Dynamic Equilibrium

Mandeville Gallery, Nott Memorial
March 12, 2009 - May 10, 2009

Dynamic Equilibrium explores the intersection of art and science, commenting on scientific practices and striving to expand creative possibilities.  This small exhibition represents an occasion for an investigation of the many ways that art, science, and technology can and do come together.  By juxtaposing contemporary artists who explore science, contemporary scientists who explore art, and historical apparatus used to investigate and understand science in the past, this exhibition attempts to raise questions, to provide new ways of seeing, and to stimulate innovative thinking.

The contributors to this exhibition engage the world of science and technology in exciting, profound, and extraordinary ways.  Palma Catravas and Kathleen LoGiudice explore the powerful visual information inherent in SEM images, which reveal important research information while unveiling the visual complexity inherent in their subject.  The Black-legged tick and the destructive fungus which envelopes it are both elegant and sinister, attractive and repellant.   Stefano Coluccini works with generative, interactive, video installations in which the viewer participates in the creation of lyrical, ephemeral works of visual and aural art.  The League of Imaginary Artists engages in a playful investigation of the signs and symbols, metaphors and meanings of scientific language and practice.  Their experiments emphasize collaboration, interdisciplinarity, and audience interaction.  Daro Montag facilitates the creation of images generated by micro-organisms:  by placing earth on moist color film, Montag encourages the dormant micro-organisms to activate.  Their activity – moving, eating, procreating, and defecating – is recorded directly on the film.  Laura Splan’s work explores the relationship between the body, medical technology, and domestic craft.  She frequently uses her body as a source of materials in her works, for example the elegant, delicate drawings made with her own blood as ink.  Amy Youngs and Ken Rinaldo create installations which investigate our conflicted cultural relationship to nature: through technology we attempt to control, enhance, and reveal nature, and we wield the power to both ruin and repair it.  These paradoxes are at the heart of Youngs’ and Rinaldo’s work.

In addition, early scientific apparatus from the Union College Permanent Collection are on display in the exhibition – intermingled with the contemporary art.  These objects were selected and researched by Thomas B. Greenslade Jr., of Kenyon College, a noted expert on historical physics apparatus.

This Exhibition is co-sponsored by: The Mandeville Gallery, the Biology Department, the Geology Department, the Computer Science Department, the Physics and Astronomy Department,the Dean of Engineering Office, and the Dean of Interdisciplinary Studies Office.