Into the Crucible of a Collaboration

Into the Crucibles of Nature
In what was 2009, the year of Astronomy, a unique partnership was formed between artist Fiorella Lavado and Scientist cum Author Arthur I. Miller to facilitate an exploration of the cosmos like never before. In concert with the Benaki Museum of Athens for the purpose of the exhibition, Into the Crucibles of Nature, Fiorella, with direction from Arthur have created a unique collection of art that recreates the science of the universe.

Fiorella’s weavings work particularly well with black holes. They contain a stillness that is unsettling which evokes a cautiousness to their exploration as the viewer. Likewise wormholes and nebulas which also feature are still very unknown quantities but there is reason to be very cautious about their exploration also, which is captured marvellously in these weavings.

Jaws of Darkness | Ultra Fine Wire Weave | Fiorella Lavado | Photography Noel Mclaughlin

DomeLab 2010

Western Australia's 'destination cinema' and 'full screen format' expertise swelled over the weekend with the arrival of the worlds leading full dome cinema production experts for the Domelab 2010 experience.

By combining a select group of experts and an experimental and risk-taking over finished-product approach, Domelab hopes to foster an environment where attendees can focus on the production of new skills, techniques and tools for creating more immersive cinematic full dome experiences.

Explanation iDome options by Paul Bourke

Dreamy Science Experiments with Art

Since Aristotle first claimed that "a person awakes from sleep when digestion is complete", the act of shut eye has been a very misunderstood phenomenon. It took Sigmund Freud arching back to ancient Egyptian and Greek times who believed dreams could be interpreted to reveal hidden meaning to revolutionalise our thoughts on sleep.

However since the 1970s our old ideas have begun to crumble in the face of harder scientific theories. Thus the question begs, should we shed our earlier notions and put our trust in the new regime? Is hard science the only way forward? Does imagination, invention and art not get to play a role?

Somnolence Structures | Copyright Lisa Carrie Goldberg

Painting With E. Coli

In the expanding space of scientific methods meets artistic endeavour comes another hybrid of human creation by the name of Growing Impressions: A scientific technique used to grow art.

Blue/white screening is a technique used to seperate and identify colony's of cells who's Chromosomal DNA have or have not been modified by introduced DNA. If the bacteria remain unmodified by the introduced DNA, they will turn blue as they continue to grow, like in the following photos. However, in Growing Impressions, you wont see any white E. Coli. These Ecoli have been produced especially to produce the blue pigment.

Amy Chase Gulden | E. Coli on Agar | Copyright Amy Chase Gulden

Art and the Atom

I came across a news release recently, via Google news and discovered that in Christchurch, New Zealand, there is an interesting exhibition merging nanotechnology and art.

The exhibition is a collaboration between the University of Canterbury and the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Material and Nanotechnology that aims to bring scientists and artists together in order to communicate a brilliant 21st century technology to the public.

Nanotechnology is the engineering of materials the size of 1 billionth of a meter. When materials are built at such a small scale and of variant sizes, different properties, that which don't appear in it's chemical makeup at macro sizes spring forward, often surprising the scientists at work: Nano silver is completely anti-bacterial, carbon nano tubes are execellent conductors of electricity.

The MacDiarmid Institute donated $2000 dollars to be awarded to the best nanotechnology picture of the exhibition.

David Garret | Towers of Vertically Aligned Nano Tubes

Khemia: Living Alchemy Exhibition & Workshops - Part 2 - Exhibition Run Down

The artists featured in this article were profiled in Khemia: Living Alchemy Exhibition & Workshops - Part I - Artists Introduction

Enter the world of Khemia, where separate and disparate things fuse to make the new and art and science are not as seperate as you might think.

Three artists: Niki Sperou, Angela Valamanesh & John Willanski.

Chimera - Niki Sperou
The centre piece of the exhibition, Chimera aims to drive a merger of biotechnology, material manipulations and ancient Greek cultural paradigms, using art as it's vehicle.

Niki Sperou | Chimera | Wall Mounted Photos

Khemia: Living Alchemy Exhibition & Workshops - Part I - Artists Introduction

Khemia is an exhibition celebrating the nexus of science and art through the talents of some of South Australia's established and up and coming artists.

Angela Valamanesh
Angela is a well known South Australian arist known for her striking yet simple and inspiring work with ceramics. Graduating from the University of SA in 1993 before continuing her studies in the Glasgow School of Art, Scotland, curtosy of the Anne & Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship, Angela has since been established herself as an expert in her field.

Angela's work fits right in with theme of the exhibition, that being biological life forms as a lot of Angela's previous work has focussed on exactly that.