By Joe Ferguson

Growing up in a rodeo town, I once imagined exhibition openings as exotic events where fashionable intellectuals gripping champagne flutes or craft beers stared intently at a painting to accurately decipher its contents. I live in San Francisco, so smartly dressed means vintage-looking designer sneakers, selvedge jeans, and any shirt or blouse purchased from a boutique. I did not study art history or fine arts, so understanding the particular idiosyncrasies of the art world took time. A knowledge of well known modern and contemporary masters, plus a few Clement Greenberg quotes will help you fit right in on opening night.

I was surprised the other night when I attended the opening for Nate Boyce’s Polyscroll exhibit at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Sure, there was the reception area that played out like the description above, but when I went into the gallery the tone of the evening drastically changed. Attendees were staring at video screens, not uttering a word—no one was even taking a selfie next to the sculptures.

By Joe Ferguson

In The Birth of the Clinic, philosopher Michel Foucault describes the development of what he called the medical gaze as the innovative way of looking at the human body wherein the physician was able to see beyond the visible flesh of a patient to the underlying structures of anatomy, physiology, and pathology. Physicians are still taught to uphold this process. From the minute they meet a patient, they observe and examine his or her body during the taking of the history, then the physical exam, and, frequently, diagnostic testing.

The idea of examining the form of the body to understand what is underneath is not new. This idea goes back at least to Galen--Hippocrates had other ideas--and was represented in its extreme in the practice of physiognomy, the idea that a person’s character or personality could be determined by outward appearance. From the Farnese Hercules to Rodin’s The Athlete, we have been, and remain, a culture obsessed with the body’s form. That perspective, however, has been unique to Western culture.

By Nekoro Gomes

The advent of technology and urbanization has relegated the winter season to white noise in our collective experience. Polar vortexes and arctic jet streams notwithstanding, most urban dwellers are generally able to file the four-month period away as an inconvenience to soldier through. With layers of clothing we venture outside equipped with a myriad of electronic distractions to battle the bitter cold.

For audio producers Josie Holtzman and Isaac Kestenbaum, the tactility of winter and the rituals of experiencing its simple pleasures lent themselves uniquely to audio, particularly through the medium of the guided soundwalk. The two combined their respective backgrounds in sound art and oral history to produce Winters Past, an audio project pondering how winter has changed through time. The project was conceived in 2012 and produced over the course of two years through a grant from the environment small grants program Invoking the Pause. 

By Joe Ferguson

There is a theory individuals are hardwired with a perceptual preference for either visual, auditory, or kinaesthetic learning. For instance, if you are visually-inclined you probably find it difficult to understand a lecture that lacks a slideshow or illustrations.

Research suggests that 60% of the population are visual learners. Science texts are peppered with illustrations because of this theory. Many of us have been moved by these science illustrations, but it may be difficult to qualify them as art. Illustration, by definition, is bound to a semiotic relationship with the viewer--it must communicate an idea visually. Art, on the other hand, is usually weighed on its aesthetic merits and may communicate a distinct message or be purely expressive.

As art critic Robert Hughes suggested, if art must provide us with a coherent experience that we cannot attain otherwise, and if some of us are hardwired to understand through a visual medium, it stands to reason that illustration would provide a way to understand an idea or data through experience. In other words, illustration can be art.

Enter Data Canvas: Sense Your City, a partnership between swissnex San Francisco, Lift, and Gray Area. The project collects data from a network of DIY environmental sensors built up around the world by citizens in seven cities--Bangalore, Boston, Geneva, Rio de Janeiro, San Francisco, Shanghai, and Singapore. The data streams online and is open for anyone to see and use--it can be viewed graphically or as raw data, whatever your preference. The different ways this data can be visualized has been put forward as the Data Art Challenge, which is accepting submissions through March 20th.

From the phase space of cancer, to ballooning spiders, to self-watering plants, and the limits of human attention, the breadth of science-based art grows wider every day as new scientific discoveries are being made and new problems arise.

For the first issue of this year, here at SciArt in America we are pleased to bring on board our new managing editor, Neel V. Patel. Headlining this February issue is his article on the growing movement of biology-based art. Under the larger umbrella of science-based art, bio art pushes art- world boundaries more often than any other movement today by confronting ethical and mandated standards on the use of living organisms, including one’s own body, as the medium and canvas.

Looking at the art of science from the latter point of view, we have the winning images of the BioScapes competition, an annual collection of microscopy photographs that celebrate beauty found in the laboratory. Alongside the plant-pigment paintings of Ellie Irons, the spiderweb drawings of Jim Toia, and the hermit crab homes by Elizabeth Demaray, there occurs a wonderful difficulty in distinguishing between the science and the art.

You can read the full issue online here, or by clicking the cover image above.

Thank you for your continued readership, and I hope you enjoy the issue! 

Sincerely, 
Julia Buntaine
Founder & Editor-in-Chief