(x)trees participated in the surprise PASEO 2020 Drive-thru Projection Experience that filled the historic Taos plaza in New Mexico with over 18 projections featuring PASEO alumni artists from all over the country. For this iteration of the (x)trees Agnes collaborated with coder, Roy MacDonald from Chile. Roy is now working on new interactive features that will be presented for the next showing of (x)trees in Lisbon, Portugal. Stay tuned!
PASEO 2020 artists: CHiKA, Motomichi, Ollie Bell, Sasha Von Dorp, Britney King, Corwin Levi, Ruben Olguin, Cristopher Cichocki, Agnes Chavez, Lionel Cruet, Nettrice Gaskins, Alison Johnson & Thomas Vause-Digital Ant Media, Morgan Barnard, Jennifer Nev-Diaz
Events
(x)trees@PASEO 2020
(I=)UNIVERSE: An intercultural sci-art exploration of the universe
(I=)UNIVERSE is a STEMarts Lab production in collaboration with Santa Fe Institute’s InterPlanetary Festival, Milagro Middle School and multiple departments at Santa Fe Public Schools, including Art, Science, Technology, and Native American Student Services. Together they coordinated an intensive, hands-on workshop that included digital technology, particle physics, and Native-Western science connections. Experts in all of these fields served as contributing scientists, artists, and storytellers throughout the project. The project included a 2-week workshop with 70 students led by an interdisciplinary team: STEMarts founder/artist, Agnes chavez, Milagro art teachers, Megan Avina and Grace Mayer, Dr. Nicole Lloyd-Ronning, LANL astrophysicist, Shane Wood, QuarkNet staff/ particle physics instructor, Steve Tamayo, Lakota artist/cultural specialist, as well as virtual visits from Geneva with Dr. Steven Goldfarb, CERN physicist and from Austria with Tagtool founder/ artist, Markus Dorninger.
(I=)UNIVERSE culminates=s with the following student performances, Due to COVID the Santa Fe Institute’s InterPlanetary Festival was cancelled.
• Innovation EXPO: Full STEAM ahead! A re-imagined and innovative take on the traditional school science fair. Student live painting performance at the Santa Fe Convention Center. February 13, 2020, 5:30pm-7:30pm.
STEMarts (x)change: Lisbon to New Mexico
POSTPONED DUE TO COVID
American Corner@University of Lisbon Faculty of Letters (FLUL). I will be working with Humanities students from the ‘Cultural Creative’ program to design a community outreach project based on a relevant social topic. The 2-month project will culminate with a sci-art projection installation at the American Corner space that will raise awareness to the social topic explored and outline next steps for implementing the community project. Learn more.
SAP Lab: Artist residency and collaboration
Agnes will be starting an artist residency in 2022 at the SAP Lab in Lisbon, Portugal, collaborating with Catarina Pombo Nabais, philosopher and founder of the SAP Lab, ‘an innovative, experimental and interdisciplinary laboratory within the Center for the Philosophy of Science of the University of Lisbon (CFCUL). Their mission is for philosophy to deeply intertwine with science and art. It aims at integrating the work of scientists and artists with the conceptual analysis which philosophy is prepared to provide.’ Visit their website for more. Catarina will be facilitating research and discussions from diverse interdisciplinary and intercultural voices and they are working on several projects to explore at the intersection of ecology, art and philosophy.
Fluidic Data@CERN Data Center
The Fluidic Data team presented the results of the inter-departmental collaboration on November 2019 at the 24th International Conference on Computing High Energy and Nuclear Physics in a presentation called Fluidic Data: When Art Meets CERN, Data Flows. The speaker was Julien LeDuc, IT specialist at the CERN Data Center. Julien was the lead technology designer for the installation and particularly for data integration and the pump system (pictured here in early stages of design) which visualizes data through colored water segments and air pockets. See gallery.
BIOTA@Species in Peril along the Rio Grande
BIOTA was a commissioned art installation for the 516 Arts exhibition entitled Species in Peril along the Rio Grande, September- December 2019. 516 ARTS and partners presented this exhibition and series of regional public programs responding to the global biological crisis described in the new UN Report that officially state that nature’s dangerous decline is “unprecedented,” and species extinction rates are accelerating at an alarming pace. According to a recent New York Times editorial, the report says, “‘Biodiversity’ — a word encompassing all living flora and fauna — ‘is declining faster than at any time in human history,’ estimating that ‘around 1 million species already face extinction, many within decades,’ unless the world takes transformative action to save natural systems.” The artists were invited to create an installation to generate awareness to an endangered species. BIOTA focused on microbial species found in water and soil and their vital role to the health of the planet’s ecosystem. See Gallery.
Space@PASEO 2018 Festival
Agnes (Co-Founder of The PASEO Festival) curated the 2018 PASEO festival with the theme of SPACE.
Exploring inner and outer space, artistically, socially and scientifically. From self identity to space exploration to human impact on the environment our definition of who we are, where we come from and where we are going are in a state of flux. As powerful scientific instruments and new media tools expand our senses, allowing us to see into the farthest corners of the universe and the invisible spaces within our bodies and minds, we begin to grasp the enormous power and potential of humanity. Further, with quantum physics and astrophysics revealing an interdependent universe in line with indigenous worldviews, we have an unprecedented opportunity for intercultural exchange and cooperation. PASEO artists have created immersive and participatory installations that bring together new technologies, scientific explorations and socio-cultural themes. PASEO 2018’s festival forefronted the role of art, science and technology in contemplating our place in nature and re-imagining society. Participants’ senses were activated, curiosities stimulated, and minds transported to a wondrous universe in flux.
Curatorial contributors: Anita McKeown and Ariane Koek.
Art, astrophysics and particle accelerators: NM artists at NASA and CERN
Date and Time
Fri, June 8, 2018
6:00 PM – 7:00 PM MDT
Doors open at 5:30pm
Art, astrophysics and particle accelerators: artists working with NASA and CERN – a Santa Fe LASER talk on interplanetary art, science and technology with New Mexico artists Richard Lowenberg and Agnes Chavez.
Biocultura will present the third Leonardo Art, Science, Evening Rendezvous (LASER) Talk in Santa Fe in conjunction with the Santa Fe Institute Interplanetary Festival.
Santa Fe artist Richard Lowenberg’s talk is titled “Info/Eco (An Arts/Sciences Exploration of the Information Environment as Ecosystem)”. Richard’s presentation will include an overview of works created as part of a 1974-1984 series of NASA/Arts collaborations, including the first artist’s use of satellite communications, use of bio-sensors by dancers in environmental performances, and performers participating in astronaut gravitational simulation experiments. Richard will also present two current 1st-mile / SARC (Scientists/Artists Research Collaborations) projects: “The Energy & Information Ecosystems of the Colorado Plateau: An Arts/Sciences Field Study” and “Eco-Value Scale”, an interactive public artwork and program to balance Earth’s economy.
Agnes Chavez will present her interdisciplinary work including a collaboration with CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Switzerland. She currently works as Artistic Director with CERN scientists and engineers at the Data Center designing a permanent installation that will visualize real time and statistical data from the Large Hadron Collider. Agnes’ colleague Johan S. Bonilla, PhD candidate at the Center for High Energy Physics, University of Oregon will join via Skype.
Richard Lowenberg is an artist, rural tele-community planner, environmental designer and eco-cultural activist. He has dedicated his creative life to investigations, understandings and artful realization of works presenting and collaboratively setting examples for ‘an ecology of the information environment’, with resulting opportunities for development of a culturally and ecologically rooted economy’. Richard’s ‘arts-sciences-society’ involvements include networking local-global communities and involvement in international arts/sciences initiatives over 50 years. Richard is founder of 1st-Mile Institute – SARC (Scientists/Artists Research Collaborations) which has collaborated with UNM, Los Alamos and Sandia National Labs, Santa Fe Institute, Leonardo, National Science Foundation’s SEAD initiative, The Internet Society, Cabine Voltaire (NL) and more.
Agnes Chavez is a new media artist, educator and co-founder of The PASEO festival in Taos New Mexico. She was an artist and Education Director for ISEA2012 and has been serving as an AmericorpsVISTA with Biocultura for the past three years developing the STEAMNM project in Northern New Mexico. She creates participatory experiences with a focus on particle physics, education and social practice. In 2009 she started the STEMarts LAB a project that applies the latest science research and technological innovations to arts and education through interdisciplinary collaborations.
Co-sponsored by Santa Fe Institute, with thanks to Currents New Media Festival.
For more information visit bioculturasantafe.com/events.
Albuquerque Wonder Cabinet: Tamarind Institute
Precision and Imagination, a weekend-long Wonder Cabinet, pitched squarely along the borderlands between Art & Science.
PARTICLE PHYSICS AND NATIVE AMERICAN COSMOLOGIES
April 20-22, 2018
This session featured Taos-based artist Agnes Chavez, who is currently collaborating with CERN to create an installation to visualize data from the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, with Greg Cajete, a Tewa Indian from Santa Clara Pueblo and the director of Native American Studies at The University of New Mexico, in a conversation about Chavez, her work, and its resonances with Native American cosmologies.
(x)trees at GDLuz: Catedral de Guadalajara
New Mexico artist/educator, Agnes Chavez and projection artist, Joe Abraham Dean were invited to project the (x)trees in Guadalajara as part of the U.S. Arts Envoy Sister City initiative. (x)trees is a video projection that will generate a forest of dynamically growing trees on to the Guadalajara Cathedral. The tree branches are generated from messages collected from participants of the Sister City initiative between Albuquerque and Guadalajara, capturing the collective spirit of the two countries through text messages. Branch by branch the trees form and the messages from each branch are displayed for a fleeting moment. The (x)trees represent our universal connection to each other through nature and technology.
Sister Cities International hosted its first-ever U.S.-Mexico Sister Cities Mayors Summit in Guadalajara February 15-16, 2018. Designed to promote grassroots citizen diplomacy and the concept of cross-border, city-to-city collaboration in the 21st century, the summit addressed themes related to immigration, innovation, economic integration, trade, and security. Agnes and Joe Dean projected the (x)trees for the summit luncheon as a way to underscore the power of art and technology to act as cross-cultural communication tools and binding agents between cities.
Agnes shared her work and STEAM initiatives in a tour to high schools and universities throughout the city organized by the Consulate General of Guadalajara. Follow (x)trees in Guadalajara on Facebook!
Agnes Chavez is the founder of the STEMarts Lab and cofounder of The Paseo Project outdoor arts festival in Taos.
Post by Janet Web. Beyond Taos adapted for this site.