Feb 14, 2012 |
MORPHONANO, an innovative nanotechnology art exhibition
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(Nanowerk News) MORPHONANO marks a decade of an artistic collaboration (2002-2012) of media artist
Victoria Vesna and nanoscientist James Gimzewski. Their work is focused on the idea of
change and consciousness at the intersection of space-time and embodiment. Participants
interact with the works in mindful ways resulting in rich visual and sonic experiences within a
meditative space. By reversing the scale of nanotechnology to the realm of human
experience, the artist and scientist create a sublime reversal of space-time.
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ZERO@WAVEFUNCTION plays with the idea of scale and molecular manipulation from a distance with the participant changing the structures of the buckyballs with their shadows, a real time interactive metaphor of the scanning tunneling microscope (STM).
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Victoria Vesna is a media artist and Professor at the Department of Design | Media Arts at the
UCLA School of the Arts and director of the UCLA Art|Sci center. Currently she is Visiting
Professor at Art, Media + Technology, Parsons the New School for Design in New York and a
senior researcher at IMéRA – Institut Méditerranéen de Recherches Avancées in Marseille,
France. Her work can be defined as experimental creative research that resides between
disciplines and technologies. She explores how communication technologies affect collective
behavior and how perceptions of identity shift in relation to scientific innovation. Her most
recent experiential installations -- Blue Morph, Water Bowls, Hox Zodiac, all aim to raise
consciousness around environmental issues natural and human-animal relations. Other earlier
notable works are Bodies INCorporated, Datamining Bodies, n0time and Cellular
Trans_Actions.
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James Gimzewski FRS is a distinguished Professor in the Dept. of Chemistry and
Biochemistry at UCLA. He is director of Pico and Nano core laboratory at the California
NanoSynstems Institute (CNSI). He is also scientific director of the Art | Sci center and a senior
fellow of IMéRA. He is a satellite co-director and PI of materials nanoarchitectonics at the
National Institute of Material Science in Tsukuba, Japan. Until February 2001, he was a group
leader at the IBM Zurich Labs, where he was involved in Nanoscale science since 1983. He
pioneered research on electrical contact with single atoms and molecules, light emission and
molecular imaging using STM. His accomplishments include the first STM-manipulation of
molecules at room temperature, the realization of molecular abacus using buckyballs, the
discovery of single molecule rotors and the development of nanomechanical sensors based on
nanotechnology, which explore the ultimate limits of sensitivity and measurement. He is a
fellow of the Royal Society.
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List of works
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BLUE MORPH is an interactive installation that uses nanoscale images combined with sounds
derived from the microscopic undulations of a chrysalis during the period of its metamorphosis
into a butterfly recorded using nanotechnology. The work is designed to be responsive to
minute, subtle, mindful movements of the participant creating a rich visual and sonic
experience of morphing. Most is revealed in complete stillness.
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NANOMANDALA is a video projected onto a disk of sand, 8 feet in diameter. Visitors can
touch the sand as images are projected in evolving scale from the molecular structure of a
single grain of sand - achieved my means of photography, optical and scanning electron
microscopy (SEM) - to the recognizable image of the complete mandala, and then back again.
The original Chakrasamvara mandala was created by monks of the Ghaden Lhopa Khangsten
monastery. Patience will allow experiencing the whole.
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ZERO@WAVEFUNCTION plays with the idea of scale and molecular manipulation from a
distance with the participant changing the structures of the buckyballs with their shadows, a
real time interactive metaphor of the scanning tunneling microscope (STM).
Slow motion makes change happen.
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BRAIN STORMING: SOUNDS OF THINKING a premier of a work of self organization in
progress focusing on scale invariant and the brain using biometric data. A number of brain
storming sessions with cutting neuroscientists, nanotechnologists, philosophers and monks will
take place throughout the exhibition.
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In many ways the works in this exhibition reverse the scale of nanotechnology to a visible
realm and time in nano scale creating a sublime reversal of space-time.
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MORPHONANO will be on view at the Beall Center from February 2, 2012 – May 6, 2012.
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