I’ll be joining a discussion on the future of the arts on November 18, 2016 at #CreativityConnects w/ a great panel of art leaders and creative thinkers. Be sure to follow!
Listen in on what creative thinkers from across the country and across sectors say about how creativity manifests itself in different fields and how we can make more tools, resources, and opportunities accessible to those who want to pursue a creative life. On November 18, “In Pursuit of the Creative Life: The Future of Arts and Creativity in America” will explore these topics and more. Watch the live-stream of the panel sessions starting at 10 am on arts.gov! #CreativityConnects
10:00 am Framing Panel: The Here and Now of Arts and Creativity
@creativecap – Suzy Delvalle
@STEMartslab – Agnes Chavez
@shirletteammons – Shirlette Ammons
@mica – Sammy Hoi
We are excited to announce that the launch of a STEAM Innovation Lab at the Taos Integrated School of the Arts in Taos, New Mexico is underway. STEMarts Lab founder, Agnes Chavez, is working with Richard Greywolf and Megan Avina Bowers to design a STEAM Lab that will launch TISA students and teachers into the 21st century.
For the past three years TISA has participated in the STEMarts Lab youth program@The Paseo Youth program where students have gotten a taste of this unique STEAM approach. They experience cutting edge technologies and science through the lens of new media artists, and collaborate with the artist to create participatory art for Taos’ exciting new festival, The Paseo. In 2015, NY based artist, CHiKA, engaged students in a video mapping marathon that was part of the festival and this year students worked with The Illuminator, an art collective that works with light projections as a means of political expression, environmental transformation, and public discourse. We will integrate an ongoing series of Projecting Particles workshops in collaboration with ATLAS@CERN that will keep students abreast of the latest discoveries in particle physics, and through art, better understand how these discoveries expand our understanding of who we are and our place in the universe.
We have partnered with TWIRL to integrate their exciting STEAM activities, and are looking forward to collaborating with other emerging Maker spaces and activities to create a community-focused laboratory for exploration. The STEAM Innovation Lab at TISA will continue to offer these unique interdisciplinary collaborations but will also provide teachers with year long opportunities to learn about and integrate cutting edge technologies into their own curriculum topics.
Some unique features of the Lab include, A 21st Century Materials and Resource Library, a multi-functional space that allows for multiple intelligence exploration, and a VR biofeedback room that focuses on social emotional intelligence. The TISA STEAM Lab will have a strong emphasis on science concepts, creativity and innovation, personal reflection and growth, and social practice as the foundation to all technological explorations. For more information contact learn@sube.com.
Origination Point is a generative interactive projection installation originally exhibited at the 12th Havana Biennial in Havana, Cuba as part of the collective exhibit Entre, Dentro, Fuera/Between, Inside, Outside.
As part of Agnes Chavez’s Projecting Particles series and inspired by her research stay at ATLAS@CERN in Geneva Switzerland, this work explores new concepts about space, our origins in the universe and how matter was created after the big bang through the newly discovered Higgs field. In Origination Point, Chavez contemplates humanity’s shared subatomic origins in relation to her Cuban-American origins to express that we are more than the physical bodies and socio-cultural identities we construct.
Through a collaboration with artist Marcel Schwittlick, who programmed the code, Origination Point features images of self-generating ‘rocks’ that are transformed in real time exploring the evolution of matter and our wave/particle duality. The images are projected onto a wall of hanging fabric strips creating mesmerizing movements in rhythm with an interactive soundtrack. The interactive composition designed and programmed by sound designer Robert Schirmer includes sounds from NASA’s field recordings of outer space accompanied by terrestrial nature sounds. Through an interactive sensor the visitor moves rocks in and out of a circle on the ground. This process adds layers of water, space and earth sounds designed to shift one’s perception and emotional response to the projected visuals.
Agnes Chavez is a new media artist based in Taos, New Mexico. Inspired by particle physics, nature and technology, Chavez experiments with data visualization, sound and projection art to create participatory environments.
Marcel Schwittlick is a visual artist living in Berlin, Germany examining new possibilities of modern technology. He is interested in digital culture and its inclinations on society and is working in strong connection to various fields in the arts, forging a connection between physical and digital media.
Robert Schirmer is a sound designer and musician living in Berlin,Germany. His approach to sound and music is driven by improvisation and reduction. He’s often using field recordings and home-grown foley recordings.
Buiiding the projection cube maker station. Cade Harris and Melanie Redmond
Buiiding the projection cube maker station prototype. Cade Harris and Melanie Redmond
Designing the projection cube geometry.Aryana and Melanie
Projection mapping tests. Netlogo coding by Drake and Code.
Projection mapping tests. Netlogo coding by Cade, Drake and Code.
Projection mapping tests. Netlogo coding by Cade, Drake and Code.
Invent Event at Enos Garcia April 23, 2016.Twirl Event
Invent Event at Enos Garcia April 23, 2016.Twirl Event. Student led
Invent Event at Enos Garcia April 23, 2016.Twirl Event. Student led
STEMarts LAB Projecting Particles coding team sponsored by ATLAS Experimet at CERN, in partnership with Tracy Gallighan at Taos High School. The team has designed and built a unique projection mapping station for the Invent Event. April 23 12-5m at Enos Garcia Elementary.
We are exploring Netlogo, ‘a programmable modeling environment for simulating natural and social phenomena. NetLogo is particularly well suited for modeling complex systems developing over time. Modelers can give instructions to hundreds or thousands of “agents” all operating independently. This makes it possible to explore the connection between the micro-level behavior of individuals and the macro-level patterns that emerge from their interaction. ‘
I played with this code a little during my residency November 2016 at Santa Fe Art Institute. I am collecting real-time migration data of immigrants and refugees video mapping their movements on to structures inspired by power lines connecting across the landscape. The above images are from the prototype for a large scale “cube” installation. I am exploring agent-based modeling for the data visualization.
ATLAS at CERN partners with Agnes Chavez, Quarknet and The Harwood Museum to bring a unique physics + art opportunity to Taos High School students. This event is sponsored by ATLAS Experiment, The Harwood Museum and Los Alamos National Laboratory. Special thanks to Carla Chavez, Biology teacher at Taos High School and Megan Avina Bowers, teacher at Taos Integrated School of the Arts (TISA). On March 18 and 19, students participated in the International Masterclassto delve into particle physics as a kick off to the 3-day Teen-Led Projecting Particles workshop. The week long event culminated with students coordinating and documenting a physics-inspired projection. They then presented on their experience as part of an Artist Talk at The Harwood Museum, which showed the physics-inspired installation, Origination Point, by Agnes Chavez, Marcel Schwittlick and Robert Schirmer. In addition, lead students visited TISA to do a presentation to younger students sharing what they learned about art and physics.
What is the International Masterclass?
From the CERN website, ‘Each year in spring, research institutes and universities around the world invite students and their teachers for a day-long program to experience life at the forefront of basic research. These International Masterclasses (link is external) give students the opportunity to be particle physicists for a day by analysing real data from CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This year’s edition will attract more than 10,000 high-school students from 40 countries, celebrating the 10th edition of the initiative. As part of this workshop, Taos was conferenced in with students from Medellin, Colombia, Santiago, Chile and Notre Dame, London to compare the results of their investigations.
The Visiting Guest Teachers
Michael Wadness, a high school physics teacher from Medford High School near Boston with a doctorate in science education, lead the exciting International Masterclass at Taos High School on March 18,19.
Sally Seidel is a professor of physics at the Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of New Mexico and presently works on the ATLAS experiment in high energy physics. Sally came from Albuquerque on March 19 to do a presentation and lead a discussion with students on particle physics concepts and ATLAS.
About the Sci-Art integration
After a two day immersion with experts in particle physics, students began the exploration of projection art as a medium of expression and communication. The three-day workshop March 22-24 was led by three teens that participated in the workshop in December 2015. They lead a group of new students to explore a projection art iPad tool called Tagtool. Together they will storyboard, design and document a live projection on to a building inspired by the physics concepts. Special thanks to Markus Dorninger, collaborating partner and developer of the Tagtool app.
Learning by Teaching
During the workshop students presented a PowerPoint to share their experiences as part of an Artist Talk at The Harwood Museum along with artist/facilitator, Agnes Chavez. Students visited Taos Integrated School of the Arts (TISA) and presented to over 70 students from different classrooms. They shared what they learned about particle physics and how it informed their art. These new additions to the Projecting Particles workshop deepened the students understanding of the physics concepts and developed valuable leadership and communication skills.
Understanding the Higgs Field Concept– Nice visuals and effects make the concepts easy to understand. Filmed before the Higgs was discovered but still good for understanding basic concepts.
” Ars Electronica-style festivals to artists in residence programmes at scientific organisations, “art meets science” is a term that just keeps on trending. ATLAS visiting artist Agnes Chavez has taken a fresh look at the merging of the disciplines, adding a new one to the mix: “Art meets Science meets Education”. “..agnes chavez CERN ATLAS projecting particles by Katarina Anthony in the CERN Bulletin.
Thanks to ATLAS at CERN for sponsorship of Dr. Luis Flores Castillo as physics instructor in the Projecting Particles workshop at the Havana Biennial 2015. Special thanks to Dr. Steve Goldfarb and Kate Shaw for facilitating the residency and the sponsorship that made it all possible.
Origination Point, the interactive projection installation, was part of the collective exhibit “Entre, Dentro, Fuera/Between, Inside, Outside” at the 12th Havana Biennial in Havana Cuba.
Artists: Agnes Chavez (artist/concept), Marcel Schwittlick
(visual artist/coder), Robert Schirmer (intercative sound)
UNM Art Graduate Student assistants: Abbey Hepner,
Christine Posner, Julianne Aguilar, Adrian Pijoan
Interactive projection installation
Written in OpenFrameworks and Max MSP
A projection of self-generating “rocks” (a visual metaphor
for the particle nature of matter) are transformed through
mesmerizing movements in rhythm with an interactive
soundtrack (representing the wave nature of matter).
Audio was created with sounds recorded by NASA from
outer space and with real nature sounds. To interact with
the piece, move the three “rocks” in and out of the circle
on the floor, adding layers of sound designed to shift
your perception of and emotional response to the
visuals.
“In this piece I contemplate both my origins as a Cuban
American and humanity’s shared ‘subatomic’ origins to
express that we are more than the physical bodies and
socio-cultural identities we construct.”
Origination Point, the interactive projection installation, was part of the collective exhibit “Entre, Dentro, Fuera/Between, Inside, Outside” at the 12th Havana Biennial in Havana Cuba. The concept began to brew in December after I received the invitation from curator, Dannys Montes de Oca. I decided on the series I was currently exploring called Projecting Particles that involved doing a 2-week research stay at CERN in Geneva Switzerland. The question I was exploring in the residency was how can these understandings of space and the origins of matter transform the way we perceive the world around us and more specifically, as artists how we visualize and create. As the concept evolved so did the collaboration of individuals that came together to design and realize the installation for the inauguration on May 22, 2015 at the Pabellon Cuba. Visual artist and coder, Marcel Schwittlick, who designed the generative code, sound designer, Robert Schirmer who engineered fantastical sounds for the interactive rocks, and my graduate student assistants from the University of New Mexico Fine Arts Department, Abbey Hepner, Julianne Aguilar and Adrian Pijoan, with Cristine Posner taking the lead. They were magicians when it came to installing the piece on site in Cuba. Thanks to all of you!
The piece is a projection of self-generating “rocks” (a visual metaphor for the particle nature of matter) transformed through
mesmerizing movements in rhythm with an interactive soundtrack (representing the wave nature of matter). Audio was created with sounds recorded by NASA from outer space and with real nature sounds. To interact with the piece, participants move the three “rocks” in and out of the circle on the floor, adding layers of sound designed to shift your perception of and emotional response to the visuals.
In response to the theme of the exhibit, Entre, Dentro, Fuera/Between, Inside, Outside”, I contemplate both my origins as a Cuban American and humanity’s shared ‘subatomic’ origins to express that we are more than the physical bodies and socio-cultural identities we construct.
