Carnegie Mellon University has expanded beyond the entertainment industry in its Los Angeles presence with the opening of "Intimate Science," a traveling exhibition by the award-winning Pittsburgh-based Miller Gallery.
Guest-curated by Andrea Grover, the exhibition features international artists working at the intersection of art, science and technology — one of the hallmarks of the university.
The Williamson Gallery at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif., is the latest institution to host the exhibit. "Intimate Science" previously was on display at art galleries in San Francisco and Hartford, Conn., after its premiere at CMU's Pittsburgh campus. Additional stops include university galleries in Lafayette, La., and New York City. More information is available at the Miller Gallery's website.
"We were thrilled to open 'Intimate Science' at the Williamson Gallery at the Art Center — to have the opportunity to bring the gallery's work to Los Angeles, to be seen by a wider audience and have a larger impact," said Astria Suparak, director and curator of the Miller Gallery.
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| Pure Culture: Ganoderma lucidum fungus, Philip Ross, 2000. Image courtesy of Carnegie Mellon University |
The exhibit has drawn visitors from fields as diverse as art, science, math, psychology, medicine, drama, architecture, music and education.
"This exhibition, in line with our programming focus at the Miller Gallery and with Carnegie Mellon's vision to meet the changing needs of society by building on its traditions of innovation, problem solving and interdisciplinarity, is timely, thought-provoking and builds connections between seemingly disparate fields," Suparak said.
"Intimate Science" examines how networked communication and open-source culture have contributed to the shift from artists "aiding" science to artists "doing" science and the impact this imparts on the way scientific knowledge is acquired, used and disseminated.
Visitors to the exhibit will see:
- BCL (Tokyo) genetically modified, cut flowers are bio-hacked back into living plants with the intention of creating an "open source" population of these flowers.
- Center for PostNatural History (Pittsburgh) a singular natural history museum spearheaded by CMU School of Art faculty member Richard Pell concerned with "PostNatural" varieties of life, i.e., transgenic organisms that have been altered by humankind via biological tampering.
- Markus Kayser (London) sustainable micromanufacturing taken to the extreme, including a 3D printer that uses solar power to transform sand in the Sahara into glass forms, and a low tech 'laser cutter' that makes objects by focusing sunlight into a powerful beam.
- Allison Kudla (Seattle) combines computer fabrication technologies and plant tissue culturing to make living installations.
- Machine Project (Los Angeles) is a community event space dedicated to making specialized knowledge and technology accessible to artists and the general public.
- Philip Ross (San Francisco) works in the realm of "biotechniques." He makes sculptural and architectural works from plants and fungi, and videos about micro-organisms.
The publication, New Art/Science Affinities (2011), accompanies the exhibition and features more than 60 international artists and collaboratives including many CMU faculty and alumni.
Grover was the 2010 Andy Warhol Foundation Curatorial Research Fellow at CMU's Miller Gallery and The Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry.
