Art and science
For the Science Hotel Science Festival, organized by Erasmus University Rotterdam, CBK Rotterdam invited visual artist and filmmaker Mirjam Somers and photographer Bas Czerwinski to make portraits of three Rotterdam visual artists who have common ground with science. In collaboration with Nicole Sciarone, Somers and Czerwinski made short video portraits of Daniela de Paulis, EAT ART collective and Maud van den Beuken.
A conversation becomes interesting for this collective when different opinions about art and food come together. The collective encourages itself and others to discover the world through a mix of art, food, technology and people. EAT ART collective describes itself as "a collective of multidisciplinary all-rounders who are fascinated by the world around food". The collective works together with researchers and professionals from companies and universities.
Powder to the People is an ongoing research project of this artists' collective that focuses on the role that industrial food additives and techniques can play in the kitchen. What role can the food industry play in a sustainable food system? EAT ART collective believes that democratizing practical knowledge from that industry contributes to a healthy discussion. "Let us choose which additives we use, for our own well-being and that of our environment". As an artist collective they can take a critical position outside the power triangle of industry, consumer and government.
Daniela de Paulis is an interdisciplinary and internationally working artist. She works together with other artists, scientists and radio amateurs. Since 2009 she is - the first - artist-in-residence at the radio telescope Dwingeloo and ASTRON (Dutch research center for radio astronomy), where she developed a technology called Visual Moonbounce together with the CAMRAS and the ASTRON team. She is currently a guest researcher at ASCA (Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis), University of Amsterdam, and is developing research into interstellar transmissions. Since 2010 she works with the international collective Astronomers Without Borders (AWB), as founder and director of the AstroArts program. In 2013 she founded Cabine Voltaire, an online collaboration platform for live discussions about science, technology and humanities.
De Paulis is currently working on her new project cogito for which she collaborates with the Overview Institute and with neuroscientists and philosophers. With the project cogito thoughts are spread in space like radio waves. The project takes place at the Dwingeloo radio telescope in the Netherlands. cogito is a thought experiment that is being developed as an art installation and excursion in Drenthe. The project is the result of a number of years of research at the Dwingeloo and ASTRON radio telescopes.
In her practice as an artist, Van den Beuken starts from the fixed fact that the ground is always under our feet, and the air above our heads. In exhibitions and in public spaces, she makes works and installations that change the space and question the physical relationship between man and earth. This year Van den Beuken participated in the Arts / Science: Academy Honors Program for Young Artists and Scientists of the KNAW.
Her project Mapping the Sky is a cartographic investigation into the non-physical and indefinable: how does the air define itself as space? Never before has the sky been mapped as a stand-alone space. In two years, Maud van den Beuken, in collaboration with cartographer Falco Joosten, developed a method to define the sky. Van den Beuken made a simulation of the most used satellite that maps the country: Landsat 8 (NASA, USGS). The sky was captured from the land at exactly the same times and locations as the Landsat does from the land at an altitude of 705 kilometers.
Publication date: 09 / 10 / 2018