lichen

Introducing Artist-in-Residence Doo-Sung Yoo

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Meet the Artist 

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.”

Artist-in-Residence Doo-Sung Yoo in the field, photographing lichen on a tombstone

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).

Residency Activities

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.

Doo-Sung standing under an augmented reality model of a lichen specimen. This model was made by the Lichen Likers group as a part of their fall research activities.

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!

Workshop Series: Lichen Creation & Ideation

| Amy Youngs

The Lichen Likers* of the Living Art & Ecology Lab will host the second workshop in our series. We are artists learning with lichens, observing and experiencing their symbiotic lifestyle, conceptualizing, and practicing respectful, creative activities with lichens. In this workshop, we invite you to join us in five different hands on activities involving observing, drawing, ideating, mediating, and creating with lichen – in ways that do not harm them.

* The Lichen Likers art research group includes art faculty Doosung Yoo and Amy Youngs and art students Anna Arbogast, Madison Blue, Xiuer Gu, Elias Marquez, and Nate Tyler.

Follow Lichen Likers on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lichenlikers

 

Workshop Series: Learning Lichen!

| Amy Youngs

The ‘Learning Lichen’ workshop is the first one in a series of art workshops with Living Art & Ecology Lab, where our art communities are learning with lichens, observing and experiencing their symbiotic lifestyle, conceptualizing, and practicing respectful, creative activities with lichens. This first workshop includes a talk by Emeritus Professor Robert Klips, author of ‘Common Mosses, Liverworts, and Lichens of Ohio’, who will speak about lichens and share his research experience in the study of lichens and bryophyte ecology, and long-term teaching in the Department of Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology at OSU.


The first workshop is a great opportunity to learn more about the science of lichens, such as identification, anatomy, morphology, and interactions with environment. Also, it would be a good opportunity to learn more about lichens’ symbiotic lifestyle with other organisms, including being ‘non-binary’, ‘multiple’, ‘resilient’, and ‘beyond human time’. Learning scientific backgrounds and facts will help us move to the next themes of workshop series, in which we will discuss and envision how we might better approach non-human beings, including and embracing ‘others’ as we learn from lichens.

At the beginning of the workshop, the members of ‘Lichen Research & Art Project’, Doosung Yoo and Amy Youngs will briefly introduce our collaborative work, along with undergraduate interns Anna Arbogast, Madison Blue, Xiuer Gu, Elias Marquez, and Nate Tyler. We hope to engage more artists in our projects and future workshops. Please join us!

Our Lichen Likers Instagram is linked in the poster QR code