“Belonging to Soil” is opening at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland this Friday, January 30! This is my collaborative virtual reality art installation – with Shadrick Addy, JT Thrash, Mayen McClain, Luke Stephens, Josh Rodenberg, Will Yuan, Andrew Sanchez, and Megan Wright, and live springtails!

This group show brings together artists across Ohio who focus on sustainability, agriculture, food justice, and natural ecologies. Through diverse materials and perspectives, these artists reflect on humanity’s relationship with the environment. Some incorporate found elements like waterway pollutants, plant-based dyes, and grass clippings, while others investigate topics ranging from climate change conspiracies to natural history and arthropods. Many draw directly from personal experiences as farmers, grocery workers, or environmental observers. Spanning painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, installation, and community-based practice, the works in this exhibition highlight the urgency of environmental issues while inviting dialogue and response.

Curated by Theresa Bembnister, DJ Hellerman, Megan Lykins Reich, and Christina Vassallo. Co-organized by the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH and Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, Cleveland, OH.

It really is a great exhibition, with artworks by: Catherine Clements, Avery Mags Duff, Myles Dunigan, Tina Gutierrez, Brian Harnetty, Desert Kitchen Collective: Glenna Jennings, Jalisa Robinson & Friends, Keith Lemley, Celeste Malvar-Stewart, Lori Nix & Kathleen Gerber, Elena Osterwalder, Praxis Fiber Workshop, John Sabraw, Charmaine Spencer, and Supermrin.

Photos by Wong Pak Hang.

The exhibition team installed the work beautifully; including the virtual reality experience zone next to the live springtail terrariums with magnifiers and a video microscope viewing area. The exhibition is at Hong Kong City Hall, November 4 – November 12, 2023. I will also present a talk titled, Eco Intelligence, in the festival’s conference, Humans, Animals, Plants, Machines and Artificial Intelligence, on Nov 9, 2023.

Belonging to Soil is a collaborative virtual reality artwork created with Shadrick Addy, Mayen McClain, Luke Stephens, JT Thrash, Andrew Sanchez, Josh Rodenberg, Megan Wright, and William Yuan.

Join us for a conversation with Amy M. Youngs and Russ Corbett-Detig to discuss their approaches to interpreting data, moderated by Isabel Bjork, Executive Director of the Genomics Institute. 

This happened on Wed, Apr 14, 2021, but since it was an online event, a recording is available.

Amy M. Youngs creates ecological and digital artworks that explore interdependencies between technology, plants and animals. Her practice involves entanglements with the non-human, constructing ecosystems, and seeing through the eyes of machines. She exhibits nationally and internationally at venues such as the Te Papa Museum in New Zealand, the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA, and the public parks in New York City. She is an Associate Professor at the Ohio State University where she coordinates the Art & Technology area in the Department of Art, leads interdisciplinary grant projects, and teaches courses in digital art, eco art, and art – science.

Russ Corbett-Detig is an assistant professor in the Biomolecular Engineering Department and an affiliate of the Genomics Institute at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His team conducts research on a wide range of questions in computational and evolutionary genomics. Russ received his PhD from Harvard University where he worked with Dan Hartl and he did his postdoctoral studies in Rasmus Nielsen’s group at the University of California, Berkeley.

The Sesnon Speak Up Series aims to provide a safe space for students and the UC Santa Cruz community to engage with critical ideas generated from our programmed exhibitions. This event is scheduled in conjunction with the virtual exhibition, What Makes Us Human: An Art + Genomics Convergence.

This is in Madrid, Spain, but actually happening online, since we can’t all go to Madrid now. One of the pandemic positives is that the organizers have made it FREE – no conference fees. Just sign up here.

I’m thrilled to be included among such a great line up of speakers of artists and scientists; many I know and others I’m looking forward to knowing. JENNIFER PARKER, JORGE FERNÁNDEZ, GAIA BINDI, SAM DUPONT, NADJEJDA ESPINEL-VELASCO, GENE FELICE II, DAVID HARRIS, JUNIPER HARROWER, TRINIDAD IRISARRI, and CLAUDIO JOSÉ MAGALHAES. Check out the conference program. Thank you to JOSE CARLOS ESPINEL VELASCO for inviting me and for co-organizing this inaugural event.

I’ll be presenting a talk called: Softening Boundaries – Practicing Humility. It is on Tuesday, December 15 at 12:15pm EST. 18:15 Madrid time. Wish me luck!

Opening webinar event
November 12, 2020, 12:00–1:00pm PST (3:00-4:00pm EST)
Register for Zoom link here

My new project, Vegetal Entangling is a multimedia webpage love-letter to plants. It reflects on human-plant relationships and documents my practice of “plant noticing”. This exhibition, which asks, What Makes Us Human? provides a great context for my project:

Some of the inquiry conducted by these collaborators examines what it means to be something other than human, simultaneously helping reveal what makes us human. How do we talk about our humanness? Which of our taxonomies intersect? And how can (virtual) space facilitate more of these intersections? How are humans furthering creative, scientific, and scholarly research while responding to the pandemic in our institutions, in our bodies, in our environments and in our communities? How can researchers be alone together and work collectively — questioning, testing, and collaborating during COVID to educate communities at the intersection of art, culture, science, and politics? 

Curated by Jennifer Parker, artist and professor of Art and Digital Arts & New Media at the University of California Santa Cruz, this exhibition showcases the multifaceted approach of artists, humanists, and scientists working across disciplines to investigate art and genetics. Spearheaded by OpenLab Collaborative Research Center in collaboration with the Mary Porter Sesnon Gallery in the Arts Division, UC Santa Cruz.

Collaborators:
A.M. Darke, Alexa Burrell, Amy Youngs, Angélica Dass, ASSIST Lab, Avital Meshi, Brad Necyk, Center for Public Philosophy, Danielle Siembieda, Dorothy Santos, Enrique Leal, the UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute, Gina Czarnecki, Heather Dewey-Hagborg, Jenny Reardon, Jessie Kendall-Bar, Karolina Karlic, OpenLab Collaborative Research Center, UC Santa Barbara Gaucho OpenLab Initiative, Paloma Medina, Phylum (Carlos Castellanos, Johnny DiBlasi, Bello Bello), The Algae Society, The Kenneth S. Norris Center for Natural History, UCSC Astrobiology, UCSC Earth Futures Initiatives, UCSC Institute of the Arts and Sciences, Zac Zimmer, Zach Corse

Acquired immunity displays artworks arising from our residencies and invited artists. We bring together artworks that were created as a response to challenges from the local environment: natural, social, and other artists. A response that we compare to the way the immune system responds to new challenges.

Marta de Menezes, curator

More about the show, events, and the Mozilla Hubs link are over on the Ars Electronica page.

Can we break away from current agricultural practices which are intimately connected to desertification, water and soil pollution, antibiotic resistance, climate change and social and economic inequalities? In a two-hour discussion we are interested in considering a sustainable, multispecies perspective to farming, which could start in the soil and progress through thinking about the multiple ways we can consider food. Aquaponics, vertical farming, worms, soldier flies, and permaculture offer real solutions, where food is grown while respecting living beings, and the intertwined ecologies that support them.Humane food can be grown in urban or rural communities, though the soil is critical. How can we learn and care about living beings we cannot quickly know or see? What is care like in practice? We are also interested in exploring the concept of “citizen eco-artist” as so much of what we do resides in the spaces between actual science, sustainable practice and speculative fiction.

• This international talk with be livestreamed on youtube and recorded for later viewing.
  
• A coproduction of the Network for Prototyping the Future and Art Laboratory Berlin

The artists in the show are:

Suzanne Anker
Ruth K. Burke
Katie Caron Adrienne DeLoe
Anna Dumitriu
Ana Maria Hernando
Luke Jerram
Ken Rinaldo
Regan Rosberg
Jennifer Delilah Trammell
Amy M. Youngs

Go visit it online.

In his podcast, Voices of Excellence, he asked me many great questions about my art and teaching practices. You’ll hear me talking about my recent work with virtual reality, augmented reality and about how living with worms has influenced me. We also discuss interdisciplinary teaching, creativity, eco art, bio art, art & science and art & technology.

My interview is on Soundcloud and on Apple iTunes.

And you can listen to all of the Voices of Excellence interviews on this regular podcast on Soundcloud or iTunes. They focus on the innovative work being done by faculty and staff in the College of Arts and Sciences at the Ohio State University.