Join the Living Art and Ecology Lab in welcoming local artist Marcia Armstrong to campus for an Artist Talk! This Event will be held Wednesday, March 6th 2024 from 4:00-5:00pm in 358 Hopkins Hall. Please see the above flyer for more details. Further information on Marcia’s work can be found on her website here or in this article published by the Columbus Dispatch.
This past semester the Living Art and Ecology Lab welcomed its first artist in residence, Doo–Sung Yoo. Doo–Sung is a Korean new media artist and a lecturer here at Ohio State University. His work focuses on the interface between the living and non-living aspects of our world. As he describes in the artist statement on his website,
“I create environments in which living entities and biological materials, including the human body, are combined with technological systems. In these environments, my hybrid sculptural and interactive entities mediate the confluence between triangular oppositions of human-animal-technological nature, and blur their boundaries. My artwork is based on those intersections between natural and unnatural technology. I explore aesthetic possibilities of ‘interspecies’ and ‘interanimation’ through human relationships with non-human others within my artistic forms.”
Doo–Sung’s previous works have been exhibited, reviewed, and published in spaces such as Posthumanism in Art and Science: A Reader (USA), Life After Literature: Perspectives on Biopoetics in Literature and Theory (Switzerland), Tierstudien (Germany), Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture (England), Art and Speculative Futures International Conference 2016 (Spain), Bodies on Stage: Acting Confronted by Technology 2015 (France), Wi: Journal of Mobile Culture (Canada), Intertekst (Poland), and Evolution Haute Couture: Art and Science in the Post-Biological Age (Russia).
During his residency with the Living Art and Ecology Lab, Doo–Sung has been working alongside OSU Art and Tech faculty Amy Youngs and undergraduate research interns Anna Arbogast, Nathan Tyler, Elias Marquez, Xiuer Gu, and Madison Blue to investigate the lives of lichen. Collectively, this group refers to themselves as the Lichen Likers. Projects and events from this group so far include a ‘lichen garden’ outside of Hopkins Hall, a guest lecture from emeritus professor Robert Klips on lichen natural history, and a virtual reality project to create larger than life models of lichen from 3D specimen scans, among many others.
Lichen Likers will continue to host workshops moving forward, providing space for our human art communities to observe and learn from lichens. They will lead creative activities centered around these symbiotic organisms, with the goal of conceptualizing better ways for including non-human beings in our making practices. Stay tuned to hear more from this group as they continue to embrace the more-than-human world in their craft. A new group of interns will join this project in spring semester, as Doo–Sung’s residency continues through the end of this academic year.
Thanks for reading, and welcome to the lab Doo–Sung!
Selected past events and workshops from Spring 2023 are highlighted below.
Biodegradable Paint-Making Workshop: extracting pigment from oranges, cabbage, flowers, and tea to make watercolors and egg tempera paints that are 100% biodegradable using at-home composting methods.
Symbiosis Walks: Recurring series hosted by the Living Art & Ecology Lab to explore the local ecosystem of our campus. These observational excursions are accessible to all, and highlight the symbiotic relationships between wild organisms living on campus – including hawks, insects, lichen, and trees. Check art.osu.edu/events for the next upcoming event!
ARTificial Intelligence with Springtail Insects: investigating visual storytelling from the perspective of an invertebrate, as told by ChatGPT and DALL-E.
