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Arranging Tangerines Episode 28 - A Conversation with Laura Splan Part 2
5 Plays3 years ago
In our second episode with the amazing Laura Splan, we talk about the rewards of providing exhibition opportunities for others, the promise of the NFT as a viable distribution model for long format video art, transfiguration!, the roll of magic in art, how our relationship to science, technology and medicine emerges in our daily lives, the beauty industry’s deliberate misuse of the language of spirituality & science in the service of marketing, the enchanted language of spam email and the use of blood as a medium and a metaphor.
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: Meet the Hosts
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 don't know what to do.
00:00:15
Speaker
I don't know what to say.
00:00:17
Speaker
I just know I don't want to be like you.
00:00:20
Speaker
I don't know what to do.
00:00:22
Speaker
I don't know what to say.
00:00:24
Speaker
I just know I don't want to.
Laura Splenn's Journey with DOS and Plexus Projects
00:00:37
Speaker
This week's guest is Laura Splenn.
00:00:40
Speaker
Part two.
00:00:41
Speaker
I wanted to ask you about every single project you have on your website.
00:00:44
Speaker
Wait, before you go, though, can I... No, I'm not going to do that.
00:00:47
Speaker
I don't think I have the time.
00:00:49
Speaker
Go ahead.
00:00:51
Speaker
I wanted to jump over to Web3 a little bit.
00:00:57
Speaker
And I saw on your...
00:01:00
Speaker
history that you had a project that maybe you were the head of called DOS, which was kind of like a artist collective type thing.
00:01:11
Speaker
I don't know if you would have called it a collective then, but it was, correct me if I'm wrong, but it was a platform where artists could sell work and they'd keep 50% and 50% would go to charity.
00:01:22
Speaker
And I didn't know if you were involved in anything like that kind of in the Web3 space or not.
00:01:27
Speaker
And if you are, what is it?
00:01:30
Speaker
And what's your kind of thoughts on that?
00:01:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:34
Speaker
So that was Dose Projects, which I started in 2013.
00:01:38
Speaker
And it was originally supposed to be just a website where I would invite artists to sell work, physical work.
00:01:48
Speaker
And then they could choose a charity that they wanted to donate 50% of the sales to, and then they would keep the other 50%.
00:01:55
Speaker
So it was really just...
00:01:58
Speaker
labor of love and like a, you know, just a way to connect with these artists work.
00:02:04
Speaker
And, um, and then it very quickly turned into, uh, a website launch.
00:02:10
Speaker
And then that very quickly turned into a group exhibition.
00:02:13
Speaker
And then that turned into a, uh, I guess kind of like a pop-up gallery space where I was curating
00:02:20
Speaker
solo exhibitions of artists.
00:02:22
Speaker
It's funny how that happens, right?
00:02:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:25
Speaker
So that, that, um, that went on for, well, it went on until I moved out of my last studio.
00:02:33
Speaker
So that was five years ago.
00:02:36
Speaker
Um, and then when I moved into this studio, I basically kind of migrated all the sensibilities of that.
00:02:44
Speaker
Um,
00:02:45
Speaker
and I guess energy of that into, um, something that's called Plexus projects now, which is, um, a much less, uh, defined project.
00:02:58
Speaker
Um, and it, it basically is whatever it can be at the moment based on my schedule and what I have time and space for.
00:03:06
Speaker
But, um, what it's been most recently is handing over my
00:03:10
Speaker
space to people like Lee Toosman to do like many artist residencies and use the space to make their own work in any way they want.
Art, Technology, and the Pandemic
00:03:20
Speaker
And so I've done that with a few artists.
00:03:22
Speaker
And then I've also had groove exhibitions in the space.
00:03:29
Speaker
And yeah, so that it's, you know, it's basically like an artist run project.
00:03:34
Speaker
The artists, you know, I, my favorite thing about it is just giving a space to an artist without requiring any kind of proposal.
00:03:49
Speaker
And I love like being surprised.
00:03:53
Speaker
I love like walking in and being surprised.
00:03:55
Speaker
And yeah, just kind of giving an artist a level or quality of freedom that they don't get from a conventional art gallery.
00:04:10
Speaker
And it's, yeah, it's, it's taken a lot of different forms.
00:04:15
Speaker
Um,
00:04:17
Speaker
And, you know, I've done some kind of like one day exhibitions for Greenpoint Open Studios.
00:04:23
Speaker
And there's a small like art publication, zine, art ephemera collection that I'll pull out and show too.
00:04:36
Speaker
But it's become increasingly focused on
00:04:41
Speaker
digital art, new media art, um, and like the kind of, um, connection between virtual art and physical experience or physical art.
00:04:53
Speaker
Um, and so most of the, most of what I've shown in this space over the last few years has been projections screenings, but I also have, um, I've also done screenings on the street where I have a, um,
00:05:10
Speaker
a little section of my window that you can see from the street that has special film on it so that I can project, um, with a short throw for projector onto the window.
00:05:22
Speaker
And that's been really fun to just like start projecting weird video art onto the window and kind of see how people stop and look at it.
00:05:31
Speaker
And, um,
00:05:33
Speaker
And so, you know, having and actually that was really interesting because I was still doing those at the beginning of the pandemic.
00:05:41
Speaker
So I was able to keep doing those at the beginning of the pandemic because I wasn't asking anybody to come in the space.
00:05:46
Speaker
So I would just come here by myself and set up the projector.
00:05:50
Speaker
And I bet you made a lot of people's nights on their nightly walks during the height of the pandemic by having something on the window for them to.
00:05:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:00
Speaker
I mean, it just like activated what was a very sad street situation.
00:06:06
Speaker
Um, then so, yeah, so I'm still, I'm still doing programming around that and it, it always changes and, um, and it, yeah, it was never, um, it was never like a
00:06:22
Speaker
web three um format but it is intriguing and i have thought about it and i actually ask is because of all these dows that are starting and yeah very much in line with that it's just all on the blockchain or whatever yeah yeah i've bought some domain names but i haven't oh okay i haven't fully decided well we all know that's the first step right it really is like if you buy the domain name it means you're kind of serious yes
00:06:47
Speaker
And that's a physical thing almost the domain.
00:06:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:51
Speaker
Cause there's a, you know, you have to pay for it.
00:06:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:54
Speaker
It costs money.
00:06:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:55
Speaker
I'm committed for $10.
00:06:56
Speaker
Can we know what the domain name is?
00:07:00
Speaker
No.
00:07:00
Speaker
It's a secret.
00:07:01
Speaker
It's a secret.
00:07:03
Speaker
But that's where we're giving of you to offer this opportunity to people.
00:07:06
Speaker
Yeah, it's been really rewarding too.
00:07:10
Speaker
And I've met so many artists that I've kept in touch with or that were in an exhibition and then we just like cross paths again later that we realize we have this connection through.
00:07:26
Speaker
And, you know, I have a very deep love for artists
00:07:33
Speaker
moving images and I could just sit and watch video art, animation art all day.
00:07:40
Speaker
So it curating the exhibitions is always a very pleasurable thing.
00:07:48
Speaker
You know, my like I said, I started making I started with video being my first media, really video and photography.
00:07:59
Speaker
So it always feels like a deep dive into the.
00:08:05
Speaker
aesthetics and tools and technologies that I'm not necessarily using in my own work that, um, are just kind of interesting to get exposed to and consider in new ways.
00:08:19
Speaker
And, and I don't know, it's just, it's sort of like a weird form of binging.
00:08:27
Speaker
I can understand that.
00:08:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:29
Speaker
That's great.
00:08:29
Speaker
You're bringing the content to, to, you're bringing the content to yourself.
00:08:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:35
Speaker
It's like you go to these, you go to museums and galleries and you see this amazing
00:08:39
Speaker
animations or moving images and they're not readily accessible, which part of the promise of the NFT is to have the ability to put the thing out there and still be able to monetize it.
00:08:51
Speaker
And so Matthew Barney doesn't have to hide his DVD away from you.
00:08:56
Speaker
You can watch it and he can still make the budget for the next whatever it is that he's going to make next.
00:09:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:02
Speaker
I mean, hopefully that's that comes to fruition.
00:09:04
Speaker
But because I mean,
00:09:07
Speaker
I, to my civilian friends that are not in the art world, I can't talk to them about Paul Pfeiffer or anybody.
00:09:15
Speaker
It's like, it's like talking to them about an alien.
00:09:17
Speaker
Like, yeah, but they should probably see these videos, you know?
00:09:20
Speaker
Right.
00:09:21
Speaker
And if you can send them a link of Paul Pfeiffer's work, you can talk about it, but you can't.
00:09:24
Speaker
I can't.
00:09:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:26
Speaker
And it has been nice to have these, I mean, I love like bringing people into the space to see the screenings, but also putting it on the street.
00:09:35
Speaker
There's something even more special about that where, um, you know, you're hoping to kind of bring in an audience that wouldn't normally know about this space or, um, you know, isn't connected by way of people who are already involved in showing work.
00:09:53
Speaker
So, um,
00:09:55
Speaker
I have a funny Matthew Barney story.
00:09:56
Speaker
Oh, please.
00:09:58
Speaker
Of course.
Media Arts and Public Spaces
00:10:02
Speaker
I used to work at this place called the Bay Area Video Coalition in San Francisco, which is a nonprofit media arts center.
00:10:09
Speaker
And I was I worked in the control room, like dubbing tapes and I.
00:10:17
Speaker
and operating the different machines for the different editing suites.
00:10:21
Speaker
And Matthew Barney was editing his Cream Master 5 in the main editing suite, which is right next to the control room.
00:10:31
Speaker
And at the time, one of my first curatorial projects was a public access television show.
00:10:38
Speaker
Awesome.
00:10:40
Speaker
That makes sense.
00:10:41
Speaker
And I was kind of doing the same thing I'm doing now, where I was just...
00:10:46
Speaker
I was inviting artists to come on and talk about their work and then I would show their work.
00:10:51
Speaker
This has always been part of your practice.
00:10:52
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:10:56
Speaker
And so I was editing, I was dubbing my own public access television show while I was at work, of course.
00:11:05
Speaker
And so I was like making copies of the part where me and my collaborator Jeanne Finley were introducing the videos
00:11:15
Speaker
So we were like on the kind of quintessential public access television set.
00:11:21
Speaker
There were probably two ferns involved.
00:11:23
Speaker
There were definitely some weird lights with like orange gels.
00:11:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:30
Speaker
And Matthew Barney walked in and he's like, are you the hostess of a television show?
00:11:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:38
Speaker
I was so like confused by the question because I'd never thought about it that way.
00:11:42
Speaker
Like I was just so, you know, it was always about like showing people's work or like curating this project or, um,
00:11:49
Speaker
you know, also just like doing this thing in between 20 other things.
00:11:52
Speaker
So I hadn't really thought about it that way.
00:11:54
Speaker
And I was just like, yeah, I am a host of some television show.
00:12:02
Speaker
That's funny.
00:12:03
Speaker
So you didn't convince him to be on though?
00:12:05
Speaker
No, I should have asked, but I chickened out.
00:12:12
Speaker
Did you see the work called Transfiguration on her website?
00:12:15
Speaker
I'm so excited to see somebody use that title.
00:12:19
Speaker
Since the beginning of when we started this podcast, he's been trying to work in Transfiguration questions into every... Not every, but... Well, you pulled back after I hassled you too much about it.
00:12:29
Speaker
So now there's an opportunity.
00:12:31
Speaker
But even my daughter, she had First Communion recently, and I was talking to her about the whole thing and how... I mean, I'm not Catholic anymore.
00:12:41
Speaker
um but the catholic church literally feels like the bread has become the body of christ like to the point where i wanted to take one and send it to a dna lab to have them i mean i think people have done that before but if they can prove that there's actually uh human dna in that that uh unleavened bread that's why they don't let you take it out of the church you can buy them off market
00:13:08
Speaker
You can smuggle it out under your tongue.
00:13:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:12
Speaker
I did see that.
00:13:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:14
Speaker
I was raised Catholic.
00:13:15
Speaker
Awesome.
00:13:16
Speaker
No longer Catholic.
00:13:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:20
Speaker
It's a really provocative notion.
00:13:26
Speaker
And I, you know,
00:13:28
Speaker
to your earlier question about interest in science.
00:13:32
Speaker
Um, I think that's part of it.
00:13:34
Speaker
I think that those notions of, um, the kind of magical transformation of bodily matter is, uh, is very intriguing and also very confusing to a child.
00:13:52
Speaker
Um, so, you know, I think that there's so much imagery in Catholicism and, um,
00:13:56
Speaker
religious art that is, uh, is a different way of, uh, kind of understanding the vulnerability of the body.
00:14:07
Speaker
And, and I think it's difficult to not relate that to medicine and science.
00:14:14
Speaker
And, uh, but yeah, I mean, and certainly in terms of science, the, the, um, possibilities for the transformation of not just the body, but of matter, um,
00:14:25
Speaker
And so, yeah, the host is one.
Magic, Illusion, and Virtual Realities
00:14:29
Speaker
And then what about the wine being the blood of Christ?
00:14:33
Speaker
I mean, what are we doing?
00:14:36
Speaker
We're drinking blood and eating flesh every Sunday.
00:14:41
Speaker
And we're all okay with that.
00:14:43
Speaker
Let's not even touch upon the fact that God is supposed to be the son and the Holy Spirit.
00:14:49
Speaker
Like, let's not even...
00:14:51
Speaker
I, yeah, I never got a good answer about that one.
00:14:54
Speaker
There is no good answer.
00:14:56
Speaker
It's magic.
00:14:57
Speaker
It's just magic.
00:14:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:58
Speaker
But I wanted to bring up this Arthur C. Clarke quote.
00:15:02
Speaker
He said that every sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
00:15:09
Speaker
Wait, read that again?
00:15:11
Speaker
Every sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
00:15:15
Speaker
So you do believe in transfiguration.
00:15:17
Speaker
You just think we haven't figured out how it works properly to say if the DNA is actually in that.
00:15:22
Speaker
That's the most reasonable solution.
00:15:25
Speaker
It's also interesting to, with so much immersive art and remote sensing technologies and interactive art,
00:15:40
Speaker
I often kind of think of that in relation to art as well.
00:15:45
Speaker
Like there is a real, um, I think that art is actually serving that role in many ways of providing a lot of magic.
00:15:54
Speaker
And, um, I think it's difficult sometimes to, uh, to make sure that your work isn't just a magic show.
00:16:05
Speaker
Like Oliver Eliasson.
00:16:06
Speaker
It can be challenging, you know, like you, you,
00:16:09
Speaker
I love magic.
00:16:10
Speaker
I really do.
00:16:11
Speaker
I love magic.
00:16:13
Speaker
I like magic shows, but I, yeah, I think it's tricky right now to, to kind of not let it just sit there as magic and, and, and negotiate that, that balance between, um,
00:16:32
Speaker
seducing the viewer, keeping their attention, and also making sure you're using the technology in a way that when we understand what the tools and technologies are, we still are interested, that it doesn't...
00:16:50
Speaker
completely pull back the curtain that there's still something else, uh, to, to discover.
00:16:57
Speaker
And that might be that other thing to discover might just be how you bring your own subjectivity to the piece and, and how it unfolds uniquely for you.
00:17:07
Speaker
And, um, and hopefully there's some sort of magic to be discovered there that the artists couldn't have possibly experienced.
00:17:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:17
Speaker
I mean, nobody's asking about like the technology of painting anymore, but it still has lots to offer viewers.
00:17:24
Speaker
Right.
00:17:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:26
Speaker
And I had heard someone say about, so about magic.
00:17:29
Speaker
So I said, let me show you what, let me show you what the thing is and let me show you what the thing is.
00:17:35
Speaker
And it isn't.
00:17:37
Speaker
And you question what else have I been wrong about?
00:17:40
Speaker
Hmm.
00:17:42
Speaker
That's a quote in relation to magic.
00:17:45
Speaker
Magic.
00:17:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:48
Speaker
I mean, I actually think that magic and illusion, visual, optical, cognitive illusions are extremely...
00:18:02
Speaker
relevant and like in need of new investigation and exploration.
00:18:08
Speaker
And I think that a lot of that is coming out of how artists are using the relationship or kind of like working creatively with the relationship between virtual and physical experiences.
00:18:20
Speaker
And I'm really interested to see
00:18:23
Speaker
if I can start to create some virtual experiences and, and I actually think that I'm already trying to do this, but, um, how virtual experiences can be used to, um,
00:18:39
Speaker
to challenge our understanding of physical space more and more and more.
00:18:43
Speaker
And not just in like an Easter egg way, but also in a way that relates to ideas of perception.
00:18:53
Speaker
And that, and that's kind of where my interest in illusions lies, like how we can sort of understand how we're perceiving physical space, its potential, its structure,
00:19:09
Speaker
in new ways that are informed by our experiences in virtual spaces.
00:19:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:18
Speaker
So you are working on some VR artworks or you have done them before?
00:19:22
Speaker
Yeah, no.
00:19:23
Speaker
That was going to be one of my questions.
00:19:24
Speaker
I'm actually, I'm just starting some work with virtual technologies that will probably be a VR headset type experience, but it will be...
00:19:44
Speaker
Um, very dependent upon and very related to a more conventional experience in a physical art space.
00:19:54
Speaker
Um, so I'm really interested to see how I can, uh, intricately entangle the two and make them, uh, make them rely on each other heavily.
00:20:08
Speaker
Um, so do you mean more of like a, like an augmented reality type thing?
00:20:12
Speaker
Where you're still engaging with the physical space or no?
00:20:15
Speaker
So I am more interested in having a VR experience that precedes a physical experience.
00:20:26
Speaker
Okay.
00:20:29
Speaker
And kind of teases out what I think of as the virtual residue of a virtual experience.
00:20:35
Speaker
Okay.
00:20:36
Speaker
And how those residues sort of surface as we move through physical space and we sort of understand that physical space or the objects within it in new ways that we wouldn't have that are completely informed by a virtual experience.
00:20:52
Speaker
But I also think that...
00:20:54
Speaker
A lot of work that I've already done is exploring this in different ways.
00:20:58
Speaker
So like the work I've done with network sculptures where there's either some sort of remote sensing happening or there's...
Artistic Experiments with Llama Materials
00:21:13
Speaker
some sort of rematerialization of something happening in virtual space.
00:21:18
Speaker
So I've done some network sculptures that were networked to Twitter activity where Twitter activity was activating these laboratory shakers.
00:21:28
Speaker
This was the llama feces, right?
00:21:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:33
Speaker
So, yeah.
00:21:34
Speaker
So that, that to me is also that kind of strange entanglement of what,
00:21:40
Speaker
what our actions in physical or in virtual space, um, how they get rematerialized in physical space, either through, um, government policies about scientific research or, um,
00:21:55
Speaker
you know, how we are relating to the materiality of the pharmaceutical drugs that we buy and how we understand its materiality.
00:22:05
Speaker
So, um, I already think that I'm doing this.
00:22:09
Speaker
I'm just really interested to do it in a more, um, uh, kind of choreographed way, um, that,
00:22:19
Speaker
Plays with all of the problems of virtual reality as material.
00:22:24
Speaker
The annoying experience of putting on a headset and the kind of limited time you can spend in it and playing with how to facilitate that in a performative way.
00:22:39
Speaker
That's the word I was looking for, performative.
00:22:42
Speaker
I can edit that in.
00:22:43
Speaker
Awesome.
00:22:47
Speaker
Just because we were talking about it, though, I did have a question about the Contested Territories piece.
00:22:54
Speaker
And maybe I didn't read far enough into it, but the significance of the llama, is that... Yeah.
00:22:59
Speaker
Is there... Or is it just because you like llamas?
00:23:02
Speaker
Oh, no.
00:23:02
Speaker
There's significance.
00:23:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:04
Speaker
Okay.
00:23:05
Speaker
No, it has to do with...
00:23:07
Speaker
extracting um is it dna for for for vaccines um it's blood blood yeah so back to blood um yeah so uh
00:23:20
Speaker
Llamas and alpacas are used to produce blood for biological products like vaccines and antiviral treatments, including the COVID vaccine, because they have unique antibody structures.
00:23:34
Speaker
So their antibodies can be engineered or processed to produce what are called nanobodies.
00:23:44
Speaker
And those nanobodies can be engineered in the laboratory more easily and have other logistical benefits.
00:23:56
Speaker
So I started working with some of the ideas around nanobodies in 2018 when I was doing this residency at
00:24:05
Speaker
a biotech lab.
00:24:07
Speaker
And part of the process of preparing non-human antibodies to be used in human pharmaceuticals is called humanization.
00:24:20
Speaker
So they have to humanize the non-human antibodies for human drugs.
00:24:25
Speaker
Does that mean putting them in front of Netflix for a couple of days?
00:24:30
Speaker
So I was really interested in that, you know, the language around this process.
00:24:35
Speaker
And I even was able to watch what's called a B cell collection where they receive a chicken leg and a test tube in the morning.
00:24:45
Speaker
That chicken's been slaughtered in the morning.
00:24:48
Speaker
And then they are able to scrape the B cells out of that chicken leg to start collecting antibodies from that cell.
00:24:58
Speaker
So many different non-human species are used for the production of biological products in general, but also for antibodies.
00:25:09
Speaker
And so they inoculate the animal with a target, and then that animal starts to produce a ton of antibodies that respond to that target.
00:25:17
Speaker
And that's what they're collecting from their blood or from their leg.
00:25:21
Speaker
And so...
00:25:24
Speaker
Through that curiosity, somehow I ended up with 200 pounds of fiber from laboratory llamas from a vivarium in western Pennsylvania that actually allowed me to come and visit and gave me a tour of their 600-acre farm where they have thousands of animals that are all producing biological products.
00:25:48
Speaker
Um, and so I, yeah, in the back, I can show it to you.
00:25:52
Speaker
I have 200 pounds of llama and alpaca fiber from laboratory animals that produce nanobodies for human drugs.
00:26:01
Speaker
And they just like, don't need the fibers.
00:26:04
Speaker
Cause they don't use them.
00:26:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:05
Speaker
They have to be their business model.
00:26:07
Speaker
Right.
00:26:08
Speaker
They have to be shorn every year and just seasonally.
00:26:13
Speaker
And, um, as far as I understand it, um,
00:26:16
Speaker
They don't keep it.
00:26:18
Speaker
Um, anyway, like using alpaca for, for, for knitting and stuff, right?
00:26:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:24
Speaker
And so there were two different laboratories that gave me their fiber.
00:26:28
Speaker
I got three very lovely separate bags of alpaca fiber.
00:26:34
Speaker
One was black, one was brown, and one was this really pretty champagne color.
00:26:38
Speaker
in separate bags, very clean.
00:26:40
Speaker
And then I got 200 pounds of llama fiber that was filthy.
00:26:46
Speaker
So I think the alpaca fiber could have been milled.
00:26:51
Speaker
Um, but the mills are picky about how clean the fiber has to be.
00:26:57
Speaker
Um,
00:26:59
Speaker
So I have been hand washing and carding all the fiber myself because I wouldn't be able to just take it to a mill.
00:27:08
Speaker
And anyway, they when I've been cleaning and carding the fiber because I wanted to spin it into yarn for some sculptures.
00:27:17
Speaker
I would often find llama feces in the fiber.
00:27:22
Speaker
And so I started collecting it and that feces became part of the material for this sculpture of networked laboratory shakers.
00:27:31
Speaker
And there are different shakers in the series that are displayed together.
00:27:37
Speaker
And each shaker is networked to different Twitter activity based on hashtags of specific words that were recommended by the Trump administration
00:27:47
Speaker
that scientists not use in their applications for scientific research and funding.
00:27:53
Speaker
And they include things like science-based and evidence-based.
00:27:59
Speaker
So when anybody tweets hashtag fetus or transgender or science-based or evidence-based, one of the shakers will shake the shit.
00:28:08
Speaker
Wow.
00:28:09
Speaker
That's funny.
00:28:11
Speaker
I'm glad I asked.
00:28:15
Speaker
For our audience.
00:28:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:21
Speaker
That's all mine, I think.
00:28:23
Speaker
I mean, I guess I'd like to.
00:28:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:26
Speaker
If we can just talk about the stuff you have out.
00:28:28
Speaker
Sure.
00:28:29
Speaker
Starting with the collages,
Laura's Exploration of Science and Art
00:28:32
Speaker
right?
00:28:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:32
Speaker
Because those are.
00:28:34
Speaker
Those are the trends.
00:28:35
Speaker
The earliest in this?
00:28:37
Speaker
Or are they?
00:28:38
Speaker
Actually, no.
00:28:41
Speaker
The lace doilies behind you are the earliest.
00:28:44
Speaker
Those are from 2004.
00:28:44
Speaker
Those are computerized machine embroidered lace.
00:28:49
Speaker
And each lace sculpture is based on a different virus structure.
00:28:55
Speaker
And one of them is SARS-1.
00:28:58
Speaker
That was amazing to me.
00:29:00
Speaker
This is probably how I've seen your work because people bring up your work.
00:29:04
Speaker
in relationship to the pandemic.
00:29:08
Speaker
But yeah, you were doing that very early.
00:29:11
Speaker
It had nothing to do, obviously, with... Yeah, I was already doing work around viruses and bacteria.
00:29:19
Speaker
And it was just part of this larger investigation of scientific and biomedical imagery in relation to culture.
00:29:31
Speaker
Kind of always trying to...
00:29:34
Speaker
connect the two, uh, connect how, um, our relationship to science and technology and medicine emerges in our daily lives and, um, and kind of playing with that.
00:29:51
Speaker
Uh, at that time I was doing a lot of work with like latch hooking and knitting and, um, um,
00:29:58
Speaker
I made a bunch of like oversized pharmaceutical drugs with latch hook as pillows.
00:30:04
Speaker
So there's like a giant Prozac and a giant Zoloft.
00:30:09
Speaker
And so I was, you know, thinking about how these objects could work.
00:30:19
Speaker
speculatively function in a domestic space.
00:30:23
Speaker
And so they're sort of initially recognizable as a doily, but there's something a little bit off about them.
00:30:32
Speaker
But they are actually pretty accurate.
00:30:36
Speaker
representations of illustrations of these different enveloped viruses like HIV and SARS and influenza and herpes and hepatina.
00:30:47
Speaker
And yeah, so those, those have kind of,
00:30:55
Speaker
had a new life emerge in the last couple years.
00:31:00
Speaker
And then the other, you mentioned the Transfigurations, but that's one of the series of collages here where I was actually looking at...
00:31:15
Speaker
Advertising in magazines for beauty products and health products and very meticulously cutting out things like splashes and drips and applicator tips for different products from magazines.
00:31:37
Speaker
And then reconfiguring them into these collages on like a white face.
00:31:42
Speaker
that are not recreating the advertisement.
00:31:45
Speaker
I'm actually like mixing all of these different elements that I cut out.
00:31:49
Speaker
But exploring these ideas of...
00:31:53
Speaker
you know, that are kind of embedded in the, in the advertisements, which is these, um, kind of promises of salvation or vitality or even transfiguration through, through these, these products.
00:32:11
Speaker
And so I was not only collecting, um, all of these pieces, um,
00:32:18
Speaker
And I've, I've made hundreds of these collages.
00:32:22
Speaker
Um, they're all hand cut.
00:32:23
Speaker
They're all hand cut.
00:32:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:25
Speaker
I mean, I love the hand and I mean, the hand isn't a lot of the earlier work where you just, it's in all the work, all the work, some of it more virtual.
00:32:37
Speaker
But specifically these hand cut objects.
00:32:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:40
Speaker
Yes, definitely.
00:32:41
Speaker
So these were very handy.
00:32:48
Speaker
Need a new word there, I guess.
00:32:50
Speaker
They were, yeah, I was cutting out these little pieces with an exacto knife and, and then gluing them onto paper.
00:33:00
Speaker
And, you know, I was really like just enamored of the color in them, but also the really absurd kind of pseudo-spiritual, pseudo-scientific diagrams and imagery in these
Digital Communication and Consumerism in Art
00:33:17
Speaker
advertisements.
00:33:17
Speaker
So...
00:33:18
Speaker
these kind of ecstatic splashes and like sensual drips.
00:33:22
Speaker
And then these like total bullshit diagrams of science that I'm just like, that's just a graph.
00:33:30
Speaker
Like there's no legend.
00:33:32
Speaker
It's just bars on a graph.
00:33:34
Speaker
Like, yeah.
00:33:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:35
Speaker
I mean, they're completely fabricated and they don't communicate anything.
00:33:40
Speaker
And so I just loved the kind of unabashed, like absurdity of these advertisements.
00:33:47
Speaker
And so I made all of these advertisements.
00:33:53
Speaker
collages and each one of them has a title that is pulled from actual language in the advertisements.
00:34:01
Speaker
So on my website, you can click on each one and see a title that alludes to all sorts of promises of salvation and enlightenment and vitality and eternal life.
00:34:15
Speaker
I have a friend who photographs these things.
00:34:18
Speaker
Oh yeah.
00:34:18
Speaker
And
00:34:21
Speaker
To see the aperture to make that happen, it's just like, it's garbage.
00:34:26
Speaker
It's unbeautiful.
00:34:29
Speaker
The most unbeautiful thing to make this.
00:34:31
Speaker
It's mostly a light box and then whatever the water or something.
00:34:36
Speaker
Or like powder.
00:34:38
Speaker
But everything around it is just detritus and just garbage.
00:34:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:44
Speaker
Obviously with editing and everything, it just makes it look good.
00:34:46
Speaker
And I loved like even the design, the kind of overly technologized design of the product applicators.
00:34:56
Speaker
So I was really just enamored of the forms that I was coming across.
00:34:59
Speaker
And then I started to make, and they're very like pristine.
00:35:04
Speaker
And, you know, to your point, there's like a disconnect between what goes into making these things and then what they are.
00:35:09
Speaker
And I kind of wanted to like explore that disconnect.
00:35:13
Speaker
So yeah.
00:35:14
Speaker
There's all these sensual splashes and kind of hygienic piles of powder and these over-technologized applicator tips.
00:35:24
Speaker
And so I started to make them out of hand-built ceramics with white clay, but they're made by hand.
00:35:32
Speaker
And I don't know how to make ceramics, so they're really kind of awkward and a little bit...
00:35:44
Speaker
So I like made some of the applicator tips as white.
00:35:48
Speaker
I couldn't tell what they were, but I like not knowing what they were.
00:35:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:52
Speaker
I mean, I was interested in like abstracting them as these kind of like nods to like minimalist art forms.
00:35:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:59
Speaker
In that one, the, where is it?
00:36:04
Speaker
This is a modular systems where you start putting them together and making these like, almost like machines out of like.
00:36:12
Speaker
Oh yeah.
00:36:12
Speaker
Right.
00:36:14
Speaker
Oh yeah.
00:36:16
Speaker
Is that in Greenpoint?
00:36:17
Speaker
That's right there.
00:36:18
Speaker
That's right.
00:36:19
Speaker
I didn't make that connection, but that's a really good modular system.
00:36:23
Speaker
It's like a retrospective of the hairdryer.
00:36:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:26
Speaker
I mean, I, um, yeah, I mean, I'm, I've always been fascinated by, uh, scientific and medical instrumentation.
00:36:35
Speaker
Um, and, and I think part of that comes from like my dad bringing home these like medical devices and implants and instruments and, um, and, um,
00:36:48
Speaker
Yeah, so I actually made a series called Modular Systems that I was constructing these speculative fictional instruments out of parts of everything from beauty products to perfume bottles to hair dryers.
00:37:09
Speaker
And they look kind of...
00:37:14
Speaker
Functional like they they look like they could be something, but they're not.
00:37:18
Speaker
Should talk to our the last interview was with an artist named Matthew Cronin, who pieced together these factory machines that into these like new machines that look like they do something, but they're completely fabricated.
00:37:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:33
Speaker
I was trying to like negotiate that line between it being.
00:37:39
Speaker
you know, an obvious fabrication, also kind of like an exquisite corpse.
00:37:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:44
Speaker
That's I definitely got that vibe.
00:37:46
Speaker
Which is a domain name that I have.
00:37:47
Speaker
I mean, there's a wonderful nod to, and a lot of your work to art history in the sense like those look like
00:37:57
Speaker
early 20th century paintings.
00:37:59
Speaker
People were fascinating with machines because they were just starting to see them more and more often because of the whole industrial revolution.
00:38:05
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:38:06
Speaker
I love that work.
00:38:07
Speaker
And I love the surrealism and the kind of many different forms and approaches that came out of that exquisite corpse tactic.
00:38:18
Speaker
And so actually part of this project is...
00:38:24
Speaker
I do have a domain name.
00:38:25
Speaker
I think it's exquisite hyphen corpse.com.
00:38:28
Speaker
I can't remember, but the real one's probably very expensive.
00:38:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:33
Speaker
And so on that, that is actually a, an infinite generative artwork where,
00:38:43
Speaker
I've taken real words from real beauty products, then the adjective, the gerund, and the noun, and made a generative artwork that's just constantly remixing those words into what sound like real beauty products.
00:38:58
Speaker
But it's just constantly shuffling the words into new... This is live now?
00:39:04
Speaker
I could go to it.
00:39:05
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:39:07
Speaker
Let's see if I can... You can actually get to it from the...
00:39:13
Speaker
I have to figure out how to spell exquisite.
00:39:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:16
Speaker
It's unspellable.
00:39:18
Speaker
It really is.
00:39:19
Speaker
Google's got me.
00:39:20
Speaker
You didn't see this one.
00:39:23
Speaker
Joe, I thought you liked these.
00:39:25
Speaker
The text pieces.
00:39:25
Speaker
That's poetic, the spontaneous narratives where you hand draw the text.
00:39:30
Speaker
Oh, right.
00:39:31
Speaker
Joseph has a project where he hand draws receipts.
00:39:35
Speaker
Oh, wow.
00:39:36
Speaker
They're just the receipt tracings from last year.
00:39:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:40
Speaker
This was similar.
00:39:41
Speaker
I was, I was in, I think it was June of 2010.
00:39:43
Speaker
I was getting the weirdest spam.
00:39:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:50
Speaker
And I just couldn't take it anymore.
00:39:52
Speaker
I was like, I have to do something with this.
00:39:54
Speaker
It's the weirdest spam.
00:39:55
Speaker
And the thing, I don't even know how, I think I finally, after this project, like I didn't want to solve the problem because I was like so enamored of the spam subject headings.
00:40:05
Speaker
But I think after I finished the project, I finally eradicated the problem.
00:40:09
Speaker
But until then, I was just collecting all the subject headings from the spam and also the date and time that I got it.
00:40:17
Speaker
And then I was like in the linear fashion building these little poems basically out of these kind of like poetic narratives that might emerge from three consecutive spam headings.
00:40:32
Speaker
And just kind of thinking about like what are the kind of –
00:40:35
Speaker
subliminal narratives that our brain puts together while we're reading these spam subject headings and how they kind of infiltrate our psyche.
00:40:47
Speaker
Sneak into our psyche.
00:40:48
Speaker
Yeah, like without us even knowing it.
00:40:51
Speaker
And so then I made an audio piece that was stringing them together.
00:40:56
Speaker
And then I also was hand drawing the little
00:41:02
Speaker
poetic configurations onto paper in a very convoluted way.
00:41:08
Speaker
You have such good instinct.
00:41:11
Speaker
I mean, this is exactly what you did here.
00:41:14
Speaker
I don't know what this data was until you explained it.
00:41:16
Speaker
I couldn't figure it out.
00:41:18
Speaker
I don't know how long it would take me to even conceive to figure it out, but it's like, it just, the fact that it's hand-drawn,
00:41:24
Speaker
Draws me in because it's very beautifully rendered.
00:41:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:28
Speaker
And then the data that you're using comes from this weird thing that I would never... We purposely don't want to think about it because spam is spam for a reason.
00:41:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:37
Speaker
But yeah, it's wonderful.
00:41:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:39
Speaker
And there's like lots of...
00:41:41
Speaker
kind of anxious undercurrent in them that is, you know, trying to sell you something.
00:41:46
Speaker
And so it's trying to either make you feel afraid or sick or less than.
00:41:55
Speaker
And so I was kind of playing with that and amplifying that.
Speculative Sculptures and Bodily Art
00:42:00
Speaker
those sensations, uh, but also, uh, sometimes just putting a wrench in the gear of their agenda at the end and like adding like the, have a nice day subject heading.
00:42:13
Speaker
I mean, whenever you can take something like that and turn it into something meaningful, it's a win.
00:42:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:21
Speaker
Uh, blood scarf.
00:42:24
Speaker
First of all, the title is fantastic.
00:42:28
Speaker
And then I can only imagine.
00:42:30
Speaker
So it is being filled when... This is more of a performative piece?
00:42:35
Speaker
It's a sculpture.
00:42:36
Speaker
Okay.
00:42:38
Speaker
And it's actually...
00:42:41
Speaker
It's a sculpture that was made for photographs.
00:42:44
Speaker
Okay.
00:42:45
Speaker
The, the work was always conceived of as photographs of a speculative or even revisionist medical, uh, artifact being, uh, depicted and even demonstrated in photographs.
00:43:02
Speaker
So I was doing, um, a series of, of,
00:43:06
Speaker
large, large format photography with like four by five and eight by 10 cameras that I was photographing different medical artifacts or devices being worn, uh, mostly worn.
00:43:19
Speaker
Um, but also I was making videos as well, like kind of demonstrate, demonstrating these like speculative surgical or medical situations.
00:43:29
Speaker
And, um,
00:43:30
Speaker
So one piece in the series is an exam gown that's hand knit out of water or a machine washable yarn.
00:43:41
Speaker
And so there's like a front and a back photograph, like life-size photographs of me wearing that.
00:43:48
Speaker
And then the blood scarf was actually part of a series of projects where I was knitting with clear vinyl tubing and
00:43:58
Speaker
different fluid through the vinyl tubing.
00:44:04
Speaker
And so it's this paradoxical device where it's filling the user's hand with an intravenous device, filling the user's, well, filling the scarf with the user's own blood through an intravenous device in their hand.
00:44:26
Speaker
And then the
00:44:27
Speaker
The tail of the scarf is open, so it eventually drains them of their blood, drop by drop.
00:44:35
Speaker
But it keeps them warm while it's doing that.
00:44:39
Speaker
It's a hypothetical piece.
00:44:40
Speaker
It's a speculative piece that it's a speculative device that is part of a series of speculative devices that I was making.
00:44:48
Speaker
Another one was called catheter bag cozy.
00:44:50
Speaker
That was a cozy that had blue liquid flowing through it that would sort of hide the urine in a catheter bag.
00:45:00
Speaker
And that also that was actually a sculpture in that was in the gallery, not in photographs.
00:45:07
Speaker
And
00:45:07
Speaker
it was continuously flowing blue liquid through this, uh, pumping blue liquid through this catheter bag cozy.
00:45:14
Speaker
And then the liquid was falling onto, um, this white kind of medical, uh, padding that had hand embroidery on it.
00:45:26
Speaker
Um, that said familiarity breeds contempt.
00:45:32
Speaker
I mean, talk about visceral, your use early on of literally using blood to draw blood as a medium, blood as an object.
00:45:45
Speaker
Can you talk a little bit about that?
00:45:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:51
Speaker
That's part of that work that became very object-oriented and intimately scaled and
00:45:57
Speaker
you know, that was probably pragmatic, um, on a certain level, but it also was, I had been doing a lot of work like the blood scarf, like the cat, you know, a lot of work that, um, was visceral or, um, conspicuously medical.
00:46:18
Speaker
Um, so like the blood scarf and the catheter bag cozy, um,
00:46:22
Speaker
the exam gown, photographs, and object.
00:46:25
Speaker
And so I was kind of interested in thinking about a way to make work that was still about the body and social constructions of the body, but without immediately representing the body in form.
00:46:43
Speaker
And so I thought that drawing with my own blood might be a good way to do that.
00:46:46
Speaker
I mean, the...
00:46:51
Speaker
Like with watercolors, you're able to get so many levels of contrast with it, surprisingly.
00:46:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:56
Speaker
It's very beautiful.
00:46:57
Speaker
Yeah, blood is a great medium.
00:47:00
Speaker
But it's also something that even there's people that even the word...
00:47:05
Speaker
Gets them to the point where they want to not be in the place where you're mentioning the thing.
00:47:10
Speaker
It's such a divisive term for a lot of people.
00:47:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:15
Speaker
I was making drawings where I was hand drawing lace with blood, where I was drawing each thread of a doily line by line with a very fine pen.
00:47:26
Speaker
So they're basically like little pieces of lace or entire doilies that are drawn with blood.
00:47:31
Speaker
And those drawings, I feel like most people can look at.
00:47:35
Speaker
Even once they find out it's blood, they can still continue to look at it.
00:47:39
Speaker
I did some other work where I was hand painting wallpaper with my own blood.
00:47:45
Speaker
And that work was a lot more challenging for a lot more people.
00:47:49
Speaker
Um, so once, you know, they could look at it and then once they realized it was blood, they, they couldn't look at it anymore.
00:47:55
Speaker
Also, what does that like, look like?
00:47:57
Speaker
Do you like, you like use, um, a syringe or something to like get blood out?
00:48:03
Speaker
Do you do that yourself?
00:48:04
Speaker
Do you have somebody help you?
00:48:05
Speaker
No, I was drawing all my own blood.
00:48:07
Speaker
Um, most of the time I was just for those very fine drawings, I was mostly doing very fine drawings and I would just collect it from my fingertips.
00:48:16
Speaker
Okay.
00:48:16
Speaker
It was just a little bit.
00:48:17
Speaker
So I would prick all 10 fingers and then collect that into heparin tubes, which, um, have an anticoagulant in them.
00:48:26
Speaker
And I would store it in my refrigerator so I could use it whenever I needed it.
00:48:29
Speaker
Um, but for the wallpaper, I did a piece where I, I made, um, an installation that had hand print hand block printed wallpaper, um, using my own blood and, and that required more blood that I collected with a butterfly needle.
00:48:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:47
Speaker
Wow.
00:48:48
Speaker
The one that's titled Incomplete Retrieval, where you say it's like a metaphor for the formation and degradation of memory.
00:48:55
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:48:55
Speaker
So I was drawing, part of the drawings of the textiles were,
00:49:01
Speaker
actually came out of a series of drawings I did of neuroanatomical structures and like these neurons and dendrites.
00:49:09
Speaker
And I was just really intrigued by the fragility of the forms and how that was sort of a metaphor for the fragility of the body.
00:49:17
Speaker
But I started to draw these doily forms with these kind of neurons.
00:49:25
Speaker
neuroanatomical dendrite structures.
00:49:30
Speaker
And, and thinking about doilies as like these nostalgic objects that are handed down from one generation to the next and thinking about the kinds of not just memories that are embedded in these objects, but also the expectations that come along with them and the kind of cultural like
00:49:52
Speaker
standards that are kind of embedded in like the assumption that you will have use for a doily in your home.
00:50:03
Speaker
And so I was, yeah, I was sort of thinking about the, um,
00:50:09
Speaker
the formation of memory and also of self.
00:50:14
Speaker
And so incomplete retrieval is a term from neuroscience and another one is elaborative encoding.
00:50:21
Speaker
So I think that piece is actually... Does that just mean that the data wasn't completely...
00:50:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:32
Speaker
And I was more intrigued by elaborating, elaborative encoding, which is a term to describe how, um, the formation of new memories is, um, reliant on, um, the, the simultaneous formation of memories or related knowledge.
00:50:53
Speaker
So, um,
00:50:56
Speaker
So how, you know, how we form a memory is not this like isolated phenomenon, it's contextual.
00:51:06
Speaker
And so I was really interested in that connection between these neuroanatomical forms and this kind of intricate lace materiality being interwoven.
00:51:24
Speaker
And so I was creating these drawings that were pieces of lace or doilies that were not completely tatted.
Emotions and Expressions Through Technology
00:51:36
Speaker
And at some point, instead of using the hand, you used data to create like the embodied objects where the data from the reading from... Oh, yeah.
00:51:49
Speaker
Actually creates the...
00:51:51
Speaker
the complicated weave-like structure.
00:51:54
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:51:57
Speaker
So that work really came out of the same sensibility where I thought that blood might be a good solution to kind of make work about the body without having an image of the body.
00:52:08
Speaker
For sure.
00:52:09
Speaker
And so I really kind of thought the same thing about data.
00:52:12
Speaker
I thought, oh, I could make work that is using data from the body, but the works themselves don't immediately
00:52:21
Speaker
as either visceral or corporeal or anatomical or medical, um, or even scientific.
00:52:29
Speaker
And, um, so really that work came out of the same, um, desire to, to see how, and if that could be done.
00:52:38
Speaker
And so I started, uh, collecting data from my own body, um, using a Arduino microcontroller to, um,
00:52:48
Speaker
to collect electromyography data, which was measuring changing levels of electricity in my muscles as I moved.
00:52:58
Speaker
And so I would perform bodily movements or even facial expressions to generate data sets.
00:53:04
Speaker
And then I would use those data sets to create computer generated
00:53:12
Speaker
Images or compute and then those computer generated images also became a series of weavings.
00:53:21
Speaker
And I also created some forms for sculptures for 3D printed sculptures.
00:53:27
Speaker
That's what that's what these are here.
00:53:29
Speaker
I love those, by the way.
00:53:31
Speaker
So those are.
00:53:33
Speaker
Those are a series of sculptures called Manifest, where I was invited to be in an exhibition at the Beale Center for Art and Technology called Objects of Wonder.
00:53:45
Speaker
And I wanted to make an object of wonder that was related to the
00:53:50
Speaker
corporeal experience of wonder.
00:53:52
Speaker
And so I was thinking about like scale and form and again, this kind of like white minimalist form that I was like previously trying to make by hand with ceramics.
00:54:06
Speaker
You know, kind of thinking about a similar scale, something that you could hold in your hand and sort of look at and then even more like start to compare it to other sculptures that were similar but different.
00:54:18
Speaker
And the reason they're different is because each sculpture in the series has a profile of.
00:54:25
Speaker
That is a waveform that is an electromyography measurement of a different facial expression as I performed an experience of wonder.
00:54:38
Speaker
So I would perform delight by smiling or perform confusion by furrowing my brow or perform, um, frustration by frowning, um, or surprise by gulping and like measuring my, I, the electrodes on my throat as I was swallowing.
00:55:02
Speaker
Um, and, uh,
00:55:05
Speaker
Oh, and then putting them on my eyes as I was blinking twice.
00:55:10
Speaker
That's what this one is.
00:55:11
Speaker
You can see the temporal quality of the... They're absolutely gorgeous.
00:55:15
Speaker
Thank you.
00:55:16
Speaker
Also, to me, they quoted the Italian futurist, the...
00:55:23
Speaker
Oh, yeah, yeah.
00:55:25
Speaker
So it has a wonderful art quote.
00:55:27
Speaker
It says it has everything.
00:55:29
Speaker
I like an art.
00:55:29
Speaker
It's just like the full Monty.
00:55:32
Speaker
But yeah, they're beautiful.
00:55:33
Speaker
Thank you.
00:55:33
Speaker
I have to think that they come from these gestures that you're...
00:55:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:37
Speaker
So I was really interested in like this, you know, notions we have about scientific data and biomedical imaging and their veracity and, and also thinking about the, you know, the kind of complexities of affective labor and how, like, what does it mean to measure a performed smile with a scientific process or instrument?
00:56:00
Speaker
And, um,
00:56:02
Speaker
So it's not a smile.
00:56:03
Speaker
It's a fake smile.
00:56:05
Speaker
Is that different than a real smile?
00:56:06
Speaker
Right.
00:56:08
Speaker
So I, yeah, so I was thinking about this experience of wonder and how our body expresses it.
00:56:13
Speaker
And then also thinking about, um, as early as Charles Darwin, um, people theorizing about, um, how our performance of emotion actually enhances emotion.
00:56:28
Speaker
The more you smile, the happier you will feel.
00:56:32
Speaker
And then the print, the digital images and the weavings came out of that same process.
00:56:39
Speaker
So with that work, I was just using, I was just basically writing a piece of software to generate a waveform.
00:56:47
Speaker
And then I would take that waveform into Rhino to make a 3D sculpture.
00:56:50
Speaker
And then with the recursive expression series, I was
00:56:55
Speaker
taking a measurement of squinting and then taking that data to create a computer-generated image that kind of looks like a fabric swatch.
00:57:07
Speaker
It's very thin lines that compel you to get very close to see the detail and maybe even squint to see the detail.
00:57:16
Speaker
Well, that one really stuck out to me because squinting is something that photographers and painters do often to judge contrast.
00:57:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:57:23
Speaker
Was that on purpose or just?
00:57:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:57:25
Speaker
I mean, my favorite thing to do when I go to an art gallery is to get this close to something and like look at like I. Without being yelled at by the guard?
00:57:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:57:33
Speaker
I mean, I can't look at any piece of art without putting my face like two inches in front of it.
00:57:38
Speaker
Squinting was the like best advice that an art teacher ever gave me was to squint.
00:57:43
Speaker
I like couldn't see light or shadow before I learned how to squint.
00:57:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:57:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:57:47
Speaker
I mean, that's interesting.
00:57:48
Speaker
I hadn't really thought about that connection to.
00:57:52
Speaker
squinting is something that shifts your perceptual understanding of what you're looking at.
00:57:58
Speaker
It closes off light.
00:57:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:57:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:57:59
Speaker
And it like removes surface.
00:58:02
Speaker
It removes everything except for light, light and shadow.
00:58:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:58:05
Speaker
I mean, I thought about it in terms of like, it's going to bring into focus these very fine lines.
00:58:11
Speaker
Um, and you'll be sort of as a viewer embodying the process that was used to create it and embodying the process that was used to generate the data.
00:58:19
Speaker
And then with that piece, um,
00:58:24
Speaker
It was a computer generated image.
00:58:25
Speaker
I wrote a program to repeat and rotate and colorize the waveforms over and over and over.
00:58:31
Speaker
So it created sort of a square image.
00:58:34
Speaker
And it looked like that.
00:58:38
Speaker
I mean, I was trying to create weavings.
00:58:39
Speaker
It looked I was trying to make a weaving like a woven drawing.
00:58:43
Speaker
They look like wearing.
00:58:44
Speaker
So I was already thinking about this with a textile sensibility, which I tend to think about everything with a textile sensibility.
00:58:51
Speaker
And so I wasn't really satisfied with the edges of the lines, just endings.
00:58:55
Speaker
So I took a, um, a stylus pen and teased out the manually teased out the ends of every, what I was thinking of as thread.
Conclusion and Future Discussions
00:59:06
Speaker
And, um, so there, which I would totally argue was done by hand.
00:59:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:13
Speaker
And then those quickly led to making actual weavings.
00:59:20
Speaker
So that's where the computerized Jaccard weavings came from.
00:59:24
Speaker
And one of those is called Undo.
00:59:31
Speaker
And it's made with data from my arm as I was unraveling another weaving.
00:59:40
Speaker
So I was...
00:59:41
Speaker
just, it was a pulling gesture.
00:59:44
Speaker
Um, so I was measuring the, the electricity in my arm muscles as I was doing that.
00:59:50
Speaker
And, um, and those, yeah, so those are like 50 by 70 inches.
00:59:58
Speaker
And, um, and then I'm working on some new weavings now, um, that are not done with electromyography.
01:00:08
Speaker
Well, Laura, thank you so much.
01:00:10
Speaker
for being so generous with your time.
01:00:12
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:13
Speaker
I have so many more questions.
01:00:15
Speaker
I wonder if you would be up for a part two sometime in the future.
01:00:17
Speaker
Sure.
01:00:18
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:18
Speaker
Then we can just maybe wrap up and maybe even have questions from audience people who listened to the first podcast.
01:00:26
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:26
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:27
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:27
Speaker
Awesome.
01:00:28
Speaker
Cool.
01:00:28
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:29
Speaker
Awesome.
01:00:30
Speaker
Well, thank you.
01:00:30
Speaker
Thanks for having me.
01:00:31
Speaker
Thanks.
01:00:38
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.
01:00:48
Speaker
You can learn more at lydianstater.co, find images at lydianstaternyc on Instagram, and follow us at lydianstater on Twitter.
01:00:55
Speaker
Thanks to Loris Bland for taking the time to speak to us this week.
01:00:58
Speaker
If you'd like to learn more about her work, visit our website at lauraspland.com.
01:01:02
Speaker
Big thanks to Tall Juan, who graciously provides our intro music.
01:01:06
Speaker
His albums are available at tallwan.bandcamp.com.
01:01:09
Speaker
And thank you to you, listener, for spending your valuable time with us.
01:01:14
Speaker
I don't know what to say.
01:01:15
Speaker
I just know I don't want to be like you.
01:01:17
Speaker
I don't know what to say.
01:01:19
Speaker
I just know I don't want to be like you.
01:01:21
Speaker
I don't know what to say.
01:01:22
Speaker
I just know I don't want to be like you.
01:01:33
Speaker
you