bioephemera is art + biology - anything and everything from representations of science in art and literature to the neuroscience of aesthetics. Along with lots of other stuff that's just plain interesting.
Jessica Palmer is a biologist & artist currently based in Washington, DC. She spent the last few years teaching at a small state college out West, and now plays with science policy. Her homepage includes the bioephemera archives & a gallery of her work.
Note: the contents of this blog are the personal opinions of the author, completely independent of any organizations with which she is affiliated.
If you think that one inanimate shark is as good as another, your understanding of the art market is, as they say, dead in the water. Mr. Saunders's piece just didn't have the same quality or cache. (Although Mr. Saunders did claim his shark was more handsome.) Most important, it's not just about the work of art; rather, the value placed on a particular work derives from how it feels to own that art. Most art dealers know that art buying is all about what tier of buyers you aspire to join.
From The New York Sun's amusing review of Don Thompson's upcoming book, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art.
Thomson discusses the promotion of Mr. Saunders' stuffed shark by an artists' collective known as the Stuckists as part of their strategy to critique Hirst's "conceptual art". The Stuckists displayed Saunders' shark across town from Hirst's back in 2003, with a $1 million price tag:
Hirst's shark later sold for $8 million - despite the fact that it rotted from the inside out, fell apart, and needed to be replaced with a fresh shark. Even Hirst admitted he wasn't sure if the artwork was still the "original" piece post-shark-replacement. But responding to the criticism that pretty much anyone could have put a dead shark on display and called it art, Hirst said, 'But you didn't, did you?'
Controversy aside, the most artistically successful shark of all is clearly this one:
"We're borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet." -- Al Gore
We all knew what he'd say, but we still stood in line for an hour to hear him say it. Today Al Gore issued his "Generational Challenge to Repower America" to a packed house at the DAR Constitution Hall in DC.
After zinging the administration a few times as a warm up ("I don't remember a time in our country when so many things seemed to be going so wrong simultaneously"), Gore laid down the We Campaign challenge. Basically, he wants the entire nation to be on "100 percent renewable and truly clean electricity" in ten years' time.
Is this goal remotely realistic? Gore seems to think so:
Anyone else think he sounds a lot like E.O. Wilson's Creation in that video?
So, why ten years? Gore said, "ten years is about the maximum time that we as a nation can hold a steady aim and hit our target," and cites the moon landing as evidence that transformative initiatives can indeed be accomplished in a decade. But transitioning the nation to purely renewable energy is going to be harder than going to the moon. According to my electricity provider, Pepco, only 3.7% of my electricity came from "renewable energy sources" in 2007. Going from 3.7% to 100% is more than a sea change; it's political plate tectonics with very large landmines thrown in.
Afterward, my staffer asked (rhetorically) whether Gore had mentioned nuclear power in his speech. The answer is, of course, no. But according to Pepco, a third of my electricity is nuclear in origin - a proportion that shocked this West Coast girl (I'm used to hydroelectric power - which is not without its own controversies). Clearly nuclear power is not a small segment of the energy pie.
I'm sure Gore didn't want to get into it in this initial phase - the goal right now is to get everyone from both sides of the aisle committed. That's why the We Campaign board consists of four Democrats, four Republicans, and one independent. But eventually we're going to have to figure out what role nuclear power has in the transitional scenario, and it's going to be sticky. Buried in the wecansolveit.org Q&A is this clue:
The electricity system can be a mix of carbon-free baseload and distpatchable sources like solar thermal with storage, geothermal, wind, solar photovoltaics, biomass, existing nuclear and hydropower, and coal and natural gas power if they are able to capture the carbon. (emphasis added)
Some people are probably going to have a problem with that.
Honestly, I doubt whether Gore, even the super-powered, Nobel-brandishing New and Improved Al Gore, can get this done. But as someone who spent her intellectually formative years under the Clinton Administration, I have a serious soft spot for him. As someone who watched him win/lose/win/lose the 2000 election in a New Orleans bar, I'm still angry on his behalf. And as someone who plastered Greenpeace stickers all over her high school locker, I want to give him a great big hug for even trying.
But of course there will always be those who don't want to hug the Goracle. . . like these 8 or so protesters outside the talk today:
The "Drill? Yes we can!" sign in particular was alarming. . . and the guy dressed as the Grim Reaper? I got no clue what that was about.
UPDATE: you can now watch the whole speech (27 minutes) here:
As I sit here waiting for Al Gore to start speaking, I'd like to note that Scibling Chris Mooney over at the Intersection has really annoyed me. Apparently the fact that I didn't like the filmSizzle is evidence that I, too, am likely a terrible communicator of science who lacks self-awareness. (Since there is no other possible reason for me to fail to LOVE the film!)
Now, Chris, some scientists who dislike Sizzle may dislike it for that reason - but there are a lot of other reasons to dislike the film, some of which I and other Sciblings have mentioned! When you say,
In my view, what's so great about Sizzle is the way it asks us to look hard at the insularity of our pro-science community--and the disconnect between the science world and other walks of life, other parts of American culture. In this context, doesn't the fact that many science bloggers are slamming it--and misunderstanding it--simply validate the film's central point?
In throwing this idea out there, what I'd hope to encourage is that some of my fellow bloggers consider watching the film again with such thoughts in mind.
I can point to my original review and state that yes, I got that VERY OBVIOUS MESSAGE quite well on first viewing! Watching it again is not going to make the scales fall from my eyes.
Chris is a good guy, so why am I so annoyed? Well, I happen to take offense when my deliberative opinion of a creative work is used as the springboard for generalizations about my intellectual abilities and personality. I haven't read all the Sciblings' reviews, but I'm sure many of them also thought carefully about it. We don't all have to agree to have valid, intelligent bases for our opinions.
The brand-new Device Gallery is hosting a group show called "Fantastic Contraption" featuring artists like H.R. Giger and Christopher Conte. The show opens this Saturday, July 19, from 6-9 pm - check it out if you're in La Jolla!
This Chicago McDonald's has a giant egg billboard that cracks open to indicate they're serving breakfast (the yolk inside says "fresh eggs daily") then closes up again at lunch. How cool is that?
This morning, a plethora of Sizzle reviews will saturate Scienceblogs. I've no doubt that the film's science will be thoroughly dissected by more informed reviewers than I. So I'm going to steer clear of temperature trends and timetables, and instead consider how the film pitches its message.
Sizzle is billed as "a global warming comedy"; the official website claims "Sizzle is a novel blend of three genres - mockumentary, documentary, and reality." Personally, I think the film suffers from an identity crisis: it tries to fit all three genres at once, and it gets a little scrambled in the process.
Here's my perspective. The documentary genre is about message. Mixing comedy and documentary gets you the type of work done by Michael Moore, who wields both humor and sarcasm - but always in service to his razor-sharp message. The mockumentary genre (my personal favorite is Best in Show) focuses on entertainment. Blurring mockumentary with reality yields products like the "Colbert Report" (especially early episodes) and Borat: the mischievous star adopts a fictitious persona to make his befuddled real-world interviewees appear at best ridiculous (and at worst, bigoted and ignorant). Though Colbert's political and social satire are cutting, the focus is on humor, not analysis or education.
Where does Sizzle fit? It pretty much has to steer clear of the serious documentary genre (where most science films squarely fit) because An Inconvenient Truth has already filled that niche. So director and star Randy Olson has done something rather innovative - he's made a comedy about making a faux documentary: a kind of meta-mockumentary. You've got to give him credit for breaking the science documentary mold. He made me laugh out loud with some absurd fantasy sequences and a few verbal zingers between the ever-squabbling crew behind the fictional documentary. Nevertheless, most of Sizzle feels subdued and mundane enough that you really could be watching one of those PBS interviewfests with which we're all familiar - and intermittently channel-flipping to some inane and equally mundane reality show peopled by Hollywood stereotypes.
You may have already seen this video over at Boing Boing, but I thought it was worth posting anyway: a flock of what look like starlings doing some seriously creepy flocking. Check out the ribbon formation about ten seconds in. It literally gave me goosebumps!
Artist Michael Dax Iacovone investigates and chronicles his familiar DC environs using mathematical algorithms to govern the way in which he experiences space. Using these formulas, Iacovone creates a blueprint to follow, film and photograph the DC area. Iacovone's solo exhibition at the Gallery at Flashpoint, The Numbers Behind, explores spaces and image-making in a new and mechanical way and is on view from July 12 through August 23, 2008. Iacovone's installation will consist of large-scale black and white photographs, maps that show the specific path that the artist follows and videos that track the artist's execution of the formulas.
Once a formula is devised for a photograph, Iacovone uses a cheap, plastic Holga camera and shoots from the chest rather than looking through the viewfinder in order to avoid making any aesthetic, compositional choices. Iacovone, rather than using Photoshop or manipulating the images post-production, layers and overlaps the images inside the camera, across the length of the negative which result in long, ethereal panoramas. The image, so sharply defined in the mapping used to document the spaces, becomes vaporous and disorienting in the resulting photographs.
Brooklyn Bridge with Process (detail)
Mike Iacovone
"Sonnet: To Science"
words by Edgar Allan Poe
song by Alex Colwell
video by Jeff Burns
From oilcanpress
I love the pairing of Poe's sonnet, which basically accuses Science of destroying the poetic mysteries that make life meaningful, with the techno-optimistic nostalgia of early films glorifying science and technology. Yummy!
Poe had a curious relationship with science. Despite the accusatory tone of his poem, Poe was fairly well-versed in contemporary scientific theory, with a solid grasp of astronomy in particular. Poe even wrote a small book called Eureka (1848) about his early, idiosyncratic version of Big Bang theory (full text here).
Although Poe has received some plaudits for being on the right side of that argument, his approach to science was intuitive, spiritual, and nonexperimental. Basically, his approach to science was unscientific. Some critics have suggested that Eureka was intended to be ironic or satirical - especially since he prefaced the book with the statement "Nevertheless, it is as a Poem only that I wish this work to be judged after I am dead." Ah, that recalcitrant, unpredictable Poe! Given our own rather mixed relationship with Science today, he'd fit right in. . . .
"To Science"
Edgar Allan Poe
Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!
Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart,
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?
How should he love thee? or deem thee wise?
Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering
To seek for treasure in the jeweled skies,
Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car?
And driven the Hamadryad from the wood
To seek a shelter in some happier star?
Has thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,
The Elfin from the green grass, and from me
The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?
If I like what I see, I'll receive 5 more issues (6 in all) for just $14.95. That's 50% off the cover price! If I'm not completely satisfied, I'll simply write "cancel" on the invoice and owe nothing. The free issue is mine to keep.
bioephemera is art + biology - anything and everything from representations of science in art and literature to the neuroscience of aesthetics. Along with lots of other stuff that's just plain interesting.
