Stonehouse Lecture Theatre Portland Square
17.00-18.00 on Friday 3rd December.
Examining Life at a Nano Level.
In this talk Paul Thomas will demonstrate via the nano art project ‘Nanoessence’, ideas on what constitutes the real and the artificial. The ‘Nanoessence’ project aimed to create a visual expression of life at a sub-cellular level, re-examining boundaries and materiality within the human context. A single engineered immortal skin cell was scanned in vitro with an Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) to create a visualisation of the space between, life and death at a nano level. The presentation will explore how nanotechnological research is challenging humanistic ideas concerning life and what constitutes materiality.
Paul Thomas: Dr Paul Thomas, is currently Head of Painting at the College of Fine Art, University of New South Wales. Paul chair numerous international conferences and is the co-chair of the Transdisciplinary Imaging Conference 2010. In 2000 Paul instigated and was the founding Director of the Biennale of Electronic Arts Perth.
Paul has been working in the area of electronic arts since 1981 when he co-founded the group Media-Space. Media-Space was part of the first global link up with artists connected to ARTEX. From 1981-1986 the group was involved in a number of collaborative exhibitions and was instrumental in the establishment a substantial body of research. Paul’s current research project ‘Nanoessence’ explores the space between life and death at a nano level. The project is part of an ongoing collaboration with the Nanochemistry Research Institute, Curtin University of Technology and SymbioticA at the University of Western Australia. The previous project ‘Midas’ was researching at a nano level the transition phase between skin and gold. Paul has recently completed working on an intelligent architecture public art project for the Curtin Mineral and Chemistry Research Precinct. In 2009 he established Collaborative Research in Art Science and Humanity (CRASH) at Curtin http://crash.curtin.edu.au
Paul is a practicing electronic artist whose work has exhibited internationally and can be seen on his website http://www.visiblespace.com download the invite…
A Perth International Arts Festival exhibition – 5 February – 30 April 2010
The unique works developed for art in the age of nanotechnology operate at the intersection of art, science and technology, demonstrating innovative examples of contemporary art and scientific collaboration. The exhibition will comprise of a series of collaborative projects designed to challenge, explore and critique our understanding of the material world and will bring together artists and scientists from the around the world to present new ways of seeing, sensing and connecting with matter that’s miniscule and abstract. art in the age of nanotechnology will feature internationally-recognised artists and scientists such as Christa Sommerer (Austria) & Laurent Mignonneau (France); Paul Thomas (Aus) & Kevin Raxworthy (Aus); Mike Philips (UK); Boo Chapple (Aus) and Victoria Vesna (USA) & James Gimzewski (Scotland).
A Mote it is… (from the ‘art in the age of nano technology catalogue).
“A mote it is to trouble the mind’s eye.” (1)
Words spoken by Horartio to describe Hamlet’s father’s ghost. In this Shakespearian play the ghost is seen but not believed and one is left to wonder if it is just the seeing of it that makes it real – its existence totally dependent on the desire of the viewer to see it. The ‘mote’ or speck of dust in the eye of the mind of the beholder both creates the illusion and convinces us that what we see is real. Something just out of the corner of our minds eye, those little flecks magnified by our desire to see more clearly. Yet the harder we look the more blurred our vision becomes.
A ‘mote’ is both a noun and a verb. Middle English with Indo-European roots, its early Christian origins and Masonic overtones describe the smallest thing possible and empower it with the ability to conjure something into being (so mote it be…). This dual state of becoming and being (even if infinitesimally tiny) render it a powerful talisman in the context of nano technology.
Throughout the last Century we were reintroduced to the idea of an invisible world. The development of sensing technologies allowed us to sense things in the world that we were unaware of (or maybe things we had just forgotten about?). The invisible ‘Hertzian’ landscape was made accessible through instruments that could measure, record and broadcast our fears and desires. Our radios, televisions and mobile phones revealed a parallel world that surrounds us. These instruments endow us with powers that in previous centuries would have been deemed occult or magic.
Our Twenty First Century magic instruments mark a dramatic shift from the hegemony of the eye to a reliance on technologies that do our seeing for us – things so big, small or invisible that it takes a leap of faith to believe they are really there. Our view of the ‘real world’ is increasingly understood through images made of data, things that are measured and felt rather than seen. What we know and what we see is not the same thing – if you see what I mean? The worrying thing is that for a long time we thought the invisible world was made of layers of transparent electromagnetic fields, now through technologies such as the Atomic Force Microscope we are faced with the reality that the ‘invisible’ is actually what constitutes our material world, we can reach out and touch it!
It is our relationship with these technologies that troubles the mind’s eye. Our ability to shift scales, from the smallest thing to the largest thing has been described as the ‘transcalar imaginary’ (2). In this context astronomer Carl Sagan described the Earth as a “mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.” (3) The famous image taken from Voyager 1 in 1990 shows the planet suspended in an infinite Universe. A mote that seems so large to us, but which is in fact so cosmologically small, disturbs our sensibilities and desire for order in our world.
A Mote it is… is constructed from data captured by an AFM (Atomic Force Microscope) from a ‘mote’ or piece of dust extracted from the artist’s eye. The whirlwind of data projected within the gallery is rendered invisible by the gaze of the viewer. The more we look the more invisible it becomes – look away and it re-emerges from the maelstrom of data. A ghost of the mote can be seen in viewers peripheral vision but never head on. – if you see what I mean?
The Premier of Western Australia Colin Barnett has officially opened the new Curtin Resources and Chemistry Precinct and the i-500 Project. The $116 million precinct is the culmination of partnerships between Curtin, BHP Billiton, the Western Australian Government, and the Federal Government.
The i-500 is an artwork that will perform a vital and integral role in the development of scientific research in the fields of nanochemistry, atomic microscopy and computer modelling, applied chemistry, environmental science, biotechnology, and forensic science. Through dynamic visualizations and sonifications the artwork represents quantitative scientific research as an integral part of the architectural environment. The large-scale visual projections, distributed echo nodes and multiple sonic zones that constitute the art work reveal to the occupants a normally invisible dialogue between the researcher, the research community and the environment. The i-500 translates dynamic data from the physical and social interactions within the building into a volatile and evolving interactive art work.
The opening of the Resources and Chemistry Precinct and launch of the i-500 begins an initial engagement between the dynamic art work and the community that occupies the Precinct. This process will continue until the final manifestation of the work for the Art in the Age of Nanotechnology Perth International Arts Festival exhibition 5 February – 30 April 2010.
The i-500 is a collaborative project between Paul Thomas, Chris Malcolm and Mike Phillips who were commissioned to produce a sustainable, integrated, interactive art work from rich flows of research and general data generated through interaction in the new Curtin University Resources and Chemistry Precinct. This data will be the source material that is reflected through the architectural fabric and surface pattern of the space.
The i-500 project has established an interactive entity that inhabits the Resources and Chemistry Precinct at Curtin University of Technology. The i-500 is a reciprocal architecture, evolutionary in form and content, responding to the activities and occupants of the new structures.
To develop an integrated interactive art work that augments the physical architecture with real time data the project team has worked in close collaboration with:
The i-500 Public Art Commission is launched on 13 November 2009.
i-500 draws on the Arch-OS experience of developed by i-DAT. The i-500 project is a public art commission for Curtin University’s new Resources and Chemistry Research and Education Buildings. Working in close collaboration with Woods Bagot Architects, as part of the architects project team, the i-500 project team is creating a public artwork to be incorporated into the fabric of the complex with the intention to encourage building users to communicate and collaborate.
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