Leonardo@Djerassi 2023: Gallery

As an artist, I have explored various configurations of collaborative projects. After decades of work, I became curious about why most of my artistic activities occur in collaboration processes [1]. Concepts from the social sciences, sciences, and philosophy percolated to include citations that equated collaboration with interconnectivity and the liquid network; with open systems and as a field of activity; and with collision of differences, and adjacent possibilities:The strange and beautiful truth about the adjacent possible is that its boundaries grow as you explore those boundaries. Each new combination ushers new combinations into the adjacent possible [2].For me, viewing collaboration as a “field of activity” encourages a perspective that acknowledges the multi-layered complexities at work in any given encounter in a non-reductive way [3].To participate in the 2023 Leonardo@Djerassi residency (1) with a larger-scale collaborative project with the Marine Institute of Newfoundland [4], (2) to be invited to lend my creative coding skills to fellow residency participant Gloria Florez’s work Forest Ambassadors [5], and (3) to use my crocheting hobby skills to make flowers for Aiyesha Ghani s fabric diptych Ultimate Beauty [6] sparked again my interest to consider what the lure of collaboration was. Upon this reflection, my thoughts wandered to Tim Ingold’s idea of the wayfaring meshwork of alongly interwoven narratives [7]:The lived experience of our multifaceted relationship to the world is like finely threaded interwoven lines, a meshwork.Each day at the Leonardo@Djerassi residency the live-streaming ocean data and creative code for my work From the Edge, the conversations about forests and human movement for Florez’s installation, the walks in the Djerassi Sequoia forest, the threads for making crochet flowers for Ghani’s work all alongly integrated into a movement of self-renewal and becoming in the making-doing-thinking-feeling of creative practice.Initiated in Australia in 2019, Forest Ambassadors has evolved into an ongoing collaborative environmental and artistic initiative, fostering a global dialogue on preserving endemic habitats. The Leonardo@Djerassi Residency catalyzed the project’s growth, leading to a dynamic collaboration between multimedia artist Dr. Teresa Connors and me.Connors and I delved into the journey and consequential impact of the Australian Blue Gum (Eucalyptus globulus) on California. Initially perceived as a symbol of prosperity for a thriving timber industry, 173 years later, California faces harsh realities—soaring temperatures, droughts, and debates on eradicating eucalyptus trees for fire mitigation. Paradoxically, a segment of the Californian population sees these trees as culturally significant, deeply woven into their identity.Connorss audiovisual projection seamlessly integrates with my eucalyptus forest–like installations, crafting a nonlinear narrative of time, place, and consequence.This interactive project invites the audience to explore environmental challenges, cultural clashes, and the delicate balance between preservation and progress, emphasizing the impact of today’s actions on the future. The collaboration has opened new avenues for both artists, facilitating the development of future narratives resonating with communities in Taiwan and Australia. Forest Ambassadors with Leonardo@Djerassi stands as a testament to the transformative power of interdisciplinary art in shaping the trajectory of creative expression.We are of ancient waves; light beams dancing through an ancient ocean of stars, from the deepest heart of our galaxy ...To measure time precisely almost seems futile. How can something nonlinear be measured and quantified? What is measured to be six months can sometimes feel like a mere three—a paradoxical joke for measurement. We Fourier transform into and out of the time dimension on a daily basis, without even thinking twice.Yet, looking toward our ancient calendars, the motion of celestial bodies dances across the sky in arcs—recorded in stone, and song, and dance. Telling the stories of the past, present and future.The flowers dance to these cycles, the winds sing, and our stories continue to be told.There is something to be noted about the gravity of the “present” moment—it can captivate or vanish into ephemera. How much gravity do we give the present moment in our own lives? It was this very gravity of presence that became the basis for my time at the Leonardo@Djerassi Residency; an unrestricted exploration of space, and time, and presence.The stories of land at the Djerassi ranch moved through and with me. “Cycles of Earth and Light,” the body of work that came from my time at Djerassi, is an homage to a poem, “The Return to My Full Self” by Pamela Djerassi—it is an embodiment of her legacy in a new time. It is an exploration and an expansion of our common threads of humanness.There is something to be noted about the gravity of this present moment, as we bear witness in this world. We must know the depth of our collective grief, the strength and beauty of our collective voice, and step into the boundless love generated by our collective heart.This project was born with the intention of creating an aesthetic of interruption based upon the lack of electrical energy produced by means of extraction. A given fact of Capitalism paused, questioned, and restructured in rather new, collaborative ways, where beings in the mud subvert the power dynamic of generation, storage, and consumption of electric energy.After five weeks spent at the Djerassi Artist Residency in July 2023, I managed to explore and research about the electric power in microbial fuel cells in order to activate a Kitronik :KLEF piano through a BBC micro:bit microcontroller as means of creating collaborations with sound artists at the residency.Soil was gathered from different parts of the 538-acre ranch, mixed and set into 10 MudWatt microbial fuel cells. After a week of carrying the cells around in a small wooden cart (crafted at the wood shop), the energy within these cells was harvested. By connecting these cells in series, it was intended to increase the wattage as a way to power the +3.3V micro:bit and :KLEF piano.It was rather soon to realize amperage also plays an important role in powering electronic devices as small as 90-350mA. More research was done, and after several attempts to increase the power of the fuel cells with the aid of capacitors, an XL6009 DC-DC Converter Module and diverse parallel and series configurations, the result was not positive.What started as a failure, became a discovery. By using the elements I had been dealt with and understanding the capacities of the microbes in the mud, is where the real collaboration started.The final piece became an analog read of the fluctuating wattage in two microbial fuel cells transformed into sound by the micro:bit and discreetly played through a pair of headphones.My original application proposal to Leonardo@Djerassi, written in 2021, was to work on my manuscript for Pixels & Paintings: Foundations of Computer-assisted Connoisseur-ship (Wiley). The subsequent lockdowns due to COVID had a dual effect: delaying the Djerassi residency and giving me time to devote to writing at home. I also test marketed the material in my courses at Stanford University, which were online during COVID. As a result of the delay, when the residency began in June 2023 I had completed the manuscript (784 pages, 1075 individual figures, 860 references, four-color throughout …) so my Fellowship time was devoted to the extremely detailed work of copy editing the full manuscript. (Is it Rembrandt’s Night Watch or The Night Watch?) Because I was to provide camera-ready typeset copy to the publisher, I had the extra burden of ensuring proper layout, typographical consistency, and so on.My overall three-year writing effort involved research in numerous museums worldwide, with extensive time in the Bowes Art Library at Stanford, beautiful Research Library at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, summer home on Martha’s Vineyard Island, and elsewhere. But none of these venues could match the natural beauty and collegiality of Djerassi, free of distractions, with splendid panoramas at all times, hawks overhead, and an occasional coyote at my glass door. The conversations with other Fellows versed in science and art—over meals, hiking the trails, and especially with outside guests on Friday dinner—were intellectually and culturally stimulating, and I will always remember my time there with deep fondness.

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