"... We say we love nature, but only when nature is harmless, in that
corner we have locked her in, silent and controllable. But this is not
nature.
Nature is often unpredictable, intractable, uncontrollable, violent,
strong... it can be very dangerous. And so 'she' becomes an 'enemy', a
'monster', a 'menace' to fight..."
Well said.
Capturing and applying the "unpredictable" and even "violent" aspects
of nature has facilitated stunning works of art in photography and on
movie sets. But presently, my mind is blank when it comes to artists
working with tornadoes, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions as a medium.
Although there was Walter De Maria's "The Lightning Field" (1977)
which is an amazing body of work.
http://www.diaart.org/sites/main/lightningfield and
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/12/AR2009081203304.html
"Some artists worked in this direction, questioning the simple idea of
nature humans often have. For instance Julia Reodica and Adam Zaretsky
in the 'The Workhorse Zoo Art and Bioethics Quiz'
(http://emutagen.com/wrkhzoo.html) project."
Yet this project is controlling the life forms on exhibit. It seems
that the art which engages nature at its most natural state, with as
little control and jurisdiction as possible. For example, scientist
Dian Fossey comes to mind.
http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/dianfossey.html Also
artist/naturalist Ansel Adams, who championed biodiversity. Artists
whose work engages nature as a medium, such as Christo
http://www.christojeanneclaude.net/tg.shtml and Robert Smithson
http://www.robertsmithson.com/ not only work with nature and the
environment, but also with the life forms within the respective
landscapes.
Ansel writes: "The whole world is, to me, very much 'alive' -- all the
little growing things, even the rocks. I can't look at a swell bit of
grass and earth, for instance, without feeling the essential life --
the things going on within them. The same goes for a mountain, or a
bit of the ocean, or a magnificent piece of old wood." (Adams
http://www.morning-earth.org/ARTISTNATURALISTS/AN_A_Adams.html )
Directly engaging his medium as an experience, light and environmental
artist James Turrell, brings the viewer/participant into nature
combining nature with technology
http://blog.oregonlive.com/visualarts/2008/02/inside_the_light_james_turrell.html Biological artist Philip Beesley's "Hylozoic Soil" is a fascinating project
http://rs.resalliance.org/2009/02/19/neo-biological-art/
It seems that the recent exhibition "Haute Couture: Art and Science in
the Post-Biological Age" revealed some interesting pieces which cover
a wide range of works. My own work "Bone Density", included in the
exhibition,
http://www.videodoc.ncca-kaliningrad.ru/participants/ii-limits-of-modeling/
looks inside the human bone to explore the collapse of osteoblasts
(bone cells), which, in this case, is due to faulty gene (genetic
mutations). Simultaneously, the projects engaged in explorations of
six species of roses whose plant structures (their spine-like stems)
were collapsing due to an infestation of nasty insects.
"On the relations between animal species and languages we published on
Noema some Louis Bec's
researches:
http://www.noemalab.org/sections/ideas/ideas_articles/bec_technozoosemiotiqu
e_1.html
http://www.noemalab.org/sections/ideas/ideas_articles/bec_poissons_electriqu
es.html
http://www.noemalab.org/sections/ideas/ideas_articles/bec_stimutalogues.html
http://www.noemalab.org/sections/ideas/ideas_articles/bec_chromatologues.htm
l "
Excellent! Thank you for providing these links.
Natasha
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