We Are Hiring Students!

The Living Art and Ecology Lab is Hiring!

We are looking for ten undergraduate students to assist on two interdisciplinary research projects this year.

Photo of the Lichen Likers student-faculty group from last year, pictured with a 3D lichen model they created using augmented reality

Learning Lichen is an artistic research project supported by the Global Arts and Humanities Discovery Theme of Care, Culture, and Justice.  The project aims to promote public awareness of the valuable relationship between humans, non-humans, and our shared environment through combining art and science practices. This project is a continuation of the Lichen Likers project from 2024, which you can learn about here: https://u.osu.edu/lichen/. We are hiring six (6) Student Research Assistants to collaborate with faculty and staff in exploring the topic described above. Four (4) student assistants will focus on workshop development and art research while two (2) will focus on the media design through digital documentation and storytelling. Faculty Advisors for this project are Amy Youngs and Doo-sung Yoo in the Department of Art.

Link to Apply: https://www.myworkday.com/osu/d/inst/15$151691/9925$254268.htmld

 

Lost Waters is a collaborative project to investigate changes to the South Oval Landscape across time, centering around the disappearance of Neil Run stream in the 1890s. Two teams of students will be hired to assist on this project: one focused on researching changes to the landscape, and the other focused on using this data to create an Augmented Reality artwork visualizing these changes. This research and artwork will help contextualize modern environmental conditions on campus, focusing on how hydrological changes have impacted ecosystem services and local biodiversity. This project is supported by an Ohio State Energy Partners (OSEP) grant. Faculty Advisors for this project are Amy Youngs (Department of Art) and Jake Boswell (Landscape Architecture).

Link to Apply (Landscape Research): https://www.myworkday.com/osu/d/inst/15$392530/9925$254253.htmld

Link to Apply (Art and Tech): https://www.myworkday.com/osu/d/inst/15$151691/9925$254221.htmld

 

To apply to these projects or to learn more about each position, students should follow the links provided. You will be asked to enter your OSU login credentials to access the job postings.

 

The deadline to apply to these positions is listed as August 21st, but we may continue to accept applications until the end of the month.

 

Any questions can be sent to the Living Art and Ecology Lab Specialist Emma Kline at Kline.434@osu.edu.

 

Introducing Artist-in-Residence Doo-Sung Yoo

Meet the Artist 

This past semester the Living Art and Ecology Lab welcomed its first artist in residence, DooSung Yoo. DooSung 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

DooSung’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, DooSung 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 DooSung’s residency continues through the end of this academic year.

Thanks for reading, and welcome to the lab DooSung!