How do artists and scientists think about systems, interconnectedness, and networks in similar and different ways? How can artists and scientists collaborate to increase the visibility of ecological systems?
The panelists in Making in Systems visualize, translate, and study systems and networks through living sculpture, recycled materials, coded environments, and hydrology mapping. They materially and conceptually engage with systems of water, historical exploitation of people and landscape, and recycling, as well as the collapse of systems.
Visualizing river networks and systems allows Paola Passalacqua to understand the development and evolution of these landscapes. In Christopher Lin's Earth to Earth (Dust to Dust), earthworms reconstitute decaying organic material such as currency and symbolic flowers into fertile soil. As the currency is consumed, seeds germinating from this composted material sprout webbed networks of roots hinting at regeneration and regrowth in this visualized future. Everest Pipkin's Worm Room is a first-person greenhouse exploration game. As you wander through an endless series of glasshouses populated by generative plants sourced from public-domain botanical illustrations, one is faced with the idea that in the future this web-based plant room might be the only way to interact with various species. In Hannah Chalew's Embodied Emissions, paper made of plastic and sugarcane, with ink made from oak galls and shells, creates a complex image examining the legacies of exploitation of people and landscape from the time of colonization and plantations into our current petrochemical age.
Research, art, knowledge, understanding, and change are all nodes in a complex system.
In this age of environmental collapse, artists and scientists are uniquely capable of harnessing anxiety into data and imagery. Science analyzes systems at their source, disseminating information that artists can filter and reprocess. Data can be remixed, visualized, and translated into sculpture/code/painting to change our awareness of the interconnectedness of systems. Networks theory, for example, is an interdisciplinary tool that can be used to consider a wide range of systems: ecological, biological, coastal, social, and internet. Visualizing patterns helps us understand them.
PANELISTS
Everest Pipkin is a writer, game developer and software artist from Central Texas whose work follows themes of ecology, information theory, and system collapse. As an artist and as a theorist, they fundamentally believe in the liberatory capacity of care; care not as an abstract emotion but rather as a powerful force that motivates collective work towards a better world.
They hold a BFA from University of Texas at Austin, an MFA from Carnegie Mellon University, and live and work in southern New Mexico. They have shown and spoken at The Design Museum of London, The Texas Biennial, The XXI Triennale of Milan, The Photographers Gallery of London, Center for Land Use Interpretation, and other spaces. When not at the computer in the heat of the day, you can find them in the hills spending time with their neighbors— both human and non-human.
Hannah Chalew is an artist, educator and environmental activist raised and currently working in New Orleans. Her artwork explores what it means to live in a time of global warming with a collective uncertain future, and specifically what that means for those of us living in Southern Louisiana. Her practice explores the historical legacies that got us here to help imagine new possibilities for a livable future. She received her BA from Brandeis University in 2009, and her MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2016. Chalew has exhibited widely around New Orleans and has shown around the country at the Laumeier Sculpture Park, St. Louis, MO; Wave Hill Public Garden and Cultural Center, Bronx, NY; Minnesota Center for the Book Arts, Minneapolis, MN; Dieu Donné, New York, NY; Asheville Museum of Art, Asheville, NC, and other venues. Her work is held in the collections of the City of New Orleans and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art.
Christopher Lin is a Brooklyn-based artist and educator with a background in research science. Fueled by a lifelong obsession with fossils, his experimental installations, sculptures, and performances question the world we inhabit and envision the one we will leave behind.
After receiving a BA from Yale University and an MFA from Hunter College, Lin was awarded the C12 Emerging Artist Fellowship in 2016. He has shown work and performed throughout New York City, including at: SVA Curatorial Practice, ABC No Rio, Recess Art, Flux Factory and the Queens Museum. He was a 2020 fellow in the Bronx Museum AIM Emerging Artist Fellowship and in 2022 he will be a Winter Workspace Resident Artist at Wave Hill. He currently teaches undergraduates at Hunter College and is co-director of the research-based artist collective, Sprechgesang Institute.
Paola Passalacqua is an Assistant Professor of Environmental and Water Resources Engineering in the Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Department at the University of Texas at Austin. She graduated summa cum laude from the University of Genoa, Italy, with a BS (2002) in Environmental Engineering, and received a MS (2005) and a PhD (2009) in Civil Engineering from the University of Minnesota. Her research interests include network and deltaic systems, lidar and satellite imagery analysis, multi-scale analysis of hydrological processes, and quantitative analysis and modeling of landscape forming processes. At the University of Texas at Austin, she teaches undergraduate courses in Hydraulics and Hydrology, and a graduate course in Stochastic Hydrology. Dr. Passalacqua has been honored with the National Science Foundation CAREER Award (2014) and several teaching awards including the Dean's Award for Outstanding Teaching by an Assistant Professor (2015) and the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors (AEESP) Award for Outstanding Teaching in Environmental Engineering and Science (2016).
MODERATOR
Heather Houser is a Professor of English at The University of Texas at Austin and teaches and writes about the environment, science, and 21st-century US culture. Her books are Infowhelm: Environmental Art & Literature in an Age of Data (Columbia, 2020) and Ecosickness in Contemporary U.S. Fiction: Environment and Affect (Columbia 2014), and her articles have appeared in a variety of academic journals and public venues. She is a co-founder of Planet Texas 2050 and served as Chair of the Organizing Committee in 2019-2020.
Event Details
Virtual