Painting Energies - Artscience podcast by Aalto University
Painting Energies
10 episodes
8 months ago
In this episode, we talked to the Australian installation artist Janet Laurence. Janne met her when he was a visiting fellow at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. Janet's practice focuses on creating immersive experiences that bring people into an intimate relationship with nature. She is known for her work with plants, which highlights not only their beauty but also their fragility and the need for care and empathy to protect the environment. Her work is diverse, spanning from large-scale installations in forests and ecosystems, to sculptures, and even video and sound pieces. Entangled Garden for Plant Memory, Yu-Hsiu Museum, Taiwan (2020), After Nature, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia (2019), and Deep Breathing: Resuscitation for the Reef, Musée National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris, France (2015) are recent examples of her work and exhibitions that relate to our conversation.
Janet tells about her way of working with scientists and researchers, and about her art installations consisting of samples from the vast animal and plant collections of natural history museums. We discuss the controversial feelings they evoke at the border between life and death, preserved but lost. Janne wonders if living nature itself is, to sapiens, like a natural history museum: a collection of increasingly rare species preserved at the brink of extinction.
Janet and Bart share their views on the role of art: could it be conceived as a powerful tool for behavioural change? This leads us to compare the different approaches by scientists and artists in presenting work and questioning: one obsessed in finding answers and solutions, the other avoiding them at all cost; the art of enquiry.
We end the conversation with Janet telling about her upcoming work with researchers of the Antarctic, spells for weather, and the plants in her new garden.
More about Janet: https://www.janetlaurence.com/
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In this episode, we talked to the Australian installation artist Janet Laurence. Janne met her when he was a visiting fellow at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. Janet's practice focuses on creating immersive experiences that bring people into an intimate relationship with nature. She is known for her work with plants, which highlights not only their beauty but also their fragility and the need for care and empathy to protect the environment. Her work is diverse, spanning from large-scale installations in forests and ecosystems, to sculptures, and even video and sound pieces. Entangled Garden for Plant Memory, Yu-Hsiu Museum, Taiwan (2020), After Nature, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia (2019), and Deep Breathing: Resuscitation for the Reef, Musée National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris, France (2015) are recent examples of her work and exhibitions that relate to our conversation.
Janet tells about her way of working with scientists and researchers, and about her art installations consisting of samples from the vast animal and plant collections of natural history museums. We discuss the controversial feelings they evoke at the border between life and death, preserved but lost. Janne wonders if living nature itself is, to sapiens, like a natural history museum: a collection of increasingly rare species preserved at the brink of extinction.
Janet and Bart share their views on the role of art: could it be conceived as a powerful tool for behavioural change? This leads us to compare the different approaches by scientists and artists in presenting work and questioning: one obsessed in finding answers and solutions, the other avoiding them at all cost; the art of enquiry.
We end the conversation with Janet telling about her upcoming work with researchers of the Antarctic, spells for weather, and the plants in her new garden.
More about Janet: https://www.janetlaurence.com/
Painting Energies - Artscience podcast by Aalto University
1 hour 36 minutes 3 seconds
3 years ago
#5 Electrical cable bacteria - with Robin Bonné
In this episode, we meet physicist Robin Bonné. In his Ph.D. research, Robin tried to combine the fundamentals of physics with living creatures. They are called micro-organisms, but they don’t look very micro – once Robin saw them with his naked eye. They are filamentous bacteria, with a lot of interdependent cells all in one chain, up to seven centimeters long, growing from the Earth's surface down into the soil where they find their main food, hydrogen sulfide.
They are called cable bacteria since they became of interest to scientists in 2012. Since their discovery on the coasts of Denmark, these bacteria are found in many sediments around the world, ranging from seawater biotopes to lakes and maybe even the pond in your local park.
The cable bacteria have an ability that is quite unknown in nature: they have cells that do only half of the metabolic processes. Some cells do one half, others the other half and the halves are connected by conduction of electrons. It was presumed that the cable-like bacterium can conduct electrons from one cell to another, from the oxygen-poor bottom part where electrons are taken from the food, up to the top cells where electrons are needed, passed on to oxygen.
In 2017, Robin and collaborators found that cable bacteria indeed conduct electricity. This electron transport takes place in the centimeter range, which is three orders of magnitude longer than was known before (in Geobacter nanowires). Robin did research into how this electron transport occurs. The cable bacteria have tiny conductive wires just underneath their surface. What they are made of – proteins perhaps – is unknown, and this question is the holy grail in that research field now.
How are cable bacteria like plants, connecting the world above ground to the world below ground and signaling between them? And do they also have a relation to sunlight like plants do? Could they be used as electrical conductors in our painted solar cells? Trying to understand cable bacteria requires many disciplines: physics, chemistry, biology; engineering. Our conversation with Robin embraces these fields and tiptoes also into the philosophy of science and the use of bacteria in wastewater treatment and bioelectronics.
Painting Energies - Artscience podcast by Aalto University
In this episode, we talked to the Australian installation artist Janet Laurence. Janne met her when he was a visiting fellow at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. Janet's practice focuses on creating immersive experiences that bring people into an intimate relationship with nature. She is known for her work with plants, which highlights not only their beauty but also their fragility and the need for care and empathy to protect the environment. Her work is diverse, spanning from large-scale installations in forests and ecosystems, to sculptures, and even video and sound pieces. Entangled Garden for Plant Memory, Yu-Hsiu Museum, Taiwan (2020), After Nature, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia (2019), and Deep Breathing: Resuscitation for the Reef, Musée National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris, France (2015) are recent examples of her work and exhibitions that relate to our conversation.
Janet tells about her way of working with scientists and researchers, and about her art installations consisting of samples from the vast animal and plant collections of natural history museums. We discuss the controversial feelings they evoke at the border between life and death, preserved but lost. Janne wonders if living nature itself is, to sapiens, like a natural history museum: a collection of increasingly rare species preserved at the brink of extinction.
Janet and Bart share their views on the role of art: could it be conceived as a powerful tool for behavioural change? This leads us to compare the different approaches by scientists and artists in presenting work and questioning: one obsessed in finding answers and solutions, the other avoiding them at all cost; the art of enquiry.
We end the conversation with Janet telling about her upcoming work with researchers of the Antarctic, spells for weather, and the plants in her new garden.
More about Janet: https://www.janetlaurence.com/
