A great time was had with presentations by Jennifer Willet (School of Creative Arts, University of Windsor, Canada), Rich Pell (School of Art, Carnegie Mellon University, PA) and Joseph Paulsen (Department of Physics, Syracuse University).
Jennifer Willet Ph. D. (School of Creative Arts, University of Windsor, Canada)
INCUBATOR Lab: Re-imagining biotech futures through bio-art practices
INCUBATOR Lab is a bio-art research and teaching facility in the School of Creative Arts at the University of Windsor in Canada. Founded in 2009 by Dr. Jennifer Willet, INCUBATOR Lab houses ongoing student and faculty bio-art projects, and science and technology studies research, and special events investigating the intersection of biotechnology, art and ecology. In this presentation, Willet will introduce the audience to INCUBATOR facilities, research methods, and activities and highlight a few of her artworks produced within this research laboratory framework.
Dr. Jennifer Willet is an artist and a Canada Research Chair in Art, Science, and Ecology and an Associate Professor in the School of Creative Arts at the University of Windsor (Canada.) Willet is Director of INCUBATOR Lab an art/science research laboratory and studio in downtown Windsor. She is an internationally successful artist and curator in the emerging field of bio-art. Her work resides at the intersection of art and science and explores notions of representation, the body, ecologies, and interspecies interrelations in the biotechnological field.
Richard Pell (School of Art, Carnegie Mellon University, PA)
Richard Pell is Curator at the Center for PostNatural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Founded in 2010, the Center for PostNatural History collects organisms that have been intentionally and heritably altered by humans by means including selective breeding or genetic engineering.
The CPNH operates a permanent museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and produces traveling exhibitions that have appeared in science and art museums throughout Europe and the United States, including being the subject of a major exhibition at the Wellcome Collection in London. The CPNH has appeared in publications including National Geographic, Nature Magazine, American Scientist, Popular Science, New Scientist, The Guardian and Wired. The CPNH was awarded a Rockefeller New Media Fellowship, a Creative Capital fellowship, a Smithsonian artist research fellowship, and major financial support from Waag Society and the Kindle Project.
Joseph D. Paulsen Ph. D. (BioInspired Institute and Department of Physics, Syracuse University)
https://paulsengroup.wordpress.com/
We are all familiar with the wrinkled texture of a raisin or a candy wrapper. Studying the size and arrangement of wrinkles in controlled experiments on extremely thin plastic films can lend insight into these and other materials that wrinkle, from textiles to biological tissues to synthetic skins. My talk will discuss how we generate wrinkle patterns in the lab, and how we study them to uncover new physical principles.
Joseph has BAs in Mathematics and Physics from St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN, and a PhD in Physics from the University of Chicago. He won a National Science Foundation CAREER Award for his work that studies connections between geometry and mechanics in thin materials. A shameless plug: he is married to Jenna Paulsen who is a practicing landscape artist in Syracuse (jennapaulsen.com).
Recordings of our Bio-Art Mixers can be found here: https://bit.ly/2VwPeFl
The Bio-Art Mixer has been initiated by Heidi Hehnly, Ph.D. Biology, SU; Boryana Rossa Ph.D. Transmedia, SU in collaboration with Canary Lab.
Supported by CUSE seminar grant and Department of Transmedia, Syracuse University.
YouTube channel of the Bio-Art Mixer: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzSiw8w4xmNEhMb2W7xyvoQ
Also check out the article in SU News at: https://thecollege.syr.edu/news-all/news-2020/bio-art-mixer-where-art-and-sciences-meet/