Stella Zhang, Fiamma Montezemolo, Carina Earl, Amy Ho, Casey Logan, Jennifer Parker, OpenLab, Cheryl Leonard
SPACE AS ENERGY:
Stella Zhang's mixed-media "0-Space" series
Synopsis:
0 as space, the realm has always inspired me to search for the innermost rhythm of life's essence or its energy when released.
Materials of my work come from nature and their simple elements among the creation, these subjects become my searches into infinity without boundary. True beauty can only be discovered by those who see the mysterious.
I hope my artworks to have interacted with the viewers for an initiation to care more about the place where we reside in with greater compassion.
0-Space-1:
The red piece represents energy. Red is powerful, yet exciting. It grabs your attention the quickest. The entire piece is red. All of the space is trapped with no intentions of letting you escape.
0-Space-2:
The yellow piece represents harmony and balance. It is between red (the engergetic piece), and blue (the peaceful and calm piece). It is the center of the universe, the "neutral color" that never takes any side, just unopinionated. There is a tone of balance that repletes our space.
0-Space-3:
The blue piece represents, calmness and depth, like the sea. It is never ending. Even though the painting has to stop at some point, what it's meant to say is that the dark blue will go on forever, always simply calm, but yet always complicated through its deepness
Bio:
Stella Zhang was born in Beijing, China. She learned painting from her father the acclaimed brush painter Ping Zhang who was a professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts. She attended the Central Academy of Fine Arts for high school. She then matriculated to the Central Academy of Fine Arts for college where she received her BFA in Chinese Brush Paining in 1989. She moved to Japan in 1990 where she studied Japanese Painting at Tama Fine Art University and later at Tokyo Art University where she earned her MFA in Japanese Painting in 1996. She has lived in the United States since 2003. In the past 20 years, her work has been exhibited in Chinese, Japanese and American galleries and museums. Her work has been included in fine arts collections in many countries. She has published four books.
http://www.stellazhang.net
SPACE AS UNIVERSE:
Carina Earl's painting "Hyperfield"
Synopsis:
"In some sense gravity does not exist, what moves the planets and stars is the distortion of space and time" -Michio Kaku-
Space is most often perceived as a void, or lack of matter. But space is a substance that can be bent, torn, compressed, stretched, and folded. The premise of the painting "Hyperfield" is that it formed approximately 11 billion years ago when the universe began to mysteriously expand at an exponential rate. Without this transition, the amount of separation needed to allow the clustering of matter into distinct objects such as stars and planets may not have been possible, and the universe could have remained in a stable homogeneity for a much longer time. As a reaction to the rapid separation, gravitational forces rotated around one another forming the first galaxies and solar systems. Within a billion years or so, the merging of several smaller galaxies formed a galactic trinity including the Milky Way, Andromeda, and the Triangulum Galaxy. "Hyperfield" portrays the possibility that the immense gravitational pull from these three super massive black holes created a rip in space, central to the entire "local group" of galaxies. The negative energy density resulting from the tear would have caused a simultaneous folding and unfolding of space in twelve directions forming a hypertetradedron. In the potential worlds that I imagine this is one of many points of access to four dimensions that have formed in our universe so far. I conceive that places like these are links to other points in space, other spacial realities, and to other times.
From my perspective, biology, consciousness, and physics are inextricably linked. I think that consciousness is a fundamental aspect of quantum mechanics that, if taken into serious account, could explain many of the puzzles encountered when attempting to understand the universe and our place in it. I don't think that the acceleration of the expansion of the universe is an accident. At one point all atoms have been physically linked to all other atoms. Physicists know that once two atoms have been connected in some way they remain connected across time and space. I don't think that life existing here, attempting to understand itself and its place in everything, is random. Life is on a trend towards proliferation, and I see it filling every corner of the universe beginning with planets, then solar systems, and galaxies. The image entitled "Hyperfield" is a depiction of its future state, when the three galaxies in our local group have merged, everything in our celestial neighborhood has begun to come alive, and sentient species have gained access to the technology of inter-dimensional travel that was fabricated as this universe was under its initial construction.
Bio:
Carina Earl, a graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute, is originally from New Orleans LA, but has spent most of her life in the DC area. She has shown her work in various galleries in Washington DC such as Moca DC, Del Ray Gallery, Gallery 123, and the Schlesinger Arts Center. During a brief time in Philadelphia she asked to lead and execute a mural with the Philadelphia Mural Arts Commission and Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful. In San Francisco she has been deeply involved with Trickster Arts Salon which has presented opportunities to show at Mission Control and Aspect Gallery. She has also shown numerous times at the Diego Rivera Gallery in N. Beach, presented a solo show at Hive Mind Gallery in Oakland in 2011, and exhibited several pieces at SFAI's Vernassage in 2012. Carina began a serious interest in art when she received her first canvas and paint set in 1986. She has always felt that through painting she has been able to access portals into other times and dimensions. Currently she is working on a body of large scale paintings called Labyrinth of Infinite Doorways which focuses on a period about 4 billion years from now when the Milky Way will merge with neighboring Andromeda. Her concepts are based on a principle that intention is stronger than fear, that life is a structural component of physics, and that eventually life will penetrate both star systems to form a galactic biosphere.
http://carinaearl.blogspot.com
SPACE AS TERRITORY:
Fiamma Montezemolo's business manilla envelope "Tijuana Bio-cartography" (2006)
Synopsis:
In this conceptual and cartographic piece the artist set out to think of the gesture of mapping an urban landscape as a diagnostic act. With a sense of irony towards the curator's medical gaze and cannibalistic form of care the artist performs here the role of an imaginary gynecologist diagnosing her patient named Tijuana. Mediated through the materiality of an ultrasound of her own uterus-a gendered and highly contested scientific technology that monitors foetal growth and developmental stages-my medical report is a provocative reading of the parent-child relationship between curators and artists in Tijuana and a critic of a new "localized" nationalism.
Bio:
Born in Rome, Fiamma Montezemolo is both a Cultural Anthropologist (PhD University Orientale of Naples) and an artist (MFA, SFAI). She is currently teaching at Berkeley University (Art Practice). As an established scholar in border and urban studies, she has patiently designed rigorous and long-term ethnographic-artistic interventions at the Tijuana-San Diego border where she has also resided and taught for many years. As an artist she situates her work as a critical extension and overcoming of the ethnographic turn in contemporary art during the 1990s. In addition to ethnography, a research method she also considers an emerging medium for art practices, she works with various media, including installation, cartography, video, digital photography, industrial materials, performance, archival documents. Her art practice straddles various disciplines, sensibilities and methodologies, including institutional critique, social art, and indigenous media. She has exhibited internationally and nationally. Her work "Fireflies" is part of the Kadist Foundation Art collection (Paris-San Francisco). She recently participated in the EASA (European Association of Social Anthropologists) conference (2012), `Anxious Visions and Uncertain Images', Nanterre University, France; the Political Equator 3 conference (San Diego-Tijuana, 2011). She contributed a conceptual map of Tijuana for the 2005 edition of the bi-national, public art event.
http://www.fiammamontezemolo.com
SPACE AS GEOMETRY:
Casey Logan's mixed media "The Birth of Geometry"
Synopsis:
"The Birth of Geometry" is a naively whimsical, and perhaps profound attempt at understanding how our human scientific conception of space came to be. Trying to imagine the existence of space before matter seemed to be a futile and meaningless practice, from a scientific perspective. There is nothing to see, compare, hypothesize, or experiment with. Simply put there is nothing of scientific value. Only when matter appears is there some type of observable relationships between objects and the space they inherit. These relationships give us the concepts of size, scale, distance, speed, angles, and so forth. This may be considered
the birth of geometry.
Bio:
Casey Logan has explored the wondrous relationship of creative thinking with scientific knowledge for much of his artistic practice. Physics, chemistry, and psychology are of particular interest to him. From the poetic to the humorous and from the simple to profound he illustrates ideas inspired by his curiosity of the universe and the sublime condition of the human experience in relation to it. Casey received his undergraduate degree from the University of Texas and his Masters of Fine Art from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2003. He has shown work thought the United States and abroad.
http://www.caseylogan.com
SPACE AS DIMENSION:
Amy Ho's single channel video projection "Wall Space IV: Arched Tunnel"
Synopsis:
"Wall Space IV: Arched Tunnel" is a site-specific installation created for the Cubberley Auditorium Lobby. On October 18th, the projection will transforms the main arched entryway of the lobby into a imagined entrance to a tunnel space. This installation is a projection of an image of a tunnel space on the existing glass entryway. The work utilizes our visual imagination to create a sense of space and dimension. Space represents the most immediate medium through which our bodies experience the world, yet we often overlook our sensitivity to the physical environment around us. This installation strives to make us actually feel the world around us and to heed our instinctual physical responses. The projected image was created by photographing a crafted model of a tunnel space. As the model only exists in miniature, the work plays with ideas of scale as well as with imagined space.
Bio:
Amy Ho builds video and spatial installations that bring attention to
our existence as both physical and psychological beings. She received her
undergraduate degree in Art Practice from UC Berkeley and her MFA from
Mills College. Amy has recently shown in the ProArts Gallery 2x2 Solos
series, at the Walter and McBean galleries at SFAI and at Root Division.
She currently works and lives in the Bay Area.
http://www.amymho.com
SPACE AS SOUNDSCAPE:
OpenLab's three pedal pumping zoetropes "SonicSPACE"
Synopsis:
Created by a team of individuals through OpenLab (Sudhu Tewari, Leslie Thompson,
Andre Marquetti, Christopher Cravey, and art department chair Jennifer Parker),
the "SonicSPACE"
zoetropes create interactive listening spaces that take the viewer
on a journey through city sound spaces, childhood spaces, and internal spaces of
the body. The zoetropes, created from repurposed bicycle parts, invite a
physical relationship to the audio simulation allowing the user/viewer to engage
in a playful participatory experience that unites the act of listening with the
visual motion of the wheel and the physical pumping of the feet to build the 3D
animation. By creating a user experience to guide the short animation with the
soundscape we aim to embed the user into a reflective physical space to view and
absorb the animation of sound from ear to mouth, to vibration and rotation.
Bio:
Jennifer Parker is Associate Professor and Chair of the Art Department. An MFA from Rutgers, she co-founded and is Executive Director of the OpenLab Network, as well as Affiliate Faculty of Digital Arts & New Media, and Lead of the Mechatronics Project 2012. She works in sculpture, interactive art, new media, and kinetic art. Her work has been presented nationally and internationally in places such as the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; ZER01, 10SJ Biennial and the Tech Musuem, San Jose, CA; the World Trade Center in Osaka, Japan; and the Sala de exposiciones Parque Garcˇa Sanabria in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain. Her work has been supported by the Inter-Arts Program of the NEA and The New Jersery State Council of the Arts, among others, and she recently received a grant to collaborate with ZERO1, to develop an interactive website, ArtHERE.org , to facilitate matching of public spaces and art of all kinds (prototyped during the Summer of Smart 2011 art hackathon). See OpenLab projects at http://openlabresearch.com/exhibitions-events and http://openlabresearch.com/openlab-summer-institute-catalog-art-astrophysics.
Chris Cravey's sculpture-based media is focused on engagement with the past. Over the last few years, the fabrication of metal and wood based pieces has driven this pursuit. His work creates layered links to the past, begging questions of practicality and modern significance of historical items in relation to the human experience.
Andre Marquetti is a UCSC doctorate student in computer algorithmic music and has worked for the most part as a composer, saxophonist performer in Chicago. He holds a Master degree in experimental composition from Wesleyan University where he studied with Anthony Braxton and Alvin Lucier.
Sudhu Tewari has been called a professional bricoleur, junkyard maven and young audio-gadgeteer. He builds audio electronics, acoustic instruments, kinetic sculptures, interactive installations, and sound art. Tewari is currently pursuing PhD at UC Santa Cruz in the Cultural Musicology program also works as a project manager for OpenLab at UCSC, a network for collaborative discourse fueled by academic communities, arts and science communities, and industry.
Leslie Thompson is a developing artist interested the Mechatronics group as fabricator who specializes in sculpture. She has experience with welding, sewing, wood, and other sculptural methods. She considers herself an "on call" fabricator and is willing to do what it takes to make someone else's mental picture a reality.
http://openlabresearch.com
SPACE AS UNKNOWN:
OpenLab's 3D stroboscopic zoetrope "The Big Splat in Space: Earth Had Two Moons?"
Synopsis:
OpenLab (featuring Sudhu Tewari, Leslie Thompson, Erik Asphaug, Noar Movshovitz, Bruce Kirk, Kayla Vuong, and art department chair Jennifer Parker)
worked with
Erik Asphaug
a planetary scientist at
UC Santa Cruz
to imagine places
in space where the gravity of the moon and Earth cancel each other out.
Asphaug had already worked with colleague
Martin Jutzi
of the
University of Bern in Switzerland
to create a 2D animation simulating how the earth
may have had two moon's that collided with one another. Openlab took this
simulation one step further to investigate the perspectives of this once upon a
time space mash-up theory and combined it with Victorian era animation
technology. By re-contextualizing and reanimating the event with a Zoetrope we
are now able to learn about and see this dramatic collision of lunar material
colliding in space from both the art and the science perspectives.
Bio:
Santa Cruz's OpenLab Network is a research initiative which targets a complex education issue of national significance regarding the ability of art and science researchers to collaborate on research endeavors. The goal of the OpenLab Network is to help change the current status by providing shared research facilities and create a network for collaborative discourse fueled by academic communities, arts and science communities, and industry.
The OpenLab Network project is pursuing the physical development of new collaborative laboratories on campus as spaces to foster this research and establish an on-line social networking system for faculty and students to create projects. Laboratories and studios in both the arts and the sciences will be accessible to users in the OpenLab Network. Within this immersive environment, we will conduct research to acquire skills and knowledge that crosses disciplinary boundaries between science, education, and the arts while sharing expertise in collaborative research methodologies.
The following research questions are investigated:
(1) How can we strengthen or create new methodologies that truly engage art and science thinking?
(2) Is an interdisciplinary laboratory space for cross-disciplinary and collaborative research more engaging and productive for students and faculty without these resources?
http://openlabresearch.com
SPACE AS DISTANCE:
Cheryl Leonard's
composition for Antarctica sounds "Point Eight Ice"
Synopsis:
Point Eight Ice is a composition for sounds and objects of Antarctica.
Play:
Bio:
Cheryl Leonard is a San Francisco-based composer, performer and instrument builder. Over the last decade she has focused on investigating sounds, structures and objects from the natural world. Her recent works cultivate stones, wood, water, ice, sand, shells, feathers and bones as musical instruments. Leonard uses microphones to explore the intricate sounds hidden within these instruments and develops compositions that highlight the unique voices they contain. She has also composed numerous soundtracks for film, video, dance and theater, and created sounds for museum exhibits Her commissions include works for Kronos Quartet, Illuminated Corridor and Michael Straus.
