This year’s invited juror, Judy Natal, has curated an exhibition highlighting photographic works from 12 national and international artists whose practices synthesize parallel lines of artistic and scientific research. Artifact presents pr works from an expanded field of photography and integrated media including prints, videos, and functional objects. Alternatives has achieved national recognition for its leadership in forging new definitions in the medium by emphasizing the work of photographers in the conceptual forefront of the practice, since its inception more than twenty-five years ago.
facebook.com/AlternativesOhioUniversity/ Catalog design, Daniel King
An international bienniel juried exhibition, presented by the MFA Photography + Integrated Media program and the School of Art + Design at Ohio Univerity On view from January 20 – February 21 at the Ohio University Art Gallery, 536 Seigfred Hall, Athens, Ohio
Photography + Integrated Media, School of Art + Design, Ohio University, 2015
“I believe that magic is art, and that art, whether that be music, writing, sculpture, or any other form, is literally magic. Art is, like magic, the science of manipulating symbols, words or images, to achieve changes in consciousness… Indeed to cast a spell is simply to spell, to manipulate words, to change people’s consciousness, and this is why I believe people that an artist is the closest thing in the contemporary world to a shaman.”
Alan Moore Graphic novelist, writer, cartoonist, screenwriter, musician, magician
+VSPS 4UBUFNFOU Artists, like scientists, have always been magicians. Both science and art were born out of ideas of magic that encouraged new developments in philosophy, science, religion, and art. Photography has always had more than a bit of magic to it. Photographers can be alchemists, clowns, time travellers, tricksters, visual archaeologists, anthropologists, geologists, biologists, environmentalists and ecologists, all potentially as expansive as the universe itself. Biotechnology, cosmology, quantum physics, and beyond, we move Biotechnolog backward and forward in time, our imaging systems like magic wands, facilitating how we visualize space. Using such tools as the camera obscura and camera lucida, the microscope and the telescope, surveillance camera and drone, artist-scientists prepare a place where the visible and the invisible merge. Artists, like scientists, test out hypotheses with rigorous research and empirical knowledge. Artists often combine a dash of daydreaming, musings in the shower, and staring off into a space where the intuitive, the emotional, the visceral, and the logical make strange but wonderful bed-fellows. Universal systems of order and chaos so beautifully coexisting together. Since Leonardo Da Vinci, artists have been scrutinizing the world through the eyes of scientists. Now more than ever, our comprehension of the universe explodes way beyond what meets the eye. Intersections of art and science have created both a powerful historical and contemporary equation that continues to stimulate imaginations by developing new technologies while reimagining old ones. The artists in this exhibition explore microscopic visions and telescopic horizons of the universe to portray uniquely personal insights and aspirations. Myriad strategies of visualizing, abstracting, imagining, pretending, inventing, and story telling portray their wonderment and curiosity about the world with poetic succinctness in order to examine our place in it, and what it means to be human. ~ Judy Natal, 2015
(Above) Introverted Simultaneous Panorama Camera v.2 Neal Cox, 2011 - Paper, Davey board, book cloth, string (Below) Vertebrae Animation #4 Neal Cox, 2013 - Video loop
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Camera design and construction rests at the foundation of my practice as a printmaker. Originally, building a large camera was the quickest way to generate a contact scale negative for use in alternative processes. What began as a matter of convenience grew into a complex practice incorporating multiple disciplines ranging from a study of geometry to the use of anamorphic and even animated imagery. Over the past decade, I have made two series of cameras: the first includes several cameras based on the five plutonic solids, or regular polyhedra. These geometric solids, defined as volumes contained by the connection of an even and identical set of equilateral polygons (triangles, squares, or pentagons) provide multiple symmetrical angles and non-standard non-standa film planes from which to construct a system of modular cameras. When exposed and developed, the resulting images from any given camera yield a set of possible 2-dimensional compositions reflective of the design of the camera. The second series includes five cameras that shoot either an “extroverted” (facing out) or “introverted” (facing in) linear panorama.
Originally from Provo, Utah, Neal Cox graduated with a BFA in art from Brigham Young University. After receiving an MFA from the University of Texas at San Antonio, Cox accepted a professorship at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas, where he currently resides.
Ixodes Scapularis Marcus Desieno, 2013 Archival Pigment Print from Dry Plate Gelatin Ferrotype
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“Parasites” is an ongoing body of photographic work investigating a history of scientific exploration through images of parasitic animals taken with a scanning electron microscope and then exposed onto dry plate gelatin ferrotype plates. The ferrotype plates are scanned and printed large for these abject animals to confront the viewer at a one-on-one scale. Photography and science have had an intrinsic relationship since its’ invention in 1839. It did not take William Henry Fox Talbot long before he was using his calotype process to capture what was under the lens of his microscope. The indexical nature of photography has pushed the reaches of science ever forward into the 21st century. These technologies allow us to peer in to the unexamined corners of the natural world reminding us that the universe around us is much greater than ourselves. In this realm of scientific curiosity, photography has a intriguing relationship with the invisible, allowing us to see the world that we cannot.
Marcus DeSieno is a photographer from Albany, New York whose work is concerned with the history of science and exploration in relation to the history of photography. photograph He received a BA in Photography from Marlboro College and is currently pursuing an MFA in Studio Art from the University of South Florida, expected to graduate in 2015.
30ยบ28'28.67"N, 91ยบ12'36.19"W (Port Allen) AnnieLaurie Erickson, 2013 Pigment print
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My artistic practice focuses on generating alternate modes of representation by isolating and exposing various aspects of sensory perception, using photography to create images outside the spectrum of human vision. This series, titled Slow Light, addresses the phenomenon of afterimages – the latent imagery that remains on our retinas after we look at the sun or at bright objects in the dark. Using handmade artificial retinas that register the remains of light, I am able to simulate an essentially unphotographable visual experience. Afterimages have a transgressive quality that appeals to me. They appear when we use our eyes in ways that we shouldn’t - by staring at something too bright or holding our gaze for too long. Soon after I started to photograph them, I was stopped by the police and told that refineries are indeed “unphotographable” according to post-9/11 regulations. Keeping a low profile, I began to systematically document refineries up and down the Mississippi River, using the afterimaging camera to render them as ghostly, mysterious constellations of light marked by unearthly color shifts.
AnnieLaurie Erickson earned her BFA in photography from the Rhode Island School of Design and her MFA in photography from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is currently an Assistant Professor and the Director of Photography in the Newcomb Art Department at Tulane University.
Bathroom Rug, August 2nd (Carpet Beetle Larvae) Daniel Kariko, 2012 Archival Inkjet Pigment Print
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Insects find a way into our homes no matter how vigilant we are in our effort to keep nature on the outside of our windowpanes. During my investigation of the suburban experience, I started recording the indoor wildlife consistent with the environment my subdivision occupies. Insects represent almost 85% of all known animal species. Taxonomists name and describe about 2000 species of insects annually. Unfortunately, many species of insects will become extinct before they are even discovered, due to habitat loss and other environmental problems. This project investigates the results of our habitat’s expansion into rural areas. Images are meant to be portraits of our often-overlooked housemates. The “portraits” are a composites of a number of exposures with a scanning electron microscope and a stereoscopic microscope. I carefully arrange the LED lighting, small reflectors, and diffusers, in order to achieve a portrait-like effect inspired by the tradition of 17th Century Dutch masters.
Daniel Kariko received his Bachelor of Arts degree at Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, Louisiana and his Masters of Fine Arts from Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona in studio arts with a concentration in photography. Kariko started working at ECU in 2010, after 8 years of teaching at Florida State University in Tallahassee, FL. Kariko’s images investigate environmental and political aspects of landscape, use of land and cultural interpretation of inhabited space.
Cosmological Processes - Atheism Liz Lee, 2014 Van dyke over pigment print
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Cosmological Processes was created to explore whether thinkers and theologians have come any closer to answering the most basic questions of existence as posed in Thomas Berry’s 1978 article “A New Story”. Berry observed how humans are in between stories – creation stories of the world’s religions and the scientific story of the evolution of the universe. The Cosmological Processes P series is a photographic body of work designed to inspire a new and closer relationship with the Universe in a period of growing environmental and social crisis.
Liz Lee is a Professor of Photography in the Department of Visual Arts and New Media at the State University of New York at Fredonia. She received a BFA in Studio Art from the University of Calgary in Calgary, Alberta Canada in 1990 and a MFA M in Photography from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 1996. Prior to her appointment in SUNY she was an Assistant Professor at Missouri State University. Liz’s work has appeared in numerous national and international exhibitions that encourage the audience to explore the point at which photography and technology, art and science, merge.
Insecure Security Lin JingJing, 2013 Photography
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Art is the thinking that artists reach through their individual experiences. It is a question the artist raises to the self and to the world. We don’t have to understand our lives or even ourselves, but people must seek out the way in which their lives come together. By discussing experience, apparently valuable thinking and content that embodies that thought can finally exist independently of the individual. I hope that my artwork can raise issues through paradox and dislocation methods, seeking out the real power of the self’s internal yearnings from the artificial interior of the artwork.
Lin Jingjing did graduate studies at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1994-96, is an artist living and working in Bejing, China. Her work is in the collection of the National Art Museum of China, Beijing; the Ivam Museum, Valencia, Spain; the National Museum of Fine Art, Santiago, Chile; and the Museum of the nation, Lima, Peru.
Two still frames from The Platonic Drip Luke Shaw, 2013 Video loop, metronome
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The Platonic Drip was conceived to bear some similarity to the demonstrations of my physics professors, who would occasionally begin lecture by illustrating, in real life, some relevant and magical property of matter, magnetism, momentum, or whatever. The solid, colorful shapes you see are the Platonic Solids, which Plato theorized to be, in some physio-mathematical sense, the building blocks of the universe. They are constructed out of molded, frozen Jell-O, a material that is similar to the agarose gel used in petri dishes and is “Alive.� As the solids near complete liquidation, subtle breakdowns in the image frame reveal themselves and a gloved hand facilitates the destruction of the central pyramid. A ticking metronome adds an auditory indication of real time met and space, slicing the displayed entropic processes into one-second intervals and punctuating the sensoria of viewers with a standardized, mathematical rhythm.
Luke Shaw is a conceptual artist currently living and working in Baltimore, MD. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in Neuroscience from the University of Rochester in 2010 and a Master of Fine Arts degree in Imaging Arts from f Rochester Institute of Technology in 2013.
In Space (3) Maya Smira, 2014 Digital print mounted on plexiglass
.BZB 4NJSB The majority of my inspiration stems from my traveling around the world and constant exploration of new spaces. I'm a multidisciplinary artist and I use time based media, photography and installation, usually in simple, abstract and formal ways. My work has multiple different sides, each representing a different di aspect of my interest. All co-exist in my mind, although they cannot always live together in the same space. Being from Israel, one facet of my work is politicly-driven, challenging issues of war, borders, and living under a constant state of emergency. Another line of my work deals with philosophical questions about human nature, body, time and technology. It sometimes challenges dominant concepts within the art-historical canon. Another one of my interests is derived by my personal life and experience, family history, and the way it reflects my national story.
Maya Smira was born and raised in Haifa, Israel, in the mountains close to the sea. She was always engaged with social ideas through the use of photography, video, dance and varied forms of art. After her military service, she travelled the world, exploring cultures and places in the Far East, Latin America and Europe. Eu Later she worked as a photographer and artist in independent art & film productions. In 2012, Maya obtained a BA in Arts and Humanities and a BFA in photography in Tel-Aviv. Recently she completed the MFA program in the New Genres department at the San Francisco Art Institute. Maya has exhibited in both the United States, Israel, and in Europe.
Tech School 2 Jennifer Tremblay, 2014 Large Format Photography
+FOOJGFS . 5SFNCMBZ Blacks Run is a small stream that has its beginnings in Harrisonburg, Virginia. It runs only a short distance before colliding with Cooks Creek, then quickly joining the North River, and eventually flowing out to sea. It is also one of the most polluted waterways in Virginia and runs, coincidentally, mere feet from my studio. I began this project p with an obsessive need to document, collect, study, and understand this neglected and abused waterway. Much like the medium of photography, I am steeped in a tradition of science and document, my first degree being in Biology. By soaking my negatives in water from the polluted stream, I allow the stream to have its own action on the negatives, rather than simply being acted upon by the photographic gaze. These destroyed negatives, their emulsion eaten away by the water, also serves as a way to document pollution that moves away from numbers and statistics and into a more visceral way of knowing.
Jennifer M Tremblay is a photographer who views science and art as two different ways of exploring and understanding the world. She received a BA in Biology from f the University of Vermont, a BFA from Keene State College, and is currently pursuing her MFA in Studio Art at James Madison University.
Housing Development Construction Site Justin Ward, 2014 Archival Inkjet Print
+VTUJO 8BSE Housing Development Construction Site is from my project Unmanned Landscapes, which explores the ways in which current unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), or drone, technology can be utilized to visualize and interpret the land in new ways. Utilizing methods of image capture common in map making and archeological research, I fly and photograph from a small camera drone to capture aerial views of the southern landscape. I collect numerous small images while flying my drone over the land and combine them to form large-scale works in an artistic process akin to painting or collage artists. For this piece, I used the drone as a mark-making tool. The piece gains its brush stroke like appearance due to the flight path I flew the drone in. When re-constructing the individual photographs taken while flying, the image takes on the shape of the path I flew the drone in while photographing. The construction site subject matches the mark-making theme due to the marks on the land from the construction machinery.
Justin Ward is an MFA student at the Savannah College of Art and Design. His BA in digital art is from SUNY Oneonta and MA in art education is from Teachers College, Columbia University in New York. He has previously taught high school art, photography and graphic design for five years in Manhattan.
Beez II Angela Wells, 2014 Chromoskedasic sabatier
"OHFMB 8FMMT The works in Seeing Light are visual accounts of my investigations with seeing rather than looking. I live in the country surrounded by farmland. This is a relatively new experience for me. I find myself mesmerized by the little gifts that show up on my porch or in my yard. Artifacts of life that are ever present but often overlooked. I began collecting these treasures t and taking a much closer look at them. The images reflect this inspection; the pause in the hustle of the daily grind to stop and see the wasp. Chromoskedasic is Greek for “color by light scattering”. The Chromoskedasic Sabatier printing method produces a full spectrum of colors through chemical and light reaction. The process is difficult to control or reproduce and I’ve found it to be liberating in that it encourages play and experimentation. By combining these two elements, I am able to craft a unique print that expresses the wonder and delight of seeing the little things, making art, and adding levity to my creative practice.
Angela Franks Wells is a photography-based artist who specializes in 19th century photographic processes and is a master at copperplate photogravure. Her work explores explo a range of ideas including the precious vs. ephemera; labor and craftsmanship; beauty; and place and/or space. Angela was born and raised in California and learned the value of craft and hard work from her parents: a machinist and a mechanic. In 2000, she received her BA in Studio Art and Psychology from Scripps College, CA. In 2006, Angela received her MFA from Arizona State University. Currently, Angela is an Assistant Professor of Photography at East Carolina University in Greenville, NC.
This year’s invited juror, Judy Natal, has curated an exhibition highlighting photographic works from 12 national and international artists whose practices synthesize parallel lines of artistic and scientific research. Artifact presents pr works from an expanded field of photography and integrated media including prints, videos, and functional objects. Alternatives has achieved national recognition for its leadership in forging new definitions in the medium by emphasizing the work of photographers in the conceptual forefront of the practice, since its inception more than twenty-five years ago.
Human Remains 111 Jinyoung Yoon, 2012 Digital C Print Catalog design, Daniel King
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Photography + Integrated Media, School of Art + Design, Ohio University, 2015
EXHIBITION WORKS
NEAL COX
DANIEL KARIKO
• Introverted Simultaneous
• Window Screen, August 1st, (Cuckoo Wasp) Archival Inkjet Pigment Print, 2013
Panorama Camera v.2 Paper, Davey board, book cloth, string, 2011 • Vertebrae Animation #4 Video loop, 2013 • Extended Cube Camera Davey board, Book Cloth, Tin 2013 • Between Art & Housing Gum Bichromate over Cyanotype from Pinhole Negative, 2013 ANNIELAURIE ERICKSON • 30º28'28.73"N, 91º12'40.55"W (Port Allen) Pigment print, 2013 • 30º28'28.67"N, 91º12'36.19"W (Port Allen) Pigment print, 2013 MARCUS DESIENO • Hirudo Medicinalis Archival Pigment Print from Dry Plate Gelatin Ferrotype, 2013 Edition 1 of 5 • Taenia Solium Archival Pigment Print from Dry Plate Gelatin Ferrotype, 2014 Edition 1 of 5 • Ixodes Scapularis Archival Pigment Print from Dry Plate Gelatin Ferrotype, 2013 Edition 1 of 5
• Bathroom Rug, August 2nd, (Carpet Beetle Larvae) Archival Inkjet Pigment Print, 2012 • Back Yard Pathway, July 17th, (Golden Paper Wasp) Archival inkjet Pigment Print, 2013 LIZ LEE • Cosmological Processes - Humanism Van dyke over pigment print, 2014 • Cosmological Processes P - Atheism Van dyke over pigment print, 2014 • Cosmological Processes - Buddhism Van dyke over pigment print, 2014 • Cosmological Processes - Taoism Van dyke over pigment print, 2014 LIN JINGJING • Insecure Insecu security Photography, 2013 • All I Need is Sunshine Sunshine Sunshine 2 Photography, 2014 LUKE SHAW • The Platonic Drip Video loop, metronome, 2013 MAYA SMIRA • In Space (3) Digital print mounted on plexiglass, 2014
SPECIAL THANKS JENNIFER TREMBLAY • Tech School 2 Large Format Photography, 2014 • Tech School 3 Large Format Photography, 2014 • Tech School 6 Large Format Photography, 2014 La JUSTIN WARD • Housing Development Construction Site Archival Inkjet Print, 2014 ANGELA WELLS • Beez II Chromoskedasic sabatier, 2014 Ch • Dark Moth I Chromoskedasic sabatier, 2014 • Star Crossed Lovers III Chromoskedasic sabatier, 2014 • Vacancy I Chromoskedasic sabatier, 2013 JINYOUNG YOON • HR111 Artist grown fungi Color Print, 2012 • CR125 Artist grown fungi Color Print, 2012 • HR107 Artist grown fungi Color Print, 2012
The 2015 Alternatives exhibition was organized by Ian Campbell, Amber Hoy, Daniel King, and Joshua Raftery. We would like to collectively recognize a few individuals without whom this exhibition could not have issued forth out of the darkness. Special thanks to our juror Judy Natal for her willingness to dedicate the time and efforts necessary for this collaborative process. View Natal’s work here: www.judynatal.com Tip-of-the-hat to our Professor Laura Larson, chair of the Photography + Integrated Media Department at Ohio University, for guidance in the planning process. Without her steady hand this ship may have come unmoored unmoo long ago. Petra Kralickova, Curator at the Kennedy Museum of Art, for resource guidance and technical support. We really appreciate your help in bringing world class art to Ohio University.
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