{"id":28747,"date":"2015-05-07T15:54:33","date_gmt":"2015-05-07T21:54:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=28747"},"modified":"2025-01-08T09:04:38","modified_gmt":"2025-01-08T16:04:38","slug":"both-sides-of-the-coin-artsystems-exploration-of-art-and-science-at-the-nora-eccles-harrison-museum-of-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/both-sides-of-the-coin-artsystems-exploration-of-art-and-science-at-the-nora-eccles-harrison-museum-of-art\/","title":{"rendered":"Both Sides of the Coin: ARTsySTEM’S exploration of art and science at the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nIt\u2019s not exactly nostalgia that makes antique scientific paraphernalia attractive. Not usually windows into our personal pasts, these carefully crafted tools and specimens take viewers on a journey into the collective history of exploring and deciphering the only planet we know. Two artists who have mined the aesthetic appeal of these artifacts are Mark Dion and Brandon Balleng\u00e9e, both currently on exhibit at the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum in Logan. In Dion\u2019s monumental \u201cTravels of William Bartram Reconsidered \u201c(2008)\u2014which was also in\u00a0The Smithson Effect,\u00a0<\/em>UMFA\u2019s sprawling 2011 celebration of the influence of\u00a0Spiral Jetty<\/em>\u2019s maker\u2014collections suitable for natural history museums skirt the boundary between objective observation and subjective interpretation. Such academic conundrums matter less to Balleng\u00e9e, who is a biologist and environmentalist as well as an artist who makes direct efforts to awaken in others his passionate concern for the living world. \u201cTears of Och\u00f9n\u201d (2012) focuses on shrimp, a popular food and so a well-known example of a vulnerable species, and, as the title suggests, links the timeless, universal experience of mourning to present-day events. \u201cDanse Macabre\u201d (2014) tracks the intricate interaction of a species in stress and the opportunistic parasites that are destroying it: an increasingly common story and a necessary reminder that beauty in nature can just as easily accompany death as signify life. Closer to home, \u201cRIP Utah Lake Sculpin\u201d(1991\/2014) recalls a rite in which the artist cut the image of a local, formerly common but now extinct variety of fish out of a field guide to the species, then burned the image and placed the ashes in an urn made from a laboratory bottle. The exquisite page of engraved fish, from which Zion\u2019s \u2018share\u2019 is pointedly missing, graphically makes the point that a subject of Utah stewardship no longer exists.<\/p>\n

Everyone knows that truth does not belong to science alone; it\u2019s just as much a goal of art. Yet how many know that beauty, art\u2019s primary goal, is also crucial to science? The difference lies in emphasis: while artists may seek truth in beauty, scientists seek beauty as an attribute of truth. When two responses seem otherwise equal, scientists will choose the shapely equation or the symmetrical theory, working from the insight that we find truth beautiful in itself. The exhibition\u00a0ARTsySTEM: The Changing Climates of The Arts and Sciences<\/em>, at the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art until August 1st, sets out to show both sides of this coin: both the potential for scientific activity as a source of art, and art making as valid collaboration with science.<\/p>\n

Working before the invention of a reliable clock, Galileo probably used his musician\u2019s skills to time motions crucial to his experiments. Leonardo da Vinci perfected his drawing while limning the behavior of nature. While it\u2019s not clear how or when this synergy broke down, there\u2019s no time to waste putting it back together. We live today in a crucial moment, when no human endeavor is more pressing than getting scientific knowledge right. Where our species historically has depended on the ability to move to the next place when this one could no longer support us, and counted on the seemingly limitless capacity of marginal lands, atmosphere, and ocean to absorb our wastes, there are no more pristine valleys over the hill, and we\u2019ve exceeded the environment\u2019s ability to absorb our poisons. Scientists struggle to convey the extent of the problem, while artists, who rely on their ability to communicate with an unseen public, often lack the sophisticated knowledge that would make their concerns convincing.<\/p>\n

On a fundamental level, the same drive to observe the natural world drives both artists and scientists.\u00a0ARTsySTEM<\/em>\u00a0acknowledges this with contributions from artists whose subjects, permitted more traditional representation. Edward Weston, perhaps the first photographer to present nature precisely and holistically\u2014as an ecological scientist might do\u2014is represented by \u201cSoil Erosion, Carmel Valley\u201d (1931), a Modernist photo meant to capture the formal qualities imparted to land sculpted by water. Seeing it today, it seems every bit as much an environmental statement as Harry Reuben Reynolds’ untitled landscape of the part of Cache Valley known as ‘the Island’ in its pristine condition, in 1950, before development forever altered its original state. A more sophisticated take on this view of nature appears in James Turrell\u2019s \u201cRoden Crater,\u201d a project far ahead of its time when Turrell, whose life\u2019s work explores the role of light in giving form to the world we see, began it in 1974. The documents here, including maps, elevations, and a mind-bending scale model in a custom-built carrying case with an aerial photo in the lid, primarily reproduce the geometry of a conic crater inside a cinder cone, a view into either the remote past, 400,000 years ago when the volcano was active, or an even more desolate future. Either way, viewers should realize that this bleak bit of real estate typifies countless features on a vast majority of planets that remain inimical to life. Curious viewers will want to explore \u201cRoden Crater\u201d online, where an impression of the grand, literally consciousness altering visual effects available to visitors may be found.<\/p>\n