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Arranging Tangerines Episode 27 - A Conversation with Laura Splan Part 1
5 Plays3 years ago
In our first episode with Laura Splan, we talk about her Syndemic Sublime project, coopting scientific tools and processes in the service of art making, driving dynamic visualizations with unexpected data sets, utilizing software in unintended ways, NFTs as just another outlet or platform to explore, the possibilities of custom smart contracts and how they are the most material aspect of the NFT, the conventions of metadata and how exhibition opportunities and access to spaces influences her work.
Laura Splan is a transdisciplinary artist working at the intersections of science, technology, and culture. Her research-driven projects connect hidden artifacts of biotechnology to everyday lives through embodied interactions and sensory engagement. Her artworks exploring biomedical imaginaries have been commissioned by the Centers for Disease Control Foundation and the Triënnale Brugge. Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Arts & Design, Pioneer Works, and New York Hall of Science and is represented in the collections of the Thoma Art Foundation, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, NYU’s Langone Art Collection, and the Berkeley Art Museum.
Her recent exhibitions featuring molecular animations and material artifacts of laboratory animals include her large-scale immersive installation in the Brooklyn Army Terminal at BioBAT Art Space. She is currently developing a new series of collaborative artworks with theoretical biophysicist Adam Lamson for a project supported by the Simons Foundation. Her research as a member of the New Museum’s NEW INC Creative Science incubator included collaborations with scientists to interrogate interspecies entanglements in the contemporary biotechnological landscape. She is now a NEW INC Artist-in-Residence at EY where she is collaborating with the Cognitive Human Enterprise at EY on projects and research exploring the implications of virtual technologies. Splan often creates public engagement with her projects to make concepts and techniques behind her work accessible to audiences with programming including everything from all ages bacterial transformation workshops to remote textiles collaborations.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Arranging Tangerines' Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to Arranging Tangerines, presented by Lady and Stater.
00:00:05
Speaker
Conversations with contemporary artists, curators, and thinkers about the intersection of art, technology, and commerce.
00:00:10
Speaker
Your hosts are me, Alessandro Silver and Joseph Wilcox.
00:00:13
Speaker
I know what to do.
00:00:14
Speaker
I know what to say.
00:00:17
Speaker
I just know I don't want to be like you.
00:00:20
Speaker
I know what to do.
00:00:20
Speaker
I don't know what to say.
00:00:22
Speaker
I just know I don't want to be like you.
Introduction of Guest Laura Splann
00:00:37
Speaker
This week's guest is Laura Splann.
00:00:40
Speaker
Part one.
Discussion on John Cage and Silence in Art
00:00:42
Speaker
You know that old, I'm sure you know that old John Cage story, the one about him going into the soundproof room?
00:00:50
Speaker
No, I don't.
00:00:52
Speaker
Um, someone had invited, I don't know if it was part of the lab, but, uh, it was a soundproof room and we wanted to see what quiet sounded like.
00:01:01
Speaker
And they were doing things and he's like, can you make it more quiet and did something else?
00:01:04
Speaker
And he's like, can we make it more quiet?
00:01:06
Speaker
And they did something else and they closed off all the walls and he's completely enclosed.
00:01:09
Speaker
And he's like, can you turn down the hum?
00:01:11
Speaker
And it was like, there's no hum.
00:01:14
Speaker
It's completely quiet.
00:01:15
Speaker
It's one of the quietest places in the world.
00:01:17
Speaker
You'd have to go like in a cave, like underground cave somewhere to get even more quiet.
00:01:22
Speaker
He's like, what's that hum?
00:01:23
Speaker
He goes, that's the blood streaming through your head.
00:01:27
Speaker
Oh, wow.
00:01:28
Speaker
But how is that being mic'd?
00:01:30
Speaker
He can hear it.
00:01:32
Speaker
Whoa.
00:01:33
Speaker
Wow.
00:01:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:35
Speaker
That's weird.
00:01:36
Speaker
I haven't heard that story either.
00:01:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:39
Speaker
But yeah, that's what it felt like when you turned off the AC.
00:01:45
Speaker
It's true.
00:01:45
Speaker
You don't really know what silence is until you get to it.
00:01:48
Speaker
All the sounds.
00:01:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:49
Speaker
Right?
00:01:51
Speaker
I know.
00:01:51
Speaker
Or like, I always think my studio is really quiet.
00:01:55
Speaker
And then I don't know if you know Lee Toosman, but he does a podcast and he was using my studio to work on it for a while because they were doing construction as an apartment.
00:02:06
Speaker
And, uh, and I was like, oh yeah, you can just use my studio.
00:02:09
Speaker
And he's like, it's a little loud.
00:02:15
Speaker
He was like, not pleased.
00:02:17
Speaker
I mean, I think we also like tolerate and zone out so much residual noise in the city.
00:02:22
Speaker
Cause you just like, it's just how your brain works and can function.
00:02:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:27
Speaker
And I actually like, I often work in silence, like, or what I consider to be silence, but apparently it's not.
00:02:33
Speaker
Um, so I really, uh, don't notice like the external sounds when I'm working.
00:02:41
Speaker
Is it possible to get you a little closer to the table?
00:02:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:47
Speaker
I think that's good.
00:02:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:48
Speaker
Am I good here?
00:02:49
Speaker
You sound good.
00:02:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:52
Speaker
Okay.
00:02:54
Speaker
um it's a long bio i know it is it is really long i was trying to decide if i could cut it somewhere we usually do read a bio in the beginning of the um of the guest and i was trying to see if there was a spot in your oh is it from my website yeah oh well like the first paragraph is probably i mean the mo or like the first few sentences is it triennial bruges
00:03:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:19
Speaker
Well, triennale Bruges, but you could say the Bruges triennial too.
00:03:24
Speaker
I should probably just change that.
00:03:26
Speaker
And it's splan.
00:03:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:29
Speaker
Cool.
00:03:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:31
Speaker
Uh, I'll do the bio.
00:03:32
Speaker
Cool.
Laura Splann's Artistic Journey and Recent Works
00:03:33
Speaker
Um, well, welcome Laura.
00:03:35
Speaker
Thank you for allowing us to come hang out in your studio with you.
00:03:39
Speaker
Yeah, thanks for coming.
00:03:40
Speaker
We have Laura Splann here with us today.
00:03:43
Speaker
Laura Splann is a transdisciplinary artist working at the intersections of science, technology, and culture.
00:03:49
Speaker
Her research-driven projects connect hidden artifacts of biotechnology to everyday lives through embodied interactions and sensory engagement.
00:03:57
Speaker
Her artworks exploring biomedical imaginaries have been commissioned by the Centers for Disease Control Foundation and the Bruges Triennial.
00:04:06
Speaker
Welcome.
00:04:07
Speaker
Thank you.
00:04:10
Speaker
Where do you want to start, Alex?
00:04:12
Speaker
I know you have 100 questions.
00:04:14
Speaker
I don't even know.
00:04:15
Speaker
I guess maybe get the NFT thing over with so we can get into the nitty gritty.
00:04:20
Speaker
I mean, there's a lot of nitty gritty in both.
00:04:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:26
Speaker
Okay.
00:04:26
Speaker
Well, before we do that, you just came back from Barcelona.
00:04:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:31
Speaker
And what were you doing there?
00:04:32
Speaker
I was there for the ISAIA Symposium, which is the International Symposium of Electronic Art.
00:04:39
Speaker
And I was doing an artist talk at the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art.
00:04:44
Speaker
And I also have some artwork in an exhibition that's related to the symposium at the Santa Monica Art Center.
Techniques and Tools in Laura's Art
00:04:52
Speaker
Oh, cool.
00:04:53
Speaker
And, um, so I was showing a new video from my series syndemic sublime, um, which is a series of data driven animations, um, with molecular structures.
00:05:06
Speaker
And then I was, my artist talk was discussing that series and then, um, really several other projects that led to creating that series.
00:05:16
Speaker
Cool.
00:05:17
Speaker
Was there, uh, was there a Q and a during the artist talk?
00:05:22
Speaker
There was.
00:05:22
Speaker
So they curated three or four artists for each artist talk series to speak together.
00:05:31
Speaker
And my talk was called Time and Space, Zooming In and Zooming Out.
00:05:37
Speaker
And so they had one artist that was working at the kind of...
00:05:43
Speaker
cosmic level of scale.
00:05:45
Speaker
And then another artist working in kind of the street, uh, and in the subways, New York city subways, and then me working at the molecular scale.
00:05:55
Speaker
Um, and so we had a little panel after our talks, that was the Q and a and, um, and somebody asked me about, uh, the software that I was using at which point I can
00:06:10
Speaker
proceeded to talk for probably way too long to talk shop way too long.
00:06:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:16
Speaker
Which like half the people were probably really into and the other half were like, and I think the person that asked me was a molecular biologist.
00:06:22
Speaker
So, um, I got the sense that she would know what I was talking about and that she would also be excited about it.
00:06:28
Speaker
And, uh, and I think she was, but she might've been the only one.
00:06:32
Speaker
I didn't get a chance to ask when we were talking before we started recording, but the software that you use, is it like for medical purposes usually?
00:06:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:42
Speaker
So the software I use is called Pymol and it's molecular visualization software that is used by molecular biologists to...
00:06:53
Speaker
to view protein structures like antibodies and viruses and viral proteins.
00:07:01
Speaker
And then they can not only view the structures, but also model structures.
00:07:08
Speaker
For example, model what it will look like when and if an antibody binds to a virus.
00:07:17
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:07:20
Speaker
And or if you're doing research.
00:07:22
Speaker
Which is a big part of the new project that you're working on, right?
00:07:24
Speaker
This like the binding.
00:07:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:27
Speaker
So these the syndemic sublime animations are basically like inspired by that kind of technique.
00:07:36
Speaker
But, you know, I'm always like co-opting scientific tools and processes to try to do something that a scientist would never do.
00:07:45
Speaker
So I've been.
00:07:47
Speaker
So loading up these different protein models from scientific databases into the software and loading up a bunch of models that would never be looked at altogether at once.
00:08:03
Speaker
And then, but that are in fact related.
00:08:07
Speaker
So the latest animation is bat, pangolin, camel, llama, alpaca, human, and SARS-CoV-2 structures all kind of ganged up into one interspecies shit show.
00:08:24
Speaker
And they're all animating this unfolding process that is data-driven.
00:08:32
Speaker
And then sort of getting tangled in a mess by the end of the animation.
00:08:38
Speaker
Is that the one that's on the wall right now?
00:08:40
Speaker
Yeah, that's the one that's on the wall.
00:08:42
Speaker
And that's actually the one with all of those structures is one that I made specifically for...
00:08:49
Speaker
the exhibition in Barcelona.
00:08:50
Speaker
Oh, cool.
00:08:51
Speaker
And, um, so they have it, uh, projected onto this big, beautiful wall.
00:08:57
Speaker
And this is the first thing you see when you walk in the museum.
00:08:59
Speaker
It's really nice.
00:09:00
Speaker
And, um, and so the, the data that's driving the unraveling and disruption of the protein structures is, um,
00:09:09
Speaker
is data from tracking deaths in the United States from COVID over the first 20 months of the pandemic to disrupt the different, the 20 amino acid residues along the protein structures.
00:09:25
Speaker
And so the...
00:09:27
Speaker
The animation starts out with kind of, you know, recognizable molecular structures.
00:09:32
Speaker
I mean, you might not be super familiar with what they might be or what the meaning of the different representations is, but you sort of would recognize it as some sort of molecular structure.
00:09:46
Speaker
And then by the end of it, they get tangled.
00:09:51
Speaker
I do love when the data being used to make the rendering of things is sometimes these horrific things.
00:10:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:02
Speaker
You know, I was just kind of responding to how much data visualization was being rendered and produced to give the public and also scientists better understanding of what was happening and how...
00:10:18
Speaker
the coronavirus was spreading and in different situations and, um, you know, even just keeping track of vaccination rates so that we were just like inundated with so much data visualization for two years and, um, and even still.
00:10:35
Speaker
And, um, so, you know, I wanted to make something that was a data visualization of sorts, but that had, um, um,
00:10:43
Speaker
some sort of emotional or kind of visceral impact that might kind of emerge through watching it.
00:10:55
Speaker
And, you know, I've been making a lot of different kinds of molecular animations with this software and playing with...
00:11:03
Speaker
speed and duration as ways to and movement as ways to kind of draw people in to something enough for them to ask a question and also trying to make everything like a little bit weird like make it weird enough that it seems like there's some sort of logic but you don't really know what it is and and
00:11:25
Speaker
that, you know, you're hopefully curious enough to read a wall label or read some text to find out.
00:11:31
Speaker
Leave some room also for, for somebody to, to bring themselves to it.
00:11:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:36
Speaker
And, and, you know, also that once, once you kind of understand the piece more that it, it adds more questions and layers rather than, um, finishes the piece in any way.
00:11:51
Speaker
Yeah, I've always like when data visualizations kind of became, I feel like mainstream, which I don't know exactly when it was.
00:11:58
Speaker
I feel like maybe it was like mid 2000s or something.
00:12:02
Speaker
I was like really interested in how you needed to learn how to read them.
00:12:07
Speaker
in order to like understand and there was different kinds um and so just thinking about the syndetics syndemic sublime series um and like imagining a creature who's like who like knows these structures so well that they could like understand the data from the visualization which like
00:12:26
Speaker
seems impossible for
Art with Data: Impactful Visualizations
00:12:28
Speaker
a mere mortal like myself.
00:12:30
Speaker
But I think that that's like part of the fun of them.
00:12:33
Speaker
And like the interesting aspect of them is that they're like these, they're like pulled from data, but like you couldn't necessarily, what's it called when you like work backwards on a thing?
00:12:43
Speaker
Reverse engineering.
00:12:44
Speaker
Yes.
00:12:44
Speaker
You couldn't reverse engineer the pieces and like get the data out of them, which I think is kind of a cool aspect.
00:12:50
Speaker
yeah yeah i mean they're also they're beautiful to look at so you that's you draw the person in in that way and then i mean like you said we were inundated with these data sets and it got to the point where i think you just didn't know what to make with it yeah it was just like piling up on top of each other and to have something like this and then kind of like kind of i think we were talking about comedy and
00:13:16
Speaker
Humor, it's another way to kind of slip in some important information.
00:13:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:20
Speaker
Bring the viewer in or have them listen.
00:13:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:23
Speaker
And I like to kind of implicate the software in that, too.
00:13:29
Speaker
So the reason one of the reasons I went this direction with this software is.
00:13:35
Speaker
I was given like a kind of like a one hour tutorial on this software when I was doing a bio art residency and at a laboratory.
00:13:45
Speaker
And so I kind of got the basics of how I might understand what it's for.
00:13:50
Speaker
And then I just kind of went off and started poking around and looking at drop down menus.
00:13:55
Speaker
And I found this feature called sculpting.
00:13:57
Speaker
Mm hmm.
00:13:58
Speaker
And I found it very intriguing, this idea of sculpting a molecular structure that is supposed to be representing a very specific conformation or folding of a protein.
00:14:13
Speaker
And so an artist misusing technology, I'm shocked.
00:14:17
Speaker
And so I thought, well, I have a master's degree in sculpture, so that must be for me.
00:14:24
Speaker
And so I started unraveling proteins with this sculpting tool.
00:14:29
Speaker
And when I was doing it, it sometimes would make the software complex.
00:14:33
Speaker
completely freak out and it would just start going wild with movement.
00:14:38
Speaker
And, um, the, you know, parts of the protein would like go off into space.
00:14:43
Speaker
Like things would fly into this infinite workspace of the software environment.
00:14:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:49
Speaker
And, um,
00:14:50
Speaker
So I was sort of hooked after that, but also really wanted to figure out how to control it and like decide when that was going to happen.
00:14:57
Speaker
And so with these slower animations, there's just little moments that punctuate this kind of slow, sensuous movement that every once in a while something kind of like freaks out or spazzes out or starts vibrating erratically.
00:15:13
Speaker
And so there's little moments where
00:15:17
Speaker
And that calm and slowness and subtlety is disrupted, I think, in ways that are quite appropriate for the inspiration of the piece.
00:15:28
Speaker
And yeah, so there's something, you know, there's something meditative about them, but there is also something that I think also plays with this idea of like,
00:15:40
Speaker
glazing over and not knowing what you're looking at in the same way that happens with these data visualizations that we've been looking at.
00:15:48
Speaker
Yeah, I was, um, I was watching some of the videos on my phone as I was like waiting for the train to come here.
00:15:55
Speaker
And I was just like imagining the person next to me, like watch, I'm like watching this like three minute, really kind of like slow moving video.
00:16:02
Speaker
It wasn't from this series, but it was the one that
00:16:05
Speaker
That there's like the four kind of like structures that are coming in from the corners and they.
00:16:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:12
Speaker
And just like it's like not something you watch on your phone while you're waiting for the train typically.
00:16:18
Speaker
Right.
00:16:20
Speaker
And so you could you could make lots of wild conclusions about the person who's watching it and, you know, their state of mind or whatever.
00:16:26
Speaker
And I just thought it was an interesting, like, context experience of like, where you get to see this kind of work, because it is really well suited to be watched on a personal screen if you wanted to.
00:16:40
Speaker
But we don't normally kind of engage with.
00:16:43
Speaker
uh, this, I feel like this kind of artwork on our phone screens very often.
00:16:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:48
Speaker
There, um, there is something that is, that I think does kind of function on a, a phone screen in that, you know, you, you, we often like compulsively look to our phones for some form of like entertainment or relaxation or just like killing time.
Creating Immersive Installations with Sound
00:17:06
Speaker
And so these animations kind of can function well in that way and that you can kind of,
00:17:13
Speaker
trip out or space out on them.
00:17:15
Speaker
Um, but I've mostly shown them at large scales, um, where they become a very immersive experience and there's a soundscape with them that amplifies that, uh, kind of immersive experience in an even more visceral way where the, the sound, um, so at the
00:17:36
Speaker
The installation that I did at the Brooklyn Army Terminal really lent – the space really lent itself to that kind of experience where I could have some very loud studio monitor speakers in the space that really filled it but also kind of echoed in a way that –
00:17:53
Speaker
was, you know, sort of immersive and overwhelming and maybe even sort of felt in the body a little bit.
00:18:03
Speaker
Yeah, that dark space at Biobat is like one of the coolest.
00:18:08
Speaker
I think it's one of the coolest places to see art in New York.
00:18:11
Speaker
Yeah, it was so exciting to imagine how to install those in that space.
00:18:18
Speaker
And I was a really, so that was a really interesting exhibition to conceive of and to install.
00:18:25
Speaker
Cause I was invited by bio bat to do something in their space because they were closing down for COVID.
00:18:31
Speaker
So they, um, they invited me to use the space while they were closed.
00:18:36
Speaker
Okay.
00:18:37
Speaker
So, um, I was their first artist in residence and had this 15,000 square foot space in the back and then a 3000 square foot space in the front to work, um, uh, on projects that they, they were very familiar with my work and familiar with some of these animations that I was developing.
00:18:58
Speaker
And, um,
00:19:00
Speaker
And so, but it was, but it's also a very raw space.
00:19:06
Speaker
And so it really was like this kind of rough blank canvas to, you know, conceive of something with whatever resources I could manage at the time, not to mention, you know, it,
00:19:24
Speaker
the limited resources that were due to the pandemic and, and things being shut down.
00:19:31
Speaker
And, um, so that was in like June of, or maybe April of 2020 that they invited me.
00:19:37
Speaker
And, um, so I finished developing these animations and then started installing in, in July, August of 2020.
00:19:46
Speaker
So me and my partner, we just went over there and like started walking around the hallways and we actually built the screens for the projections out of scrap materials we found in the hallway.
00:19:59
Speaker
There was all this like heavy duty aluminum track that we hung from the ceiling somehow.
00:20:07
Speaker
I don't really remember how now.
00:20:08
Speaker
Not safely.
00:20:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:11
Speaker
It was safe.
00:20:13
Speaker
We hung from the ceiling and then we zip tied these screens that are just like stretchable projection screens.
00:20:22
Speaker
And then we use like another piece of aluminum track on the bottom.
00:20:26
Speaker
No, a stainless steel track on the bottom to weight it down.
00:20:30
Speaker
And it worked so beautifully that when I left, they were like, oh, can you just leave those?
00:20:34
Speaker
And I was like, sure.
00:20:34
Speaker
I was like, I don't want to take them down.
00:20:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:38
Speaker
The, just to go back to the, you were saying that at the conference in Barcelona, the way it was set up, it was, you were the micro, someone was in the intermediate space and somebody else was macro.
00:20:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:51
Speaker
Um, but your work also shares all three of those qualities.
00:20:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:55
Speaker
Cause it's, it also alludes to the universal and to the, to, to the cosmic basically.
00:21:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:01
Speaker
Um, so I, I mean, I had wanted to ask you about that anyway, how that kind of interplays with your work.
00:21:07
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think that that was really wonderfully acknowledged in the way that this panel was curated.
00:21:14
Speaker
I think all three of us were actually dealing with those different shifts in scale.
00:21:21
Speaker
And yeah, I mean, I think just because the work that I'm showing in that exhibition is dealing with these molecular models at the
00:21:29
Speaker
You know, at first glance, that's how it reads, but it's certainly, you know, its underpinnings are about this larger scale that is in terms of the data at the scale of the U.S. population.
00:21:47
Speaker
So yeah, I think, you know, something I've always worked with as like a tactic is to draw people into something that's intimately scaled or to compel some sort of desire to look at something very, very closely.
00:22:07
Speaker
And then for there to be some other, maybe even completely different experience when you pull back
00:22:14
Speaker
and either look at something from further away or understand the kind of layers of either materiality that are involved or in the case of the animations, the data that's involved that are also very much part of the piece.
00:22:35
Speaker
So, and I think that that's often how that happens is there's sort of like a,
00:22:42
Speaker
an image that, um, is really, really trying to, uh, operate on a very sensory scale first.
00:22:53
Speaker
And, and then there's enough curiosity, hopefully to start questioning the materiality of that image.
00:23:01
Speaker
And then that's where those layers start to unfold where, um, you know, what,
00:23:08
Speaker
what software was this made with or what are these molecular structures or what is this latch hook rug that is kind of weird colors and also a little dirty?
00:23:20
Speaker
Like what's going on here is basically the question I'm trying to get people to ask.
00:23:27
Speaker
Great.
00:23:29
Speaker
I guess the NFT thing is obviously one of the reasons we reached out
Exploring NFTs and Digital Art Challenges
00:23:34
Speaker
to you.
00:23:34
Speaker
I've never seen somebody's work who is so suitable for that space.
00:23:39
Speaker
It just seems like it was readily made for work.
00:23:43
Speaker
I mean, you already were making generative art.
00:23:47
Speaker
A lot of your work is digital.
00:23:49
Speaker
It kind of has these moving parts and they're atmospheric.
00:23:54
Speaker
I mean, there's meaning behind them, which is great, unlike some of the NFT artwork out there.
00:24:00
Speaker
But can you tell us how and when you got into NFTs and what you think of them and are you going to continue using them?
00:24:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:09
Speaker
And what maybe you think the future of them might be?
00:24:13
Speaker
Yeah, so the first I started thinking about NFTs really by way of working with Sedition Art, which is a blockchain platform for digital editions of mostly animation and video art, but also still images, collections of still images.
00:24:36
Speaker
And, you know, I was starting to ask those questions of like, why, why put these videos that I've already shown in exhibition spaces, why put them on a digital edition platform?
00:24:48
Speaker
And, and also thinking about what is the size of the edition?
00:24:51
Speaker
What is the pricing?
00:24:52
Speaker
And, you know, these are all questions I had already considered in thinking about prints and photographs and sculptures and, you know, digitally fabricated, you know,
00:25:03
Speaker
objects that could be reproduced.
00:25:05
Speaker
Um, and even with the computerized machine embroidery, uh, lace sculptures that I'd made in the past, like those are addition.
00:25:14
Speaker
And so a lot of the questions that it was bringing up for me were, were familiar.
00:25:20
Speaker
Um, and it, it really just felt like another outlet or platform to, um, to reach either, um,
00:25:31
Speaker
the same audience or a different audience?
00:25:33
Speaker
I mean, it really felt like a bigger audience, like a broader audience.
00:25:37
Speaker
So I have some of the Unraveling series animations on Sedition, and then I have the Syndemic Sublime animations on Sedition.
00:25:49
Speaker
And so those...
00:25:54
Speaker
I started working with them in 2020 and then not long after that was asked to include some work in a group exhibition that was through a gallery and they were putting it on OpenSea.
00:26:10
Speaker
And so I have some still images on there that are actually part of
00:26:18
Speaker
an older series of images called recursive expressions.
00:26:24
Speaker
And they have always operated well as prints.
00:26:32
Speaker
And I thought that they could work well as images in an NFT platform.
00:26:42
Speaker
And yeah, I mean, I think again, it was just like,
00:26:47
Speaker
I liked what some of the other artists in the exhibition were doing with NFTs.
00:26:52
Speaker
It was an intriguing group of artists that were working with digital media and creative coding and animation in interesting ways.
00:27:04
Speaker
So, you know, sometimes I feel like in the NFT space, I'm just asking myself the same questions I've always been asking.
00:27:13
Speaker
Like why this gallery or like why this work in this space or like what is the best work to show in this space, whether it's virtual or physical, it doesn't matter.
00:27:26
Speaker
But the real, my real frustration and the thing that I'm interested in navigating is
00:27:35
Speaker
in more interesting ways is, is just file size and pixel dimensions.
00:27:42
Speaker
It's a problem.
00:27:44
Speaker
I mean, it's gonna, it'll get there.
00:27:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:46
Speaker
Cause it has to, and cause people want it and artists want it.
00:27:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:49
Speaker
But yeah, it is.
00:27:50
Speaker
I mean, we've, we've worked with artists doing, um,
00:27:53
Speaker
18 minute long videos.
00:27:55
Speaker
And I'm like, I'm like, this looks terrible, but is it okay?
00:27:59
Speaker
And they're like, I guess, but like, it's not right.
00:28:02
Speaker
But it is, but it is, it is, it is, it can be, if it's a different thing than what the original is, or if you get access to the original or something, but if you're going to do it, you want it to be what it should be.
00:28:13
Speaker
Right.
00:28:13
Speaker
Yes.
00:28:13
Speaker
And if that's a 4k video, that's 20 minutes long, you should be able to put it on the blockchain and addition it.
00:28:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:19
Speaker
I mean, that's why I like the idea of making
00:28:22
Speaker
new work specifically with all of these limitations in mind, um, or making something new out of something that has another life that, um, suits the platform better.
00:28:36
Speaker
Um, like something tangential to a thing that you already are creating for a different space or something like that.
00:28:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:42
Speaker
So, um,
00:28:44
Speaker
Yeah, I think that there are projects that I have that are well suited to NFTs already in terms of pixel dimensions or file size.
00:28:56
Speaker
I'm actually going to be...
00:29:00
Speaker
launching some on foundation that are part of a series of what have been small and large format photographs.
00:29:10
Speaker
And those are perfect.
00:29:11
Speaker
Those already like they read at that scale and
00:29:15
Speaker
they relate to a whole body of work that informs them as images.
00:29:21
Speaker
Um, but yeah, I'm really interested in, in the possibilities of custom contracts and, um, how that can bring in,
00:29:32
Speaker
all sorts of nuance of materiality and even performative, performative, performativeness.
00:29:41
Speaker
What is the word that I'm looking for?
00:29:43
Speaker
Performance.
00:29:48
Speaker
We'll say performance.
00:29:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:50
Speaker
So I think that the custom contracts are,
00:29:54
Speaker
Actually, the most interesting materiality of NFTs.
00:30:00
Speaker
Have you coded some of that?
00:30:02
Speaker
Have you messed with Solidity?
00:30:05
Speaker
Solidity is Ethereum's coding language.
00:30:08
Speaker
No, no.
00:30:09
Speaker
Well, I think when it's really going to be cool is when you don't need to know how to code to make a custom contract, right?
00:30:14
Speaker
So whatever platform, which I'm sure there's already 10 startups doing it right now,
00:30:19
Speaker
that makes it so that artists can hop in, make a custom contract, the code is spit out and you get to like mess with it and do cool stuff.
00:30:27
Speaker
I think that's going to be a new wave that we'll see sometime soon.
00:30:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:32
Speaker
And I don't know.
00:30:33
Speaker
I just, when I poke around, um, open C or foundation, um,
00:30:40
Speaker
You know, I think like how the work is situated on the site is really important and interesting too.
00:30:48
Speaker
And one of my favorite things to do when I'm looking at NFTs is to look at the metadata.
00:30:53
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:30:53
Speaker
Like to see what people have written in there.
00:30:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:56
Speaker
And it's always so different.
00:30:59
Speaker
And I find that to be like a very exciting thing.
00:31:02
Speaker
I'm actually kind of more interested in the metadata most of the time.
00:31:08
Speaker
I often don't even look at the image.
00:31:10
Speaker
I'm just like, what did they put in the metadata?
00:31:13
Speaker
I don't know why I'm so obsessed with it.
00:31:15
Speaker
I'm hoping for an Easter egg, but I also think it's very telling what the artist has put in the metadata.
00:31:25
Speaker
I think it reveals what
00:31:29
Speaker
what they feel is unique about this platform for that particular image or animation or video that they've uploaded and yeah, like what it has to offer and also what they want the collector to know and also what they don't want them to know.
00:31:48
Speaker
So it's, you know, I think it's, you know, I guess it's sort of,
00:31:54
Speaker
what's called the tombstone of, um, of the NFT.
00:31:58
Speaker
Like the, when you go to a gallery and there's like the, the artist's name, title, date, a little bit of information dimensions, whatnot.
00:32:07
Speaker
Um, that's where I'm always going to find out what they have considered is worth preserving from that convention and what they have gotten creative with about adding to that convention.
00:32:19
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:32:20
Speaker
Um, because certainly within a museum or gallery setting that tombstone is often very, you know, conventional and, you know, there's just sort of, uh, like a format that is followed in terms of order and length and, uh, and level of detail.
00:32:41
Speaker
And I've seen a lot of people stray from that in, in the metadata.
00:32:46
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:32:48
Speaker
And then, yeah, I also think it's really exciting when the NFT is strongly connected to the physical world where, you know, there's like maybe a sculpture or a book that is also delivered upon collecting the NFT that ties that digital artwork
00:33:17
Speaker
to a physical object that is then in the collector's life and, um, or even a website.
00:33:26
Speaker
I mean, I kind of feel like that, that functions in relation to that as like a very physical thing somehow.
00:33:33
Speaker
Um, and I, yeah, I often like get very confused about what I consider physical and
00:33:41
Speaker
Right.
00:33:42
Speaker
We've talked about that a lot.
00:33:44
Speaker
Cause if like, I was saying, if you have like a designated screen in your life, that is to show your digital artwork, then it is a very physical thing.
00:33:53
Speaker
Right.
00:33:54
Speaker
But if it's, if you're looking at your digital artwork that you like or own or whatever on multiple screens that do lots of other things, like you watch Netflix on, or you do whatever on, then it's like not physical anymore.
00:34:04
Speaker
It's this digital thing.
00:34:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:06
Speaker
And I think more and more people will start having these like dedicated,
00:34:10
Speaker
devices that show artwork yeah um which you know i think we're kind of seeing a little bit but that's part of our gallery's ethos is to contextualize the digital art with some kind of um real object which is one of the reasons we have a physical space yeah it's not just to replicate and show the the digital file on the monitor which is about as fun and exciting as nothing
00:34:33
Speaker
I mean, if it if it makes sense to write some some video work is supposed to be video.
00:34:38
Speaker
You don't need to force a physical object on a video work either.
00:34:41
Speaker
But yeah, it is nice to have the opportunity to connect the physical with the virtual fit if it.
00:34:47
Speaker
makes sense for the work and expands on the work.
00:34:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:49
Speaker
And it's also an opportunity for, um, the possibilities of a physical space that are not possible in somebody's tiny apartment or their home.
00:34:58
Speaker
Um, or if all they have is a smallish screen or even just a phone, then, um, you can completely change somebody's physical relationship to that artwork by allowing them to like navigate around it in, um, a physical space or controlling light and, um,
00:35:17
Speaker
I was actually I was going to ask you about kind of like, you know, like artist career trajectory.
00:35:23
Speaker
And as somebody who likes to make large projections where people can kind of like, be overtaken by it or relate to it kind of like one to one with their body.
00:35:32
Speaker
Um, was it, uh, like at what point were you given opportunities to be able to do that?
00:35:38
Speaker
Like, were you ever like not able to show at the scale you wanted because you like, didn't have the opportunities to yet.
00:35:44
Speaker
And like, did that change your practice afterwards?
Laura's Early Influences and Interest in Science
00:35:48
Speaker
Yes and yes.
00:35:51
Speaker
I mean, opportunities and access to space and materials always changes my work.
00:35:59
Speaker
And I don't mind that.
00:36:01
Speaker
Like I actually find that to be quite comfortable.
00:36:08
Speaker
You just use what you have and make the best of it.
00:36:13
Speaker
But I was really lucky in my undergraduate at UC Irvine.
00:36:18
Speaker
We actually did have access to very large gallery spaces and installation spaces to experiment with, and we could have shows in them.
00:36:26
Speaker
And so I was actually doing immersive video and photography.
00:36:32
Speaker
projection installation in my undergraduate work.
00:36:38
Speaker
And playing with sound and even I made like a kinetic sculpture with these like laser cut mirrored objects.
00:36:52
Speaker
Um, I really like listening to artists talk about old work and they're like, it's like all the art speak goes out the window and they just like talk about whatever it was as what it was.
00:37:00
Speaker
Cause it wasn't necessarily a real thing yet or whatever.
00:37:03
Speaker
Definitely wasn't a good thing.
00:37:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:06
Speaker
I mean, I learned a lot making that work and, um,
00:37:10
Speaker
And actually, you know, it's funny, I have video documentation of those installations.
00:37:17
Speaker
And when the new museum did its preservation project a few years ago, where you could go in and bring your old media, you could preserve your, what your discs or drives or video tape formats.
00:37:32
Speaker
And, and I forget what format that footage was on.
00:37:38
Speaker
I think it was,
00:37:40
Speaker
eight millimeter.
00:37:41
Speaker
It wasn't even high eight.
00:37:42
Speaker
It was like eight millimeter tape.
00:37:46
Speaker
And, um, and I preserved it.
00:37:49
Speaker
And part of the contract with that,
00:37:51
Speaker
that opportunity was it, it was going to be uploaded to the internet archive.
00:37:55
Speaker
So you can actually see like these small videos of these installations.
00:38:04
Speaker
And I'm so thankful that it's like, cause I have so much media that needs to be preserved.
00:38:11
Speaker
Um, but yeah, so I was really lucky to have, um,
00:38:15
Speaker
the opportunity to do that.
00:38:16
Speaker
And, uh, and I was doing a lot of photography and video and projection in my undergraduate.
00:38:22
Speaker
Those were my main media.
00:38:24
Speaker
Um, and, uh,
00:38:28
Speaker
And then I kind of moved more and more towards smaller scaled sculptures after that, probably because of resources where I wasn't, you know, I wasn't I didn't have access to those spaces anymore.
00:38:40
Speaker
After your bachelor's degree or whatever.
00:38:41
Speaker
Yeah, I was in like a tiny studio in San Francisco and I eventually got a studio space.
00:38:48
Speaker
But I was, you know, I was working on smaller spaces.
00:38:51
Speaker
I was actually making sculptures inside of Petri dishes.
00:38:54
Speaker
So I was working at that scale and, and I was making, um, I was making microscope.
00:39:00
Speaker
I was, it was, yeah, weird work, but I was, I was digital imaging.
00:39:06
Speaker
I was digital printing on transparencies and then, um, using this kind of like toy microscope where you, um,
00:39:15
Speaker
You could see the images only through this toy microscope.
00:39:18
Speaker
So I was making lots of, I was doing a lot of very small images on transparencies in Petri dishes and for microscopes and also making sculptures with, um,
00:39:31
Speaker
with surplus, um, chemistry supplies and, um, and laboratory equipment.
00:39:37
Speaker
So they were like these kind of self-contained sculptures that were kinetic, um, laboratory machines.
00:39:45
Speaker
Cool.
00:39:45
Speaker
I love, I love transparencies by the way.
00:39:48
Speaker
I love the fact that it's a one-to-one thing and you, you're talking about the ones that you show on the overhead projectors.
00:39:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:54
Speaker
I was inkjet printing on transparency.
00:39:56
Speaker
Um, I never used the overhead projector, but I, uh, I had this little,
00:40:01
Speaker
microscope that you could put like a slide, a microscope slide under.
00:40:06
Speaker
And instead of putting a specimen, I just put an image and you could see it.
00:40:09
Speaker
You could change out the slides in the gallery and, um, and see these different messages.
00:40:16
Speaker
And I don't remember what they are.
00:40:18
Speaker
Oh, I was, oh, they were like, um, they were different, uh, collages of found text and scientific images.
00:40:27
Speaker
Um,
00:40:28
Speaker
So I was working with a lot of found objects and images, which is really what I've always done.
00:40:35
Speaker
Can I tell you my favorite transparency story?
00:40:37
Speaker
Yes.
00:40:38
Speaker
So I used to do audiovisual stuff.
00:40:41
Speaker
I worked in a hotel in Chicago and requests come in, obviously, because guests rent out rooms for meetings and conferences.
00:40:50
Speaker
And we got one from the CIA.
00:40:51
Speaker
And the CIA ordered an overhead projector.
00:40:53
Speaker
And we were like, that must be a mistake.
00:40:55
Speaker
They must have meant projector.
00:40:57
Speaker
So we meet them there.
00:40:58
Speaker
They come.
00:40:59
Speaker
The guy's like, no, I need an overhead projector.
00:41:01
Speaker
I'm like, okay.
00:41:02
Speaker
I brought it in.
00:41:03
Speaker
I'm like...
00:41:04
Speaker
Do you mind me asking why wouldn't you just use, at the time you could use like, you know, a 5k projector or whatever?
00:41:11
Speaker
Because with the overhead projector, I have the content.
00:41:15
Speaker
Yep.
00:41:15
Speaker
And I have the content.
00:41:19
Speaker
Probably like pulls it out of a locked briefcase.
00:41:20
Speaker
I was like, got it.
00:41:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:24
Speaker
And it can be.
00:41:26
Speaker
No digital files that exist.
00:41:28
Speaker
No.
00:41:29
Speaker
Wow.
00:41:31
Speaker
So yeah.
00:41:32
Speaker
That's a good technique.
00:41:34
Speaker
Maybe that's how I should archive and preserve all my media.
00:41:36
Speaker
Transparency.
00:41:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:38
Speaker
You should bring them in the lockbox with the handcuff.
00:41:41
Speaker
Run another studio to store everything.
00:41:43
Speaker
I can imagine like all the PNGs that make up your videos.
00:41:46
Speaker
Oh my God.
00:41:47
Speaker
And transparency.
00:41:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:48
Speaker
Which could be a fun physical something.
00:41:51
Speaker
I don't know.
00:41:53
Speaker
That's like a nightmare.
00:41:55
Speaker
So where does the love of science come from?
00:41:59
Speaker
I was originally a biological sciences major in my undergraduate.
00:42:05
Speaker
And that interest, I think, somewhat came out of being exposed to a lot of biomedical imagery growing up.
00:42:14
Speaker
My dad worked for a company that produced biological products and implants and surgical instruments.
00:42:22
Speaker
So he would come home with like artificial knees and hips and surgery videos.
00:42:27
Speaker
And I was really into it.
00:42:30
Speaker
And also my grandmother was a nurse in World War II.
00:42:34
Speaker
And I think like there were just kind of family influences.
00:42:40
Speaker
Epigenetic.
00:42:42
Speaker
Yeah, it's epigenetic.
00:42:44
Speaker
And yeah, from like being inside my grandmother's body in World War II.
00:42:49
Speaker
You were there.
00:42:51
Speaker
I was there.
00:42:52
Speaker
And, but also I think, um,
00:42:57
Speaker
You know, I was just kind of fascinated by the body.
00:43:02
Speaker
And I think it took me a long time to even understand why and how.
00:43:07
Speaker
But I was just always really fascinated by the body.
00:43:10
Speaker
And I remember like one time going to the library and wanting to check out this anatomy book.
00:43:16
Speaker
And my sister wouldn't let me because she thought it was dirty.
00:43:19
Speaker
And...
00:43:24
Speaker
So I think there's a, just a lot of early fascination there that became more and more focused on biomedical imagery and, um, and kind of easily led to like surgical imagery and molecular imagery, um, in different ways.
00:43:43
Speaker
Uh, and when I was in, as a biological sciences major, I was interested in being a veterinarian, um,
00:43:52
Speaker
So I feel like I'm just now kind of coming back to my interest in other non-human species in really wonderful ways.
00:43:59
Speaker
And so, yeah, I mean, it's hard to even unpack in a really concise way because it's so many influences.
00:44:10
Speaker
And I think the real turning point for me and my work in relation to positioning
00:44:18
Speaker
the role of scientific imagery in my work and the role of imagery of the body in my work, which I was already using in earlier work, but not in very specific,
00:44:29
Speaker
or intentional ways, I guess, or, um, yeah, just not in very specific ways was, um, when Dolly was cloned, I just thought that was bringing up so many interesting conversations around the body and, uh, culturally prescribed notions of the body and how that, how those conversations were going to be driving, um, not only, you know, legal policy, um, but also, you know, scientific research and,
00:44:58
Speaker
what was and wasn't worth researching.
Podcast Production and Contributors
00:45:02
Speaker
And, um, so I, I thought that that was, um, that was all of a sudden like a renewed and reinvigorated interest for me.
00:45:13
Speaker
That was, um, much more specifically engaged with molecular biology and, um,
00:45:22
Speaker
and how these notions of prescribed notions of the body and what's normal and abnormal, um, and what is worth engineering in and engineering out, um, how I was really interested in how that was surfacing in culture.
00:45:40
Speaker
Um, so it was using a lot of found video footage and
00:45:44
Speaker
imaging and texts to create what were often these kind of, yeah, more intimately scaled objects and sculptures.
00:45:56
Speaker
And then, and then, but yeah, I think I've always been really drawn, just coming back to your original question, been really drawn to opportunities to have bigger space
00:46:07
Speaker
to do more expansive installations that aren't necessarily like one singular immersive experience, but enough space to kind of wander among objects and make these connections between them.
00:46:29
Speaker
Arranging Tangerines is recorded, edited, and produced by Lydian Stater, an evolving curatorial platform based in New York City with a focus on the intersection of contemporary and crypto art.
00:46:39
Speaker
You can learn more at lydianstater.co, find images at lydianstaternyc on Instagram, and follow us at lydianstater on Twitter.
00:46:46
Speaker
Thanks to Laura Splann for taking the time to speak to us this week.
00:46:49
Speaker
If you'd like to learn more about her work, visit our website at lauraspland.com.
00:46:53
Speaker
Big thanks to Tal Juan, who graciously provides our intro music.
00:46:57
Speaker
His albums are available at talwan.bandcamp.com.
00:47:00
Speaker
And thank you to you, listener, for spending your valuable time with us.
00:47:05
Speaker
I know what to say.
00:47:07
Speaker
I don't know what to say.
00:47:09
Speaker
I just know I don't want to be like you.
00:47:12
Speaker
I don't know what to do.
00:47:13
Speaker
I don't know what to say.
00:47:15
Speaker
I just know I don't want to be like you.
00:47:19
Speaker
Oh, no.