Sci-Art Exhibition

ATMOSPHERES is a sci-art exhibition held in conjunction with the Imagine Science Film Festival Abu Dhabi, the NYUAD Arts Center, and the NYUAD Art Gallery. The show includes a unique roster of international artists whose works complement the films and expand guests’ interest in the intersection between science and art, all while exploring ‘atmospheres’ in both a literal and metaphoric sense. How do we understand that which is all around us, but can’t be seen? The show will feature everything from art that engages with scientific topics to aesthetically striking scientific data and images in it’s attempt to answer that question.

Featuring:

“SCENES: Data as Film”
Culled from Imagine Science Films’ larger collection is this set of moving images showcasing science research from local universities. Scientists record experiments and this data is presented as brief video clips, to help audiences better visualize the world of scientific research.

ARTISTS

Quintron

Quintron has been making genre-defying noise, soundscape, and house rocking dance music in New Orleans for over 20 years, much of it in collaboration with artist / puppeteer Panacea Theriac aka “Miss Pussycat”. In 1999, Quintron helped to foster a DIY analog synth revival with a patented instrument called the DRUM BUDDY, a light activated analog drum machine which creates murky, low-fidelity, rhythmic patterns. Quintron’s current focus is on a weather controlled analog drone synthesizer called Weather Warlock and a website devoted to streaming its music called Weather For The Blind. Weather Warlock has also spawned a live band consisting of various musicians improvising during sunrise or sunset to the sounds of this instrument doing it’s thing. Recent collaborators have included Steve Shelly, Sean Ono Lennon, Gary Wrong, Miss Pussycat, Aaron Hill (of Eyehategod), Nels Cline, Rat Bastard, DJ Lespam, and several members of the Sun Ra Arkestra. Quintron continues to live and work in New Orleans Louisiana as well as touring, teaching, and lecturing in this world and beyond.

Wingbeat Ltd.

Wingbeat Ltd is a new subsidiary of International Wildlife Consultants Ltd based in UK. Wingbeat specialises in biorobotics, the designing of structures that look like animals and interact with animals. Our first commercial model is the Robara, a radio-controlled aircraft that looks and flies like a McQueen’s Bustard or Houbara. The Houbara is the favourite quarry of Arab falconers and is suffering in many areas from loss of habitat and over-hunting. The Robara is designed as a substitute prey that can be caught by falcons high in the sky and come down without injuring the falcon. With a wingspan of 1.4 metres, its weight is only 1 kg, half that of the adult male houbara on which it is modelled. It can flap its wings and fly to the limit of human vision (about 500 metres high), diving at 250 kph. The falcons love to hunt it and both falcons and human spectators soon treat it as ‘real’ because it twists and turns to escape the clutches of the falcon. By this means public can see for the first time the hunting flights of the falcon and her prey high in the sky, right in front of them, and this allows for a variety of events and competitions. The underlying agenda is that the Robara is a conservation tool, easing the hunting pressure on the stocks of wild Houbara while giving falconers the opportunities to have exciting flights with their falcons.

Lia Giraud

Lia Giraud is a French artist, following PhD studies in the program “Sciences, Art, Creation, Research” (PSL) and research with the DiiP (EnsadLab). Her studies began at Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Art in Cergy-Pontoise (ENSAP) after which she specialised in photography-video at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Arts Décoratifs, receiving her diploma in 2011. During that time she took advantage of an exchange in Montréal, Québec at Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM) to complete a masters of visual arts and media. Her photographic work has been published with Editions Textuels (Catalogue Sita-suez environnement, 2010), and by l’Agence française de développement (AFD) au Cambodge (Série Ambivalences, 2011). Her videos and images have been shown on many occasions in France and abroad (including in Jeu de Paume, Cent-quatre, MARTa Herford museum en Allemagne, “Galerie du Cedex” à Montréal, Institut français des Pays-Bas, Arte, Polka Magazine). In her documentary work she questioned our relationship to images and how this influences the way we build our reality. With the projects “riffs”, “glasses” and “dollaralia” she transforms the image-tool into the image-subject. She proposes an experience of the image as a material, she seeks to show the relationship between humans and images and its evolution. Since 2010 she focuses on the influence of modern numerical representations and discovers unexplored links between biology and the digital. She wants to analyse and imagine new ways of producing images based on these links. Her very special way of creating and producing science gives her opportunities to collaborate with other artists and scientific labs in Paris like the team CEE of Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle (Algae-graphies project), the Kastler-Brossel lab at Ecole Nationale Supérieure (documentary film InVisible), and recently the Laboratories de Chime de la Matière Condensée de Paris (Collège de France/UPMC) and the Institut de Minéralogie et de Physique des milieux condensés (“Stromatolites” project).

Momoko Seto

Momoko Seto was born in Tokyo in 1980. After studying at the Tokyo French Lycée, she travelled to France to study Art at the École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Marseille, then at the Le Fresnoy National Studio of Contempoary Art. At the same time as working as a film director at the CNRS (National Centre of Scientific Research) in Paris, she makes experimental films mingling different genres. She has made a number of short films and documentaries, which have been presented and acclaimed at several international festivals. Her latest film PLANET ∑ received the Audi Short Film Award at the 65th Berlinale.

Sam Ridgeway

Samuel Ridgeway was born and raised in the UK, where his interest in science and media grew as he watched natural history documentaries. He is a keen photographer and, since coming to NYUAD, he has also made multiple short films. Currently, Sam is making a documentary about falconry in the UAE, as well as researching what bacteria are in the gut of falcons. He aspires to have a career in science communication and to travel around the world. Sam hopes that you enjoy his work!

Larissa Sansour & Soren Lind

Larissa Sansour was born in 1973 in East Jerusalem, Palestine, and studied fine arts in London, New York and Copenhagen. Her work is interdisciplinary, immersed in the current political dialogue and utilises video, photography, installation, the book form and the internet. Central to her work is the tug and pull between fiction and reality. Recent solo exhibitions include Turku Art Museum in Finland, Photographic Center in Copenhagen, Galerie Anne de Villepoix in Paris, Kulturhuset in Stockholm, Lawrie Shabibi in Dubai, Sabrina Amrani in Madrid and DEPO in Istanbul. Sansour’s work has featured in the biennials of Istanbul, Busan and Liverpool. She has exhibited at venues such as Tate Modern, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; LOOP, Seoul; Al Hoash, Jerusalem; Queen Sofia Museum, Madrid; Centre for Photography, Sydney; Cornerhouse, Manchester; Townhouse, Cairo; Maraya Arts Centre, Sharjah, UAE; Empty Quarter, Dubai; Galerie Nationale de Jeu de Paume, Paris; Iniva, London; Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris; Third Guangzhou Triennial, Guangzhou , China; Louisiana Museum of Contemporary Art, Denmark; House of World Cultures, Berlin, and MOCA, Hiroshima. Sansour currently lives and works in London, UK.

Soren Lind (b. 1970) is a Danish author. He writes children’s books and literary fiction. With a background in philosophy, Lind wrote books on mind, language and understanding before turning to fiction. He has published a novel and two collections of short stories as well as four children’s books. In addition to his literary production, Lind is also a visual artist and writes short film scripts. Lind lives and works in London.

Semiconductor

Semiconductor is UK artist duo Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt. In their work they explore the material nature of our world and how we experience it through the lens of science and technology, questioning how they mediate our experiences of nature. Their unique approach which combines moving image, installation, digital animation, sound works and sculpture has won them many awards and prestigious fellowships including; Samsung Art + Prize 2012 for new media, Smithsonian Artists Research Fellowship and a NASA Space Sciences Fellowship. Recent exhibitions include Let There Be Light, House of Electronic Arts, Basel (solo show); Worlds in the Making, FACT, Liverpool (solo show); Earth; Art of a Changing World, Royal Academy of Arts, London; Da Vinci: Shaping the Future, ArtScience Museum, Singapore; Field Conditions, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; International Film Festival Rotterdam and Sundance Film Festival. Their first public sculpture Cosmos was unveiled in October 2014 commissioned by Jerwood Open Forest. www.semiconductorfilms.com

Ali Cherri

Born in Beirut in 1976, Ali Cherri is a visual artist and designer working with video, installation, performance, multimedia and print. Cherri is a graduate in Graphic Design from the American University in Beirut (2000). In parallel to his design work, he finished his Master’s Degree in Performing Arts at DasArts (Amsterdam – 2005)

His recent exhibitions include Bad Bad Images, solo show at Galerie Imane Farès (Paris, 2012), Dégagements, Institut du Monde Arabe (Paris, 2012), Exposure, Beirut Art Center (Beirut, 2011), Southern Panorama, VideoBrasil (Sao Paolo, 2011), Beirut, Kunsthalle (Vienna, 2011) and A Fleur de Peau, solo show at Gallery Regard Sud (Lyon, 2011).

His work has been presented at various venues including Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), Delfina Foundation (London), Rotterdam International Film Festival (Rotterdam), Modern Art Oxford (Oxford), Tate Modern (London), HomeWorks (Beirut), Contemporary Image Collective (Cairo), Festival Paris Cinéma (Paris), Makan Art Space (Amman), Arnolfini (Bristol), Raster Gallery (Warsaw), KunstFilmBiennale (Cologne), Darat El Funun (Amman – Jordan), Festival Paris Cinéma (Paris), Medien und Architektur Biennale (Graz – Austria)

Rana Jarbou

Saudi-born Rana Jarbou has been researching and documenting graffiti and street art across 12 Arab countries since 2007, in search for a counter-narrative for the Arab identity and to give voice to society’s silent cries. She’s published essays in Arabic Graffiti and Walls of Freedom, and written about graffiti, underground cultural scenes and urban change for various online outlets. She led Al-Akhbar Newspaper’s new year (2012) special publication titled “Our Streets” showcasing graffiti of the Arab Uprisings of 2011. She participated in numerous regional arts & culture conferences and exhibitions and more recently Santa Cruz and Marseille. In June of 2015, she received her MA in Social Documentation at UCSC Film and Digital Media. Her ongoing project One Thousand and One Walls visualizes a journey capturing a transitional period while it aims to redefine the Arab world through a different lens, through its walls.

Toby Smith

Toby Smith, 33, is based in Cambridge and works internationally on projects concerning landscape, environment, industrial and science stories.

Toby graduated with a Masters in Contemporary Photography from London College of Communication in 2008. This was after spending 2 years working across Africa utilizing his bachelor’s degree in Environmental Science. His focus now lies on large-scale photography and research projects for editorial publication, exhibition, communication and advocacy. Toby is represented editorially by Getty Images Reportage and is the Artist in Residence at Cambridge University’s Conservation Institute.