InterfaCE
An ArtScience installation by
CLAIRE BEYNON & SAM BOWSER
This page shows a selection of pics of our InterfaCE installation, first shown on 2 May 2008 at The Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Saratoga Springs, NY.
InterfaCE in situ at the Tang Museum
In addition to this central ‘floating’ floor piece (a 10’ x 10’ composition comprising 127 drawings and Scanning Electron Microscope images mounted atop 127 glass laboratory beakers), we exhibited four easel-mounted works (composite drawings and SEM-s) and three glass-topped cabinets each one containing a different ‘micro mandala’ created out of raw science ingredients (preserved research specimens spun-coated in various metals, mounted first onto aluminium lab stubs, then set into perforated perspex discs).
For further pics and info. on the whys and wherefores of this work, please visit www.asci.org, http://web.mac.com/foramdude/iWeb/Site/Welcome.html or the ‘Background Process’ page on this website. Many thanks to the wonderful community of people* who have contributed towards the actualisation of this project…
Aerial view of the completed floor piece; each ring describes a different stage of our combined research & creative processes.
Looking back over the installation process…
Placing the first of 127 circular images
Laying down the first three, four, five rings…
… five, six, seven rings…
Pale white underbellies.
Light plays tricks on the eye
Micro mandala I (metal-spun specimens, aluminium stubs & perforated perspex discs)
One small component of the micro mandalas (plus lab tweezers to give an idea of scale)
‘Nothing is more humbling than to look with a strong magnifying glass at an insect so tiny that the naked eye sees only the barest speck and to discover that nevertheless it is sculpted and articulated and striped with the same care and imagination as a zebra. Apparently it does not occur to nature whether or not a creature is within our range of vision, and the suspicion arises that even the zebra was not designed for our benefit.’
-Rudolf Arnheim, psychologist and author (1904-2007)
Special thanks to JOHN WEBER, SUSI KERR, CHRIS KOBUSKI and staff of the Tang Museum. Also to DAVID DOMOZYCH and MARC TOSO of Skidmore College’s Biology Department, CYNTHIA PANNUCCI of Art & Science Collaborations Inc. (ASCI), JAN GALLIGAN, Renaissance man at Wadsworth Center, Albany, NY, ANN BOWSER, JACK & BARB HARRIS and DAN ROSEN. During my visits to NY, Kathy Cavanagh and Jim Hudspath's Inn on South Lake becomes a nest, a conference table, a drawing board and a hammock. Many thanks to you both for your support and hospitality
Thanks to my fabulous son TOMAS VAN AMMERS for his superlative patience and innovative web design, and to family and friends in Dunedin and further a-field for their belief in the projects I take on and for their unconditional support and acceptance.
Ongoing thanks to SAM for the particular challenges and rewards this collaborative undertaking has yielded; we continue to learn much about many things –
‘The end, we like to say, is also the beginning. We must each day face the page, undaunted by the endless possibilities of colour. This has always been the way; find the truths a parent cannot teach, the purpose and presence of chaos, the sense and nonsense of order…’ CB
