Alison Woods

BIG SCIENCE II

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presented by bG Gallery as part of the

Getty PST ART: Art and Science Collide 2024

curated by Om Bleicher, Sung-Hee Son and Deepa Subramanian

 

 

 

The installation Big Science II alludes to large-scale scientific projects requiring significant resources, collaboration, and advanced technologies involving international cooperation, large facilities, high costs, and long time-frames. Examples include the Large Hadron Collider, Human Genome Project, and Hubble Space Telescope, leading to significant scientific advancements and technological innovations.

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Big Science II suggests that “Science is god,” metaphorically attributing god-like qualities or authority to science. This concept highlights the trust, influence, and reverence science holds in modern society, where it is seen as a source of knowledge, progress, rationality, and even ethical guidance.

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I consider myself to be a cyborg artist, a cross between a computer and a human. Computer and internet searches are a part of the process I use in creating images. For Big Science II, I sourced images from the Internet about nano technology, molecular forms, wealth distribution maps, science fiction’s view of our future, and utopias and distopias.

 

I begin by “painting” with the computer and then interject my human artistic impulses into the process. I try to “break or disrupt” the computer’s original image to keep it from being overly literal. I’ve discovered that when the computer is the only creative voice, such as when AI generates the image, it is uninteresting in its perfection. I work with the computer to create a highly ornate structure, which I then continue to interpret both virtually and through paint. It’s my visceral artistic struggle with the surface that completes the image, making it unexpected and interesting.

 

An information-loaded science fiction CG image where all the details are present in their literal form is decidedly different from an implied image where the artist and the viewer are asked to fill in the story by studying and interpreting the image allowing for the human-factor to be a part of the experience.

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Our technological future is both a utopia and a dystopia. This is why chaos and order are both a part of my work and Big Science II. Humans naturally crave unpredictability, chaos, and the unexpected because anticipated perfection is uninteresting. Images that incorporate utopia and dystopia are therefore more human and more real.

 

Interestingly, the under-layer of Big Science II is a map of income levels in technological communities that came up when I researched utopias and dystopias. In previous work I produced emotive maps of financial markets for a series about the “illusion of wealth,” an artificial construct invented by humans to create wealth and facilitate trade. Once again, technology is naturally built to control, in this case, the wealth that surrounds it.

 

Big Science II reminds us that technology can lead us to into both utopia and dystopia.