums or other institutes. The Arts & Genomics Centre, in Leiden, where the interactions of art and the life sciences is invesigated, now has a permanent auxiliary branch at the Verbeke Foundation in Belgium. This tendency suits a time when artists are bringing knowledge-based theoretical questions into the art discourse, and in which scientists, technicians and engineers defend their motivations that are not purely based on rational thought. In the year 2011, we find very little left of the clichéd polarity between art as mendacious fiction and science as the strict investigator of truth. Ilse van Rijn is a writer and art historian based in AmsterdamThis the last in a series of three articles. The preceding articles on art and the sciences were published in the previous two issues (no. 2 & 3) of this year’s Metropolis M.
Ilse van Rijn
