Sci-Art

SCi-ART

MiCRO-SCENT

Jianne Amante MA Interior Design 1

CONTENTS What is Sci-Art?

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DNA Speed Dating

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Drawing Across Spacetime

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Game Workshop

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Practice in field

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Do-torial

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Gallery visit at CFCCA

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Poet-orial

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Micro-scent Conclusion

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Sci-Art Exhibition Event

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Bibliography/References

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What is Sci-Art? Manchester Science Festival 2018

‘Distortion of Spacetime’ Science and Industry Museum 1830 Warehouse

A sensory exhibition that allows you to move freely and play with shapes as you experience the journey through the depths of space. Particles will mirror your movements in a spaghetti-like fashion as you move throughout space.

This exhibition allowed me to fully understand the concept of Science & Art and how they beautifully merge together to form a sensory display.

Actual ticket to ‘Distorion of Spacetime’.

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Top to bottom images taken from ‘Distortion of Spacetime’.

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What does Sci-Art mean to you?

DNA Speed Dating Sci-Art Week 1 John Dalton room 244

Jo Malone perfume The science of mixing oil, aroma compounds and solvents to produce an agreeable scent.

Geode rocks Geodes are identified as spiritual that contain healing properties.

They are hollow rocks lined with crystals naturally growing inside the rock.

A piece of computer data The internet i.e. social media platforms now hold a billion data from the majority of the world’s population.

This exercise was a fun introduction to the Options unit as a means of getting to know the fellow Postgraduate students. Each with an object that would represent themselves or one of their interests, put this on display as a means of interaction.

I brought in a bottle of fragrance (example shown above) as I was initially interested in the process of making natural botanical scent.

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Photographs to show ‘About me’ notes from DNA Speed dating.

Images on the left: not actual object images from DNA speed dating.

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Drawing Across Spacetime Sci-Art Week 2 The Box Studio, Chatham ‘Drawing across Spacetime’

In pure darkness, mark making/sketching to Dave Griffith’s story from the cosmic deep field to inner quantum scale.

Sketching in a pitch black studio was never going to be easy, but everybody was deeply engrossed into the cosmic journey and drawings started to take the abstract route.

Shortly, compiled, And then destroyed.

Some would say it is...

The Circle of life.

Photographs to show charcoal as the controlled medium and the process of creating a piece of art installation.

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Image taken after ‘Drawing across Spacetime’.

Using a controlled atmosphere, medium and paper, I found this exercise very useful to practice my drawing skills in preparation to my own creative process.

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Game Workshop Sci-Art Week 3 The Box Studio, Chatham

Jana Wendler Urban Geographer/Game designer

The concept of Game design/making raises fundamental questions about how mobility, atmosphere and space are understood in different cities. Jana Wendler’s response to Street games was developed when she moved to Manchester.

Here, she was able to observe urban spaces playfully and collaborate on playful experiences.

She enjoys producing games through creative objects such as cardboard, LEDs and MakeyMakeys.

Production of Downpour, Castlefield. https://www.playfuel.co.uk/

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Photograph to show an example of severe flooding in Leeds December 2016. https://www.independent.co.uk

Downpour!

Castlefield, Manchester

A collaboration between Playfuel and Oropendola Productions. The game was created to face the issues of flooding and climate change in the UK. Festival Installations For a captivating installation Jana advised to deeply think about the materiality, ease of access, time and space constraints. These aspects correspond to the audience target and image of the end product.

Time

The creative process = Process of translation

Resources

Jana Wendler’s use of materials and space in games design has inspired me to rigorously think about the creative process used for my own practice. The aim with Micro-scent is to define an audience and experience the discovery of visualising the invisible through a microscope.

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Willingness

Practice in field Sci-Art Week 4 John Dalton room 244 Dr. Jane Grant Artist/Writer

Dr. Jane Grant is an Associate Professor in Digital Arts at Plymouth University. She writes about fluctuating matters in history of astrophysics and neuroscience. Her research leads to award-winning collaborations such as The Fragmented Orchestra, where she collaborated with John Matthias, a physicist and musician.

The Fragmented Orchestra is a collaboration that explores the firing pattern of the human brain neurons across twenty-four public site locations in the UK via FACT in Liverpool. The creative process used a diversity of sound from the general public noise, chattering of birds and the chanting of sports from football stadiums. In this experiment, the public played both the artist and audience at the twenty-four locations, which creates an overall composition of the orchestra.

The structure for the Fragmented Orchestra (shown on the right) has inspired me to design Micro-scent’s front cover to show the connection between each microscopic scent produced.

Image on the right showing the twenty-four sites. http://www.thefragmentedorchestra.com/sites/ http://www.janegrant.org/bio/ 12

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Do-torial Sci-Art Week 5 John Dalton room 244 Equipment: A5 size paper Watercolour White candle Berol pen Paintbrush Water

Photographs to show the completed Wax paintings using white candle, watercolour, paper,diluted water and berol pen.

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Photographs to show my Do-torial process using wax painting.

Process 1.

Take a piece of paper and choose from the microscopic photographs provided and draw the cells on the paper using the white candle.

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Prepare your colours using the watercolour palette and dilute with water.

NOTE: Wax is a water repellent. Do not put too much paint otherwise this experiment will not work.

3.

Paint over a layer of wax and once this is dry, repeat. The more layers you paint the more wax drawings will appear.

I chose wax painting for my Do-torial because it is simple and it creates an interesting outcome. Wax is an ideal medium to use to create loose drawings as this is impermeable but in contrast, adding more water to your chosen palette will control the intensity of the colour. This method has allowed me to experiment with irrepressible materials in which I have applied to my own practice using acrylic paint and silicone oil. ‘Micro-scent’, the idea of microscopic scent represents the wax used in the process, it is barely visible on paper but when it is diluted with paint it is revealed.

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Do-torial Sci-Art Week 5 John Dalton room 244

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Photographs taken from Do-torial showing different creative processes and techniques.

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Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art Sci-Art Week 6 Manchester

Mandy Barker Hong Kong Soup Photographer Mandy Barker draws attention to the substantial waste and pollution in our oceans, commonly nicknamed as ‘soup’. From 2012-2015 Barker collected and categorised waste debris washed up around the seashore of Hong Kong.

These categories where relevant to the traditions and culture of the city, in turn, manipulating the images to produce an ironically beautiful composition.

Hong Kong Soup outlines the impact of the unsustainable issue around us. However, creating a visual representation of the debris into exquisite artwork has made people look at the waste in a different perspective that is beautiful.

In relation to my own practice, this artwork has drawn me to visualise the outcome of my project, in which I intended to inhabit from a nondesirable matter to a desirable piece of art.

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Hong Kong Soup www.mandy-barker.com

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Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art Sci-Art Week 6 Manchester

Charwei Tsai: Bulaubulao An artist from Taiwan accentuated how the community of an aboriginal village in Yilan, Taiwan has united modern practices of self-sustainability with the conservation of aboriginal tradition. Tsai often applies Buddhist traditions and concepts into her work as a metaphor to inform environmental concerns.

Driftwood found in the aftermath of a typhoon in Taiwan, with the buddhist text Heart Sutra engraved on, each describes a move towards the ‘shore of wisdom’.

Photographs taken from the gallery visit.

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‘We Came Whirling from Nothingness’ uses a similar approach, including a dispersed swirl of Buddhist text to evoke a contemplation of emptiness. The repeated spiral forms inhabit from the simplicity of water ripples to the spectacle of the galaxy.

Lanyu: Three stories(2012) deepens the relationship between nature, spirituality and ritual through traditional dance of the Lanyu Island Tao tribe. This short film highlights the movement of the community on climate change.

Through examining the revolving human perception found in the nature of scent, Tsai’s work, spirals and nature, metaphorically mimics the coherence of my own practice.

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Poet-orial Sci-Art Week 7 John Dalton room 244

From creative spaces to science, Reversing and binding potions, Augmented an inventive outcome, Grooves of eccentric colours and shapes mingle, Rigorously magnified glow that is blind to the naked eye, A deceiving transition to identify opposite ends, Now both visible and equally cherished, Coloured ink, scent and H2O, Evolution of perspective.

Writing poetry has helped define my understanding and interpretation of my own practice. This exercise has allowed me to unleash my inner poet and focus on the main aspect of the experiment.

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MiCRO-SCENT

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Micro-scent Conclusion

What is the importance of the olfactory sense in the behavior of humans and evolution? A study produced

by Synott (1993: page 183-184) found that ‘smell’ was the first of all five senses to be sacrificed and thought to be insignificant by the public. The olfactory system is an evolutionary sense used for smelling which uses a consistent sense that often induces simplistic feelings of nostalgia and emotions. It allows an individual to distinguish the moral aesthetic of good and bad, kin and non-kin, the safe and the dangerous, unlike the sufficient information present in vision and sound, which tend to differentiate between various objects and sound.

“While we may distinguish between smells with only twenty percent accuracy, we are able to remember these smells with almost the same degree of accuracy up to a year later.

In contrast with vision recognition shows an almost one hundred percent accuracy within minutes of the original test, but this accuracy rapidly falls off with time.” (Engen 1977: n.p)

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Nail polish remover resin + ink

Eye solution resin + ink

Super Dry aftershave resin + ink

Vodka resin + ink

Bleach resin + ink

Victoria’s Secret resin + ink

All of the above resin + ink 25

Micro-scent Conclusion

Given the conundrum of smell and the challenge it has presented to scientists, it is agreeable that nothing stinks but thinking makes it so. In a perceptive observation about odour avoidance and odour attraction, smell confuses categories and challenges boundaries by making people feel anxious of unidentified scent.

For example, “A skunk is a symbol of avoidance, whereas as a rose is a symbol of attraction. Upon encountering a skunk most persons carefully maintain distance and warn others nearby of potential contamination. On the other hand, if one smells a rose one is attracted toward it, and invites others to smell it and admire its aroma.”

(Jim Drobnick page 32).

In search of the invisible scent, I wanted to experiment with olfactory evolution, how people perceive certain scents and how they might react when combined with other solutions or liquids under a microscope. “Art does not reproduce the visible, rather it makes visible.” (Paul Klee page 116). This experiment will be utilised to visualise the invisible image of scent. Often an individual has too much focus on the visible world rather than attempting to make the invisible visible. From the sociological standpoint, olfactory indicators can be seen as an incentive during social interactions or business strategies. It can sometimes trace an individual’s elegance and complexity. However, products that contain strong chemicals and synthetic products such as bleach, oven cleaner and nail polish remover are deemed to produce an offensive stench.

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This is because the olfactory is a registering device rather than a productive one, it infallibly reveals and intensifies the smell.

Using sophisticated, synthetic odours and silicone oil to produce a series of art work that combines science and art together. Once mixed, I was able to unmask the evolutionary human behaviour of the invisible scent.

This experiment shows both desirable and non-desirable scents are equally appreciated and beautiful through a microscope which can create a series of unique artwork.

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Sci-Art Exhibition Event February 7, 2019 Geoffrey Manton Atrium As part of the Documentation team with YuSian Li, it was our duty to capture the motive and experience in each exhibition display. Exhibiting from 18:00 - 20:00 at the Geoffrey Manton Atrium with an audience of almost 300 people.

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Micro-scent Bibliography & References

Books: Drobnick, J., 2006. The Smell Culture Reader.

Oxford: Berg.

Ede, S., 2012. Art and Science. IB Tauris.

Miller, A.I., 2014. Colliding worlds: how cutting-edge science is redefining contemporary art. WW Norton & Company.

Synott, A,. 1993. The Body Social. Routledge.

Further resources - other media: The Smell Podcast. (2019). Episode 22 - Interview with Dr Federica Genovese from the Monell Center. [Podcast] Transmitted 22 January 2019.

Available at https://castbox.fm [Accessed: 24 January 2019].

The Girl who can’t smell show. (2018).

What is Anosmia? [Podcast]. Transmitted 31 December 2018. Available at: https://castbox.fm [Accessed: 25 January 2019].

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Visuals to show Micro-scent in Interior Design.

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