LASER Talks in New York City

Art Today: New Growth, New Form at Pratt Manhattan Gallery

Zoom Panel, moderated by Ellen K. Levy & Patricia Olynyk, with science writer Philip Ball, chemist Bart Kahr, artist Ursula Endlicher

About this event

The Zoom Panel Art Today: New Growth, New Form at Pratt Manhattan Gallery will take place February 15, 6 PM, EST. Find your timezone Nick Battis, director of Exhibitions, Pratt Institute will introduce the moderator's Ellen K. Levy and Patricia Olynyk, co-directors of the NY LASER. Organized in conjunction with the Pratt Manhattan Gallery exhibition From Forces to Forms (curated by Ellen K. Levy and coming spring 2022), the panel includes science writer, Philip Ball, chemist, Bart Kahr, and international artist, Ursula Endlicher who will explore several themes that recur in the exhibition including patterns in nature, emergence, complex systems, and relationships between the animate and inanimate.

Zoom link to be emailed to registered participants ahead of the event upon registration on Eventbrite!

The panel will raise several questions such as: How do artists tap powerful yet unseen forces through emergence? What patterns of nature might new technologies help us to visualize? How might artists intersect the virtual and real worlds in ways that illuminate both? Can art help us affect needed environmental change through identifying patterns of behavior? How can art address the quantum world?

The artists and designers in From Forces to Forms will explore the nature of form by engaging with potent forces and processes of nature. By investigating how physical laws shape living and nonliving forms alike — ideas first proposed by D’Arcy Thompson in his classic tome, On Growth and Form (1917) — the exhibition explores universal principles of form development while delving into the flux and perturbations that characterize life today.

More information on the exhibition and participating artists can be found on our website: https://www.pratt.edu/the-institute/exhibitions/pratt-manhattan-gallery/

Image: "From Forces to Forms," installation view, Pratt Manhattan Gallery. Photo by Jason Mandella Photography

Speaker Bios:

PHILIP BALL is a freelance writer and broadcaster and worked previously for over 20 years as an editor for "Nature." He has authored many books on the interactions of the sciences, the arts, and the wider culture. Philip is a presenter of Science Stories, the BBC Radio 4 series on the history of science. He trained as a chemist at the University of Oxford, and as a physicist at the University of Bristol.

NICK BATTIS, director of Exhibitions, Pratt Institute, has been involved in organizing and curating exhibitions for over 32 years. He has coordinated numerous exhibitions of fine arts, architecture, and design in Pratt’s Manhattan and Brooklyn galleries. He has also had _solo exhibitions of his paintings in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. His vision for the Pratt Manhattan Gallery includes the themes of sustainability, social responsibility, and cross-disciplinary works.

URSULA ENDLICHER creates net art, technology-based performances and installations that use live Internet data. She investigates structural components and interfaces of digital and natural networks creating new forms and “worlds” in between.  Her work has been shown at Chronus Art Center, Shanghai; Haus der Elektronischen Künste, Basel; and is part of the Whitney Museum of American Art’s artport collection.

BART KAHR has been a faculty member at Purdue University, the University of Washington, and New York University (since 2009). His research projects emphasize crystal growth mechanisms, polycrystalline pattern formation, new methods of metrology using polarized light, and the analysis of chiroptical anisotropy. He practices the experimental history of chemistry and crystallography. He was a National Science Foundation distinguished lecturer in the mathematical and physical sciences (2014).

ELLEN K. LEVY, artist and writer, is a past president of the College Art Association who explores interrelationships among art and complex systems. Levy highlights them through her exhibitions, educational programs, publications, and curatorial events. With Charissa Terranova, she is co-editor of "D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson’s Generative Influences in Art, Design, and Architecture" (Bloomsbury Publications, 2021), and with Barbara Larson, she is co-editor of the Routledge book series Science and the Arts since 1750.

PATRICIA OLYNYK creates photographs, prints, videos, and installations that investigate science and technology-related themes and the ways in which social systems and institutional structures shape our understanding of our place in the world. Working across disciplines, she often collaborates with scientists, humanists, programmers, and engineers. She is Florence and Frank Bush Professor of Art, College and Graduate School of Art, Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University.

SPONSORS:

The Leonardo/ISAST LASERs are a program of international gatherings that bring artists, scientists, humanists and technologists together for informal presentations, performances and conversations with the wider public. The mission of the LASERs is to encourage contribution to the cultural environment of a region by fostering interdisciplinary dialogue and opportunities for community building to over 40 cities around the world. To learn more about how our LASER Hosts and to visit a LASER near you please visit our website. @lasertalks

NY LASER is a series of lectures and presentations on art and science projects, in support of Leonardo/ISAST’s LEAF initiative (Leonardo Education and Art Forum). Ellen K. Levy, and Patricia Olynyk have co-directed these presentations for over 12 years.

Pratt Manhattan Gallery, located at 144 W 14th St., NYC, supports the educational goals of Pratt Institute by presenting exhibitions that reflect the interdisciplinary, research- and inquiry-based education that prepares Pratt students for success in creative fields and professional practice.