Sustainability

Art & Science class – Art 5101

| Amy Youngs

Professors Iris Meier and Amy Youngs will co-teach an interdisciplinary Art and Science course in Spring 2023. We will do science experiments and art projects which culminate in a collaboratively designed and built art installation. Example artwork from past classes: Unbecoming Carbon: traveling in intercellular space and Where Rocks are Fed to Trees.flyer for class, showing root growth experiments hung in a window and lit with purple light. Another image shows a room-sized installation with root shapes, projected images anda person standing in the middle backlit.

In 2021 this class focused on the roots of plants, and we created an installation called Rhizotron – see images and information from the exhibition in the Art & Tech show.

We welcome interested graduate students and advanced undergraduate students from any discipline. Contact youngs.6@osu.edu or meier.56@osu.edu

 

Art & Science of Roots – ART 5101

| Amy Youngs

Professors Iris Meier and Amy Youngs will co-teach an interdisciplinary Art and Science course in Autumn 2021. We will do science experiments and art projects which culminate in a collaboratively designed and built art installation. Example artwork from past classes: Unbecoming Carbon: traveling in intercellular space and Where Rocks are Fed to Trees.

poster describing Art & Science course with picture of a hand holding roots

We welcome interested graduate students and advanced undergraduate students from any discipline. Contact youngs.6@osu.edu or meier.56@osu.edu

Ruth Burke Visiting Artist

| Amy Youngs

OSU Art & Tech Alumna Ruth Burke (BFA 2012) is visiting to present her recent artwork. Her work involves interspecies collaborations with animals; inspired by her relationships with them. Ruth’s visit is sponsored by the Graduate Student Art Club at Ohio State University.

Ruth Burke digital imaging art
Susurrus 2019, by Ruth Burke

More on Ruth’s Website.

Flyer for Ruth Burke visiting artist

Un-becoming Carbon

| Amy Youngs

Un-becoming Carbon: Traveling in Intercellular Space focuses on the importance of carbon sequestration by plants. The viewers enter the plants’ intercellular space, beginning their journey as a molecule of carbon dioxide, donating their carbon to the plant’s body, and emerging as life-giving oxygen. The interactive installation explores this process through physical, audio and virtual experiences. Entering a giant leaf through a stomatal opening, the viewers are surrounded by sculptural plant cells. Palisade Parenchyma droop from above while below Spongy Parenchyma and Stomata line the floor. Soft structures invite viewers to rest and continue their experience by entering virtual reality. An exploration between the macroverse and the microverse begins in a forest where the viewers take on the role of a carbon particle being absorbed into a leaf; first traveling through intercellular space, then moving into a cell to become part of its substance.

Concluding the experience, visitors are invited to adopt and nurture a living plant propagule to continue its carbon-binding work in their own home. Plant awareness posters act as a souvenir from their intercellular space travel.

This multimedia art installation was collaboratively created by the students and professors of an Art & Science class (Art 5001) by Ellie Bartlett, Jacklyn Brickman, Ashley Browne, Amanda Buckeye, Diva Colter, Mona Gazala, Youji Han, Saba Hashemi Shahraki, Brice Jordan, Liam Manning, Iris Meier, Brooke Stanley, Lily Thompson, Zachary Upperman, Stephen White, Taylor Woodie, and Amy Youngs.

Art and Technology show poster 2019

 

Presented as part of the Art & Technology exhibition, Non-Human Intelligence.

Come out and celebrate with us at the opening on December 4th, 5 – 7pm.

Hopkins Hall, the Ohio State University –  campus map and transportation

Brandon Ballengée – visiting artist

| Amy Youngs

While at Ohio State, Brandon Ballengée will participate in several events:

Tuesday, April 3

Marine Species Eco-Action and Vertebrate Specimen Preservation Workshop
Globally marine fisheries are suffering from species decline with many populations verging on collapse. Choosing locally sourced sustainable seafood is a key to marine conservation, yet few of us know which species are ecologically safe to eat. Join artist/ biologist Brandon Ballengée on a seafood market survey of fishes, mollusks, arthropods and other species. Ballengée will discuss encountered species natural history, ecological status and collectively we will choose specimens for a dissection and preservation workshop following the tour. When back at the lab participants will learn how to dissect and preserve specimens at a Natural History Museum standard.

  • 12:00 pm – meet at The Fish Guys in the North Market, 59 Spruce St, Columbus, OH 43215
  • 2:30 pm – we will meet back at the Museum of Biological Diversity for the dissection and preservation part of the workshop
  • Bring a sketchbook and some money to purchase a fresh specimen at the market.
  • Limited participants: please email youngs.6@osu.edu for availability

Wednesday, April 4

Praeter Naturam: Beyond Nature Artist Talk, 4 pm, Wexner Center for the Arts, Film/Video Theatre

Thursday, April 5

Ohio Ecology on Tap & Crude Life Portable Museum Exhibition 6-8 pm, The Spacebar, 2590 N. High Street

Thursday, April 6

Art & Science Panel 12 pm – 2 pm, Research Commons, 18th Avenue Library

From Molecules to Ecosystems

| Amy Youngs

Announcing a new special topics course for Fall 2017

This Art/Science studio course will explore connections between micro and macro, plants and humans, local and global, anthropocentric and ecocentric. Co-taught by Molecular Genetics professor Iris Meier and Art professor Amy Youngs, students will learn to apply both scientific and artistic methods to creative projects. Working individually and collaboratively, we will do experiments in the lab and art studios, creating works that explore  • climate stress & adaptation • biotech / bioart • constructed ecosystems • biomimicry • hypernature • symbiosis.

All forms of art making welcome in this class. While we will be discussing, reading, and experimenting with molecules, plants and eco-aesthetics, students can chose to work in media appropriate to their creative skill sets. Ideal for graduate students, and advanced undergraduates in studio-based or lab-based disciplines such as Art, Biology, Science, Design, Music and Architecture.

email Amy youngs.6@osu.edu or Iris meier.56@osu.edu for permission to enroll

Where Rocks are Fed to Trees

| Amy Youngs

showposter-web
The faculty and students of the Underground Symbiosis class are ready to show you something you’ve never seen before.

We invite you to experience Where Rocks are Fed to Trees, an art installation inspired by the subterranean, fungal communication networks that enable the sharing and transport of nutrients between different species.

This multi-channel video projection environment was collaboratively created within the context of an Art/Science course at the Ohio State University, Art 5001: Underground Symbiosis: the art and science of mycorrhizal networks. This co-taught course built on synergies between Professor Iris Meier’s research in Arbuscular Mycorrhizae and Professor Amy Youngs’ ecosystem installation artworks. Together, with 16 undergraduate students, we performed scientific experiments such as microscopy, staining, chemical analysis and plant growth trials, to better understand mycorrhizae. Artistic methods, such as observation, speculation, synthesis, manipulation, construction and presentation, were also employed throughout our investigations, which have culminated in this co-created, immersive, art/science installation.

It will be presented as part of the Art and Technology exhibition, Loving the Obligate Symbiont, in Hopkins Hall, at the Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. We invite the public to join us for the reception on Monday, April 25th, 5 – 8pm. Or visit during open hours on April 21, 22 or 25th. More info.

Artists: 

Trent Bailey, Brandon Ball, Katherine Beigel, Gaopeng Chen, Tyler Collins, Sarah Hockman, Shatae Johnson, Eric Lo, Jacob Markusic, Iris Meier, Yoni Mizrachi, Julianne Panzo, Edwin Rice, Ethan Schaefer, Aaron Theesfeld, Robert Ward, and Amy Youngs.

Special thanks to our supporters:

  • The Department of Molecular Genetics
  • The Department of Art
  • College of Arts and Sciences Small Grant Program
  • Biological Sciences Greenhouse
  • Chadwick Arboretum

And thanks to the following individuals, for inspiring our class with presentations and technical assistance: Eduardo Acosta, Dr. Ana Alonso, Jean-Christophe Cocuron, Dr. Dobritsa, Anna Griffis, Norman Groves, Kim Landsbergen, Joan Leonard, Galen Rask, and Emily Yoders-Horn.

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More class photos here.