News and views for the UB community
Published April 23, 2020 This content is archived.
The Coalesce: Center for Biological Art will host “Disperse: A Report from in a Laboratory,” a series of presentations from UB biological artists on their work in the context of the global pandemic.
The first of three online discussions will be held from noon to 1:15 p.m. April 24. Guests must RSVP with Felipe Shibuya to receive the Zoom link to participate.
The first event will feature Paul Vanouse, Coalesce director and professor of art in the College of Arts and Sciences, and Coalesce lab manager Solon Morse. The pair will discuss portions of their international award-winning projects, as well as share the broader mission of Coalesce.
The event continues with presentations by Darya Warner, graduate student in the Department of Art, and Coalesce artists-in-residence Cesar Baio and Lucy H.G. Solomon, who together form the art collective Cesar & Lois.
Warner will demonstrate her development of a MycoPrinter, an open source, low-tech bioprinter that can print with biological materials such as fungi. The project focuses on sustainable art practices and builds on the notion of art as a biological medium.
Cesar & Lois will present their project “Thinking within Ecosystems: Collective Cell Consciousness,” which explores what is human through an artwork that merges cellular and digital networks to enable communication between microbiomes, the human body and machine.
Future dates for the series are May 1 and May 8.
The Coalesce: Center for Biological Art helps artists, scientists, architects and designers examine the cultural meanings of their work. The center is a collaboration between UB’s Genome, Environment and Microbiome (GEM) Community of Excellence and the Department of Art. An initiative of GEM, the program aims to expand public understanding of and participation in the life sciences.