How the contemporary artist/art project you selected response to any of the principles in Duncum's article?
Luke Jerram’s Glass Microbiology relates to Duncum’s “representation” principle. Jerram is bringing attention to the way that certain scientific things are represented in journals and media, etc. Microbiological life forms and viruses, things that Jerram is representing in his series are actually smaller than the smallest wavelength of light that humans can perceive. That means that instead of light bouncing off these microscopic things, it goes through them and so they can only be seen outside of the visible light spectrum. Scientists then assign colors to help us understand what they might look like but in reality they aren’t colored. Jerram is bringing attention to this fact by making these sculptures in clear glass so that the objects have no hue. Therefore, his artwork is a realistic representation of microbiology but it also relates to how we typically represent these sorts of things.
Rogan Brown relates to “seduction”. His work is very intriguing and the forms and shapes he creates with the paper are complicated and draw people in. You might feel uncomfortable looking at these shapes or you might find beauty in them, but since there is so much detail you can’t help but stare and analyse every form. Like Duncum talks about, this image is sensory as it is meant to overwhelm your senses.
James Turrel’s Roden Crater also relates to “seduction”. The observation rooms are meant to make people contemplate light and how we perceive it but it also creates a beautiful image of the sky. The sky is sometimes something we take for granted, it’s always above it so most people don’t bother looking at it in the context of beauty and art. By cutting holes in the ceiling, he effectively frames parts of the sky. This recontextualizes the sky and almost turns it into a piece of art on the wall of a museum.
What ideology the artist(s) try to critique, present, or challenge in their artworks/projects?
Luke Jerram and James Turrell are challenging how we both perceive and represent things. Jerram is challenging how we represent microbiology as colorful even though they don’t have colors that humans can perceive. He is drawing attention to this by representing microbiology as black and white. Jerram is also color blind so he is also commenting on the perception of color in general and how it is largely subjective and can be different for people with color blindness. Turrell is also challenging how we perceive light. All the observation rooms in the Roden Crater are set up to capture the natural light and present it in a way that we are not used to. He says his goal is to get people to contemplate how we see light and how that light can change throughout the day/year and also during certain celestial events.
Rogan Brown is challenging how science is always changing our perception of reality. He made these paper cut outs to try and overwhelm the viewer and show how nature is extraordinarily complex but we are trying to find and design simple systems to explain it. He is challenging the idea that we know everything or that we can even know everything through science. He also comments on the relationship between science and nature by using hand cutting techniques as well as laser cutting techniques to cut the paper.
How may the artist's approach to his/her/their inquiry help you think about integrating your secondary field with/into art or vise versa?
All the artists are commenting on different scientific phenomena and how science shapes our understanding of the world. But they aren’t meant to educate about some specific theory, they are just meant for us to question and contemplate what we see and how science influences how we view the world. A lot of the artists also use scientific techniques and technology in their work, such as laser cutting paper. I can integrate these ideas into my art because I can design a process that relates thematically to what I want to explore.