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 11 minutes
3 years ago
#8 Cross-disciplinary biotopes - with James Evans
What are the ingredients for a successful cross-disciplinary collaboration? We think one of them is an evolving biotope where playful experimentations and collisions across research fields are actively encouraged and supported. And you also need persons that act as catalysts and linking agents. Like James Evans, our guest in this episode.
James is a microbiologist and lab manager at Aalto University – first at Biofilia, Lab for Biological Arts and now at Biogarage. Before, he worked at Biokeskus, University of Helsinki, and at the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland.
We discuss the role of dynamic cross-disciplinary lab environments in a knowledge institute. How are they combining art, design, science, and engineering in research and education? How is James actively guiding the intertwining of these differing worlds? How do transversal collaborations start and evolve?
In the conversation, James outlines the requirements for a creative collaborative (work)flow and environment involving experts and students. Transdisciplinary research is done also elsewhere, but James says that “here in Aalto, the jumps [across the discipline borders] are much longer, and people are much more open to doing this kind of thing here. I think that’s very important for this type of work. I can’t imagine any other circumstance where you can get real artistic production done in a functional academic lab.”
Staff members like James are well positioned to connect previously separate practices and disciplines. They receive project and experimentation requests from students from science, art, design, and architecture, separately or in groups, and facilitate workshops or contribute to those hosted by experts. This way, they often have to make a new brew from existing procedures from different disciplines, often with the unorthodox use of tools and materials. Open creative labs and their lab managers are key nodes of evolving creativity.
Our conversation goes through roughly four chapters:
0:00- Art-science Biolab at Aalto University
24:10- Example of research: Purifying microbial colour in the context of artistic use of solar energy
33:35- The enigmatic pH: its role in viruses and in the applying of biocolour; Defining life/non-life/synthetic life.
44:35- What are the qualities of a good cross-disciplinary biotope?
Mentioned in the episode:
Crispr gene editing workshop by Bioartsociety and Aalto ARTS:
https://bioartsociety.fi/posts/merry-crispr-workshop
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/
