Art-Science Mystery

The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious—the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science.

— Albert Einstein The World As I See It (2006), 7.

Creativity in Art and Science

How often people speak of art and science as though they were two entirely different things, with no interconnection. An artist is emotional, they think, and uses only his intuition; he sees all at once and has no need of reason. A scientist is cold, they think, and uses only his reason; he argues carefully step by step, and needs no imagination. That is all wrong. The true artist is quite rational as well as imaginative and knows what he is doing; if he does not, his art suffers. The true scientist is quite imaginative as well as rational, and sometimes leaps to solutions where reason can follow only slowly; if he does not, his science suffers.

– Isaac Asimov
“Prometheus,” The Roving Mind (1983)

 

El Toro Wilderness: Art Ranch Residents

Sabana Field Station

Colorado Art Ranch and the Museum of Contemporary Art of San Juan selected the following artists to participate in the Aldo & Leonardo El Toro Wilderness Residency in Puerto Rico. Most of the artists will reside at the Sabana Field Station.

Jon Cohrs is a visual artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Often employing humor and absurdity, his work uses public engagement and site-specific interventions to address global issues. Recently, he created OMG I'm on .TV; an analog Pirate TV station that filled the void left behind by the digital transition. OMG TV was used as a reference in a Supreme Court amicus brief on creativity and copyright. He has taught at Parsons The New School for Design, SUNY Purchase in the Film + Media, and Colorado College. He has just completed a fellowship at Eyebeam Art + Technology Center and is currently working on a film about artificial flavoring and the New Jersey Meadowlands called the The Spice Trade Expedition. His work has been shown at Ars Electronica, FutureEverything, 2010 Vancouver Olympics, The Total Museum Korea, Art in General and discussed in numerous publications such as NY Times, Deutsche Welle, Neural Magazine, Make Magazine, Furtherfield, We Make Money Not Art, PSFK, and Gizmodo among others.

Grisha Coleman, Assistant Professor of Movement, Computation and Digital Media at the School of Arts, Media and Engineering and the School of Dance at Arizona State University is a dancer, composer and choreographer of live performance and experiential media systems. Her current project, echo::system, has been recently presented at the ArtxScience Festival in Los Angeles and the Triennial of  New Media Art at the National Art Museum in Beijing, China. She is the recipient of a 2012 National Endowment for the Arts in Media grant for the development of this work. An invited research fellow/artist-in-residence at Carnegie Mellon University as part of the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry [for transdisciplinary work across arts, sciences and technology], she was commissioned by the Robotics Institute at CMU to create a public, site-specific robot in downtown Pittsburgh. Reach! Robot worked as a public sound sculpture, a kinetic installation and a domain for public interaction and participation. Grisha is a graduate of the College of Letters at Wesleyan University, and received her MFA in Composition and Integrated Media from California Institute of the Arts. Grisha danced as a member of the acclaimed dance company URBAN BUSH WOMEN from 1990-1994. Subsequently, she founded the music performance group HOTMOUTH, which toured extensively nationally and internationally.

Dhara Rivera has developed her artistic work through a wide variety of formats and materials. She completed a Bachelor's Degree in Human Studies (1973) and Visual Art at the Pratt Institute in New York (1980). She completed her MFA from Hunter College and participated in the "Program for Young Artists" sponsored by the Whitney Museum, N.Y.C (1980-83). Her work has focused on the frontiers and fluid connections between the domestic and public, the persona; and social, the memory and present. For over eight years this view has turned to the relationship nature/individual/society, with a special emphasis on water in all its forms. From this body of work, other performing actions were derived in Dorado Beach East, Dorado, El Salto Community from Juanacatlán in Guadalajara, México and at the Quebrada Margarita in San Juan metropolitan area metro. The El proyecto Río y respiro, that was about Río Grande de Loíza, closed in December 2012 after a year of development. Dhara currently works as part of the faculty of the Escuela de Artes Plásticas of Puerto Rico.

Felix Rodriguez-Rosa holds a Bachelor's degree in Fine Arts with a major in Photography from the University of Puerto Rico. His works range from action-performance, intervention-installation to drawing, photography and video. Since March 2012 he joined PISO as documenter, improviser and collaborator. He is currently a Fellow at La Práctica 2012-2013, a post-academic study and production program in Beta-Local, San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Noemi Segarra lives and works in Puerto Rico. Noemí was a 2011-2012 Fellow at La  Práctica, Beta-Local's experimental studies and production program in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Segarra holds a BFA from Hunter College and an MFA from Temple University. Segarra has taught at Temple University, Bryn Mawr College, University of Puerto Rico and Inter Metro University. PISO proyecto is her current research project. Initiated in her home studio, PISO has been awarded a 2012-2013 Franklin Furnace Fund to bring the work to the South Bronx in 2013. Currently, PISO is activating a site in the remains of displaced community San Mateo de Cangrejos in Santurce, Puerto Rico. Segarra is committed to pushing artistic forms forward considering our inter-connectedness at an ample scale, while remaining grounded in local and everyday, informal contexts.

The twins, Jaime y Javier Suarez Berrocal, were born in Columbus, Ohio. In 2007 and 2008 they completed a Bachelor's Degree in plastic arts at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez Campus.  They received their Master Degrees in artistic production from the Universidad Politécnica of Valencia, specializing in public art. During their residency in Spain, they started investigating subjects related to minimal intervention in natural spaces, developing concepts and implementation strategies that were in equilibrium with the environment. Today they explore how, through artistic practices, they can rehabilitate ecosystems and, at the same time combine their artistic work with nature's biological processes. They both work in collaboration under a production manifest designated as Vientre Compartido (Shared Womb).

Aline Veillat currently lives and works in Basel. She has an MA and a PhD in Aesthetics, Sciences and Technologies of Arts from Paris 8 University and an MA in Digital Media from Lausanne Cantonal Art School. After a period of theoretical research mainly in art and phenomenology to question the spatial perception in the time of interactive new media, Aline started to work as an artist. Her works have been exhibited in various places in Basel, Zürich, Bern, as well as internationally in Shanghai, Miami and recently in Gent with a nominated work for the New Technological Art Award 2012. She was granted two artist-residencies in China and Canada by Pro-Helvétia and the Christoph Merian Foundation, and received grants for art work production from the Swiss Federal Office of Culture as well as from the cantons of Basel City and of Basel Land.

A Tribute to Leonard Shlain

By Peggy Lawless, Colorado Art Ranch Co-founder

I knew Leonard Shlain only briefly before his death in 2009, but his ideas are still alive with me. Len was the quintessential scientist-artist: a vascular surgeon, an elegant and engaging writer, and a big thinker who synthesized complex concepts and made them understandable. All that and he was humble and generous and big-hearted.

As with so many important events, I met him through a synchronicity. At Colorado Art Ranch’s first Artposium, an attendee, artist Keith Howard, recommended that Grant and I read Art & Physics and invite the author, Leonard Shlain to speak at a future Artposium. We did both. And Len graciously agreed to speak at the Trinidad, Colorado Artposium on May 15, 2009. But he couldn’t make it. Len died of brain cancer on May 11.

I haven’t stopped missing Len. I miss the books he would have written and the conversations we might have had.  I wish he were here to take part in Aldo & Leonardo, a collaboration of scientists and artists to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the Wilderness Act. I don’t know if Len loved wilderness, but I do know he’d love the energy and surprises that arise from mixing the creativity of artists and scientists. So, in loving memory of Len, I dedicate Colorado Art Ranch’s creative collaboration, Aldo & Leonardo, to Leonard Shlain.

Aldo & Leonardo: A Wilderness Science and Art Collaboration

By Grant Pound, Executive Director of Colorado Art Ranch

Colorado Art Ranch is collaborating with the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute on a project to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act.


The project, Aldo & Leonardo, is inspired by the scientific wisdom of Aldo Leopold and the artistic genius of Leonardo da Vinci. Our endeavor is an interdisciplinary collaboration of art and science designed to celebrate the lands, resources and opportunities protected by the Wilderness Act.

In 2013, we are hosting one-month residencies in six diverse wilderness areas. Artists will work alongside wildland research scientists and gain firsthand knowledge of the wonders, complexities and challenges of our nation's wildest places. The result will be a body of work that creatively illustrates the value of wild areas and honors the scientific efforts to preserve wilderness for the next fifty years.

 

 

Don't miss your chance to participate in this important project. Artists of all stripes (visual, literary, and performing) are encouraged to apply for one or more of the locations. Apply online.  

 

El Toro Wilderness, Puerto Rico, Rain Forest
March 1-30, 2013
It’s underway!  

Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge, Massachusetts, Saltwater
June 15-July 15, 2013

Artists have been selected.

John Muir Wilderness, California, Alpine

July 1-August 1, 2013
Application Deadline: April 15, 2013

TBD, Alaska, Glacier/Tundra

July 15-August 15, 2013
Application Deadline: April 15, 2013  

  

Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, Colorado, Desert

September 1-30, 2013
Application Deadline: May 1, 2013    

 

Boundary Waters Canoe Wilderness Area, Minnesota, Freshwater
September 15-October 15, 2013

Application Deadline: May 15, 2013