Scientific Delirium Madness 5.0: Gallery

Color | Space | Time
Barbara H. Berrie

Art and Science—often presented as separate ways of seeing—are more aligned than is generally credited. I saw this for myself at Scientific Delirium Madness. There was plenty of thinking—hard, deep, broad thinking—and a great deal of doing. I came expecting to read and to write a bit. Instead, I found myself swept into the act of making.

I made a tower of blocks using elements from two color worlds: the apparently separate color worlds of the artist and the scientist. Cyan, magenta, yellow—the colors that cannot be made by mixing others on the painters’ palettes. Red, blue and green—the perceived responses to EM radiation that combine to make “white,” that light around us, the invisible energy that reveals the color and form of the world of things to us through our eyes.

Barbara H. Berrie, Maquette, wood, acrylic paint, 5.5 × 5.5 × 22.5 in, June–July 2018.

(© Barbara H. Berrie)

I included artists’ quotes on the color blocks: They are reactions to immaterial color, mainly, not so much to the colorant. However, the struggle to transcend the materiality of color appears to occur, in apparent contradiction, by mastering its physicality—such as in paint. Inspired by Scientific Delirium Madness, I aim to write more about my personal reactions to art and science. For the time being, I’ll focus on the things of color, which delight my eye and hand.

Misinterpreting Landscape
Alan Bogana

From the vantage point of the Djerassi residency, the ocean appears and disappears constantly, blending in with the sky, the clouds and the fog. This “blurring” of the horizon, the indiscernibility of the surrounding elements, was very fascinating to me and became a subject of passionate discussion among fellow residents.

Image from the untitled simulations, 2018.

(© Alan Bogana)

Photo still of Turbulent Drifts, 2018.

(© Alan Bogana)

Being on the West Coast of the United States for the first time, I started to imagine how this unique environment must have inspired artists of the “Light and Space” and “Finish Fetish” art movements that originated in California in the 1960s. Their use of translucent materials has long been an inspiration for my work.

In my art practice I’ve been exploring not only the unique ways in which computer graphic simulations relate to reality and the perceived environment but also how they can unveil an extended mimesis of nature.

In April 2018 I projected a video work onto the facade of the Grand Palais in Paris. It consisted of site-specific digital simulations made with computational fluid dynamics software. I used the architectural features of this Art Nouveau building as boundaries and obstacles within which digital fluids, based on air and water, flowed. As the simulations and fluids drifted, vortices emerged that were rendered visible on the facade.

At Djerassi I continued this body of research by developing a new series of simulations that would arbitrarily interpret schematics of the mesmerizing coastal landscape in order to generate new digital landscapes. Although the colors of the Djerassi simulations had a quantificational function, I use them in a figurative manner, inspired more by computer blindness than computer vision. While remaining in the realm of the digital, these abstract images invite the viewer to imagine their own unforgettable landscape.

Hybrid Reconfigurations
Sarah Rosalena Brady

My art-science work supports a manifesto to make robust biological, cultural, political and technological recompositions to reveal power dynamics within cultures, languages and systems. My research at Djerassi explored object transformation using machine learning, digital fabrication and ceramics to make hybrids. Hybrids combine binaries of human/posthuman, self/other, ancient/modern and biological/technological.

Letter 4, earthenware, recurrent neural network, 2018.

(© Sarah Rosalena Brady)

Letter 5...