It’s really touching to have a student become a colleague! Mattia Casalegno was at UCLA Design Media Arts many years ago now — he teaches at Pratt now and introduced my talk — first in person-talk and critique afterwards since the pandemic closed down.

I focused in this talk on the Octopus Mandala, Brain Storming, Noise Aquarium and Alien Star Dust starting with the Chernobyl ferris wheel… this was just days before the war around this area broke out, waking up the old Cold War tensions of nuclear disasters / threats. In the audience was Kay Hines who — ages ago — edited the Bhopal Christmas; on the street with Bast performance. Once again the individual and the collective return to some of the old shadows we repress….

Hosted today Franz Giesibl with Jim Gimzewski as moderator — to help launch his book released on this day! Also the birthday of Gerhard Richter who he had a long standing dialogue. They know each other from the late eighties when Jim was a researcher at IBM Zürich working on the Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM) and Franz was a PhD student under physicist Gerd Bining

.HERE is the link to the video:

Ushered in the year of the Water TIGER with an incredible group! Video will be up soon if you missed it… Ruling organ of the TIGER are the LUNGS — we focused on breathing, food and poetry. Anna Nacher (pig) started us off with a breath meditation, followed by Xtine Burrough who shared her one minute breath poetry project, Debora Giannone read a Rumi poem about breath and spirit, Lili Anamarija No shared info on the year of the tiger (careful for traffic accidents, fires, sudden events) and the NSK exhibition, DUMPLINGS!, CC Hart (snake) shared a beautiful poem connecting St Bridget to the Tiger (east / west!) and an Irish lamb dish with foraged greens / stinging nettles, Aisen Caro Chacin pulled out silicon muscles she is working on in her lab, Ellen K. Levy was interrupted by her parrots who had something to say, Maryam Razi made some Persian crispy rice and reminded us of the Persian tiger that disappeared, Nina Sobell played a video performance from CCTV, Mick Lorusso told us about the bacteria in cat poop that make us crazy and Clarissa Ribeiro read a poem about the TIGER + DRAGON combo. Siddharth and I hosted and brought along our classes — his in neuroscience & ethics, mine in NanoBiotech + Design. They loved it and one student said — “I wish all our classes were like this — I learned so much in such and it was so much fun!”

We are getting close to planning out the installation — replacing the pedestal with a projection on the floor. Tested it at the EDA and think it will work well. Still a lot to do — 2 minute video describing the elements in the piece, AR postcards, info for catalog… Exciting!

Here is a screen capture from the NanoBioTech + Design class playing with their USB microscopes and just zooming in. It was really fun to do this together without rushing. This was after listening to Jim Gimzewski’s lecture on scale and scale free.

My brother watches Bloomberg TV and he texted me — I just saw you on an ad for Hyundai. I asked for the link and then saw that the interview from a couple of months ago got edited and published. It is the Art & Technology program that turned down my funding applications… Enjoyed meeting Jonathan Keats and it’s a nice edit / promo of my work — even if people who do not know the art scene think I was in a Hyundai ad he he

Today I was preparing all day for the special projects class I am teaching this quarter — NanoBioTech + Design and I figured out a way to deliver my lectures by addressing every topic with STEAM reconfigured — Science, Technology, Ecology, Arts + Mindfulness. Engineering and Mathematics are already in Science and Technology. They are replaces with Ecology and Mindfulness. First lecture is on the complexity of the PENCIL

Science – carbon / graphite / graphite

Technology – microscopy / industry

Ecology – impact on the environment

Arts – artist / designers / architects  — examples

Mindfulness – exercise / assignment — draw and write with a pencil all that was addressed.

Stumbled on this video of a presentation from the Laznia gallery in Gdansk, Poland. It’s amazing how work can take on a life on the internet!

Working on two shows — one that should open sometime soon — maybe — at Pratt Manhattan gallery and the next, in May, at the Barbican gallery in London. The pandemic is changing everything and very much influencing how I am approaching the work.

Planktons produce up to 80% of the oxygen we breathe and underwater noise is destroying many species but also impacting the plankton at the bottom of the food chain. We are drwoing in the consumerist noise driven by fossil fuels and plastic…. MORE here

So, ditching the VR glasses and the interactive platform — focus is on the immersive sound, animations and AR. The test I did at the EDA is promising!

New Moon

8 years ago — OCTOPUS MANDALA — at Coney Island, NY

I am pretty sure that the person wearing the octopus crown is Arlene Lister. Today she same over with her dog Nancy who will be staying with us for a couple of weeks. She is off to Canada to visit with her sick mother amidst the omicron wave, extreme climate and general crazy… we need to go back to the source and connect to the Other — the embodied intelligence.