As our culture attempts to understand exciting new discoveries in the life sciences, artists have begun incorporating these concepts and the implications of this research into their work. They are re-interpreting scientific discoveries and addressing related ethical and moral issues in unique visual ways.
The visual artists chosen for this month's exhibition Human Nature I: The Natural World at Indiana University Bloomington's School of Fine Arts (SoFA) Gallery will examine our relationship to nature and current explorations in the life sciences. Their works will address ideas of the landscape, our shared humanity, environmental issues, health care and population, and incorporate cultural ideas about nature and our place within it.
“Because we are not informed as a culture about the transformations that are occurring in the scientific and commercial realm, it is difficult to make informed moral judgments about these new technologies,” says SoFA Gallery Director Betsy Stirratt. “Artists and scientists alike must determine exactly what is permissible in today's standards for the use and manipulation of these raw materials. Bioartists are using these materials to create works that are wholly new, and our current attitudes about these works will affect the fate of nature as an institution.”
More than 15 national and international artists and scientists will participate in Human Nature I , to be held at the SoFA Gallery from Oct. 20 to Nov. 18. The exhibition, which will feature examples of painting, sculpture, video projection and animation, sound works, and installation, is the first in a two-part series of exhibits and events to be presented in 2006 and 2007 at the contemporary art gallery. All events are free and open to the public.
The Human Nature project was supported by New Frontiers, New Perspectives and the College Arts and Humanities Initiative at IU and the Indiana Arts Commission. For more information, visit SoFA's Web site at http://sofa.fa.indiana.edu.
Perform.Media
While Human Nature explores our relationship to the body and nature through visual art, the Perform.Media festival and symposium, which is being held through Oct. 14 at IU Bloomington, offers a unique opportunity to explore artists' and researchers' interaction with new technology and media. A groundbreaking first for IU and the Midwest , it has brought together artists, directors, writers, composers, musicians, DJs, VJs, researchers and theorists and engaged them in discourse about the process of “performing” and “playing” in new media and technologies.
“New technologies and media demand an interdisciplinary approach, as well as enormous amounts of creative and research energy,” says Andrew Bucksbarg, an experimental interaction artist , assistant professor in the Department of Telecommunications at IUB and co-director of Perform.Media. He adds that the Perform.Media festival and symposium is designed to support “collisions as much as intersections and affirmations” between creative, cultural and scientific approaches to the activity of new media performing and technology.
The festival and symposium includes experiments in live audio-visual improvisations, interactive and game media, performance processes, mobile and locative works, mixed and virtual reality presentations, net.art, and other new media. It showcases more than 50 participants from around the globe, including several IU researchers from such diverse areas as the schools of Fine Arts, Informatics, and Health, Physical Education, and Recreation, and the Department of Telecommunications.
