Artillery Magazine

Tag: Getty PST

  • COLLISION ENSURES REACTION Getty PST: Art and Science Collide

    COLLISION ENSURES REACTION
    Getty PST: Art and Science Collide

    This past fall, I saw over twenty PST ART exhibitions offering contrasting visions of how “art’ and “science” might collide or collaborate. The shows addressed topics from surveillance to biotech to space exploration with dives into artificial intelligence, Indigenous textile-based technologies of the early modern era, and reflections on the environmental precarity of Los Angeles. There were as many variations on the interpretation of “art and science” as there were exhibitions.   

    From my perspective as a curator of one PST ART exhibition at UCLA Art | Sci Center, and an advisor and contributor to others, both a curious public and knowledgeable researchers are crucial to successful art and science collaboration. Concern about a lack of public investment in science prompted Getty to propose the topic in response to the first Trump administration’s hostility toward scientists and expertise in general. The hope was to educate a wider public about the value of science in the face of the climate crisis, including the wildfires in 2018 and 2020, and the global pandemic, which started only weeks after PST research awards were announced.

    Research plans had to be radically adapted and were often delayed in order to accommodate over a year of travel restrictions and archive. Around the time that exhibition grants were awarded in 2023, the messaging took a different tone, less academic and airier. Promos produced by Getty PR consultants featured museum directors at the Hammer and LACMA touting the astonishing “newness” of the “collision” that Getty had orchestrated. And collide we did, with the debris of Cai Guo-Qiang’s capitalist hysteria at USC Coliseum in September, which both prefigured the doom that has enfolded Los Angeles at the start of 2025 and seemed to mock it. Many of the artists and curators who were in attendance agreed that the event was a misstep that privileged donors’ amusement while terrorizing the very people whose labor and intellect had gone into realizing the PST initiative. The Getty was compelled to issue an apology.

    The objects on view took on nearly every form imaginable. At REDCAT, visitors could get a digitized reading of their coffee grounds in One Who Looks at the Cup / Բաժակ Նայող by Mashinka Firunts Hakopian with Dahlia Elsayed and Andrew Demirjian. An immersive installation in the form of a kitchen patterned on Armenian embroideries housed the central, AI-powered oracle into which coffee cups were placed, which prompted printed out readings. At LACMA, Mesoamerican cosmological models were interpreted spatially through pre-Colombian objects from the museum’s collection, including a pair of ceramic Censer Stands with Solar Deities from Palenque, Chiapas, c. 650–850 CE and a selection of Indigenous flutes and ear trumpets all between 500–1500 years old. This edition of PST ART relied heavily on the Greek definition of techne (which encompasses craft and material science) to support a definition of science that included such pre-industrial methodologies as weaving, dyeing and ceramic firing.

    El Palomar, Schreber is a Woman (film still), 2020. 4K video transferred to HD, 2-channel synchronized projection, color, stereo, 30 minutes. © El Palomar, image courtesy the artist.

    The exhibitions that encapsulated art and science most successfully were the ones that combined audience engagement in the form of participatory actions and workshops, and academic conversations that brought innovative scientific research into conversation with artists. The shows that were the most interesting to look at had immersive, visually stimulating artworks and said something meaningful about our human relationship to other species, to the materials of our planet and solar system, and to the pursuit of ideas. Exhibitions at the Fowler, the Autry, and LACMA all took this approach to promote Indigenous and Latin American cultural inclusion in their projects. At the Armory, artists were invited to contribute works that treat seeds as a form of future archaeology. Citizen science is another model that dovetails with these expanded approaches, embodied in one of PST ART’s most historically significant shows, which was a posthumous retrospective of artist and UC Irvine professor Beatriz da Costa organized by LACE and hosted at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery.

    Some of the most compelling moments of this season’s PST ART were the cross-disciplinary symposiums at UC Irvine, UC Riverside, ICA LA, and UCLA that brought artists and scientists into direct dialogue. Academic discourse is valuable for its informed approach to transformative collective imagining, and these symposiums addressed some ideas that couldn’t be practically realized in formal art environments. Experiments as form, particularly those involving live specimens, starved in airless and moisture-free museum environments. “Emergence,” Fathomers’ exhibition on biological art at the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center included organically derived art and design projects under the category of “SynBio” that appeared more theoretically potent than invested with life potential.

    At ICA LA, El Palomar brought early psychoanalysis, sublimated desire and the psychopharmacological critiques of Paul B. Preciado to life, and King Cobra and Xandra Ibarra both engaged the relationship between raced and sexed bodies and the social apparatus in provocative ways. At the Beall Center at UC Irvine, Chico MacMurtrie’s inflatable robots wheezed and struggled in a Sisyphean performance of artificial life, and Cesar & Lois proposed a biological-digital network synthesizing biofeedback from living plants and microbes with digital information flows. Hege Tapio’s thought experiment EPHEMERAL suggested that artificial intelligence could be deployed to synthesize human emotions using neuropeptides, effectively introducing a whole new way for corporations to influence and control us through commoditized feelings. The implications of such projects are vast and compelling, and sometimes deeply frightening, an aspect of scientific inquiry that PST ART shows rarely explored.

    Lauren Bon “Concrete is Fluid,” exhibition view, 2024. Courtesy of Honor Fraser.

    It did not always matter whether what was on view was artistic output or data visualization. A map created by the Los Angeles County Flood Control District in 1930 for a watershed with an explicitly racist name spoke volumes with minimal interpretation when presented in the CSU Dominguez Hills exhibition “Brackish Water.” Metabolic Studio exhibited earth excavated from underneath the Los Angeles River at Honor Fraser. Conceptual moments in scientific visualization can sometimes be viewed through the same lens as contemporary art. At Brand Library, Jet Propulsion Labs exhibited a symbolic impression called an “Astroglyph” that researchers had placed to mark different research sites on Earth. These imprints into soil and other terrestrial materials are temporary interventions, documented and catalogued as a conceptual archive long after the marks have faded or dispersed.

    At the start of the initiative, Getty asked participating curators, “What is the benefit of art and science collaboration for scientists?” It is telling that an arts institution would not ask a similar question about the benefit of collaboration for artists, but the question is fruitful. At best, art and science can bring out dimensions of one another that the conventions of either discipline otherwise inhibit. Art and science are a conversation, not a collision. Scientists work with budgets that most artists can scarcely dream of, fueled by assurance of their discipline’s centrality to the values of both knowledge and commerce. Artists also trade in both knowledge and commerce, and we can learn from the higher expectations of scientists while also acknowledging the moral compromises that frequently accompany larger funding sums.

    Scientists are specialized and trained, with hard-won expertise that is not readily translated to the lay public. Artists are adepts at visual communication who can synthesize complex ideas in a manner that becomes digestible for a broader audience. Scientists have a communication problem, too much information and too little connection. Artists are communication and connection experts. The PST ART exhibitions that were able to spark a meaningful collaboration were often the ones that presented fewer objects and more media, live performance, and scientific experiments as non-traditional formats for art. Here, art and science collaborations expand our imaginations by introducing possibilities that are fantastical but also deeply, fundamentally real.

  • The Harrison Studio [Newton and Helen Mayer Harrison] Survival Piece #1: Air, Earth Water, Interface or Annual Hog Pasture Mix (1970-71) at Various Small Fires

    The Harrison Studio [Newton and Helen Mayer Harrison]
    Survival Piece #1: Air, Earth Water, Interface or Annual Hog Pasture Mix (1970-71) at Various Small Fires

    Organized in concert with the Getty’s PST ART initiative, this re-mounting of Survival Piece #1: Air, Earth, Water Interface or Annual Hog Pasture Mix (1970–71) — in keeping with the entirety of the Harrison collective’s output — is less about a “collision” (per PST’s subtitle “Art and Science Collide”) than the convergence of the two. The Harrison Studio, a collaborative team that encompassed Newton (1932–2022) and Helen Mayer (1927–2018) Harrison, and later including Gabriel Harrison and other artists, approached its subjects with an ethos that was — beyond their environmental character and scope — above all social.

    Moving past a superb and beautifully complementary exhibition of work by another gallery artist, Sarah Ippolito, the viewer is confronted by the Hog Pasture in its raised redwood planting bed (or “growth box”), roughly eight feet across and extending twelve feet into the main gallery space — and by engaged viewers mingled around its perimeter. The dimensions approximate those of its original incarnation — at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts in 1971 (a 2012 iteration at MOCA here in L.A. was slightly larger). Suspended approximately five feet directly above is a lighting truss studded with LED grow lights configured to the measurements of the planter.

    The planter is filled with topsoil, compost and other planting media more or less comparable to previous iterations (also 5,000 European night crawler worms), from which various grasses—the product (as in the original) of R.H. Shumway Seedsman’s Annual Hog Pasture Mix—are already growing abundantly, albeit not to the density seen in prior installations. (The VSF team had far less than the many weeks of advanced growth prior museum iterations were afforded.) Still, it is something that a pig might conceivably pick at. And that was precisely the objective—not to sustain or nourish a pig necessarily (though at least one museum “pasture” installation did just that), but to get the human viewers looking and talking about it.

    “All of a sudden, people are looking at the environment in one way or another, and they’re looking differently. In other words, it’s bringing their attention in a way that is meaningful.” The comment comes from Helen Harrison herself; a video loop taken from the closing of the MOCA 2012 Land Art exhibition runs on a monitor directly behind the viewers as they enter the gallery. This is exactly the sort of conversation the installation engendered. Setting to one side the dire condition of topsoils globally (consider the disastrous deterioration of the Amazon basin), through the “Survival Pieces” and indeed the entire body of their work, the Harrisons sought to press forward discussions among humans about the larger conversation of the human species with its natural and built environments and the global biosphere generally.

    Press materials for the show reference Donald Judd and Dan Flavin as influences for the Harrisons’ design templates, but the more pertinent influence here is Robert Smithson. Unlike Smithson, the Harrisons’ focus was the environment; but as quintessential “non-sites,” “the Survival Pieces” (Hog Pasture through Full Farm) present closed-off arrays of “determinate uncertainty,” placing the ecological in a deeper dialogue with the cultural—with a view towards reconciliation, restoration, and sustainability.

  • Cai Guo-Qiang and cAI™ at the Los Angeles Coliseum

    Cai Guo-Qiang and cAI™
    at the Los Angeles Coliseum

    At dusk on September fifteenth, nearly 5,000 spectators gathered on the field of the Los Angeles Coliseum to view WE ARE: EXPLOSION EVENT FOR PST ART, a monumental daytime fireworks display by Cai Guo-Qiang* and his custom artificial intelligence model cAI™. Commissioned and presented by Getty in collaboration with the University of Southern California, the half-hour opening event to “PST ART 2024: Art & Science Collide” celebrated a blue-chip artist planting his flag in generative AI.

    Calling cAI™ a vanity project may be too on the nose. The AI model bears the artist’s name and is trademarked and branded with its own logo, which appeared in the sky in a constellation of drones equipped with pyrotechnic devices. Trained on Cai’s archive, cAI™ applies deep learning to reflect the artist’s interests and biases. Employing the AI model as a mouthpiece, Cai narrated the event in Chinese, his project manager translated his words into English, and cAI™ spoke her translation, its voice simulating Cai’s timbre and accent. The accompanying fireworks, which exploded in the stands and the airspace above the stadium, and the content simultaneously presented on the stadium’s mirrored display screens were cAI™’s response to the artist’s question “What is the fate of humanity with AI?”

    Structured in five acts, cAI™’s forecasts resembled those of a Magic 8 Ball. In one sequence of explosions, the AI model proposed a mathematical formula followed by a lengthy explanation that leaned heavily on mystical abstraction. In another, cAI™ offered a series of portmanteaux it had coined—echoanta, synthview, altcog, logicloom and humavisor—spelling the words out in the stands in monochromatic puffs of smoke.

    cAI™’s allusions, which Cai often called out in his narration, further muddled its answer. The name of ACT I DIMENSIONALITY REDUCTION refers to a common method for enhancing machine learning models. In ACT II WE ARE, a snaking line of explosions traveled rapidly through the stands, a nod to the serpent in the Garden of Eden. ACT III THEFT OF FIRE featured a lightning-bolt formation followed by an eruption of skyward bursts of red and orange pigments, referencing the ancient Greek myth of Prometheus, who stole lightning from Zeus to give man fire. In ACT IV BIRD OF PARADISE, colorful bouquets of smoke that were launched along the perimeter of the stadium formed a ring in the sky, representing the floral emblem of Los Angeles. ACT V DIVINE WRATH pointed to Zeus’s retribution against Prometheus and God’s punishment of Adam and Eve, or so I gather.

    In the final act, we found ourselves directly in the fallout zone as shell fireworks launched overhead in a dense and roaring barrage of explosions. Surrounded by a tumult—sharp cracks and thundering booms that surpassed the threshold of discomfort, sparks flying above, plumes blossoming and dissipating around us, cardboard and clay debris falling from the sky—spectators covered their ears, noses, mouths, heads, and eyes with nowhere to seek cover. Given his mastery of fireworks, Cai would have been certain of this outcome.

    The finale was a breach of trust, its aggression revealing the limits of intelligence and an extraordinary loosening of permission structures. Under Cai’s direction, cAI™’s inherent combination of knowing without feeling is dangerous. Under the auspices of Getty, USC, and PST ART, Cai is too.

    *Cai pronounced like the word sigh with a t in front of it, Guo like gwuh, Qiang like cheeahng, the sound of its last three letters bearing a closer resemblance to the -ong in Cheech & Chong than the ang- in angle.

  • Editor’s Letter

    tulsa-bookmarkNot so long ago on a return flight to LA, I was sitting next to a young Boston couple who had never been to the West Coast before. I asked them what the first thing they wanted to do was when they landed. They said they wanted to eat at Del Taco. I tried to hide my horror and politely suggested that if they noticed any of the numerous taco trucks parked on the streets of our fair city, to please try those tacos as well. “It’s the closest thing you’ll get to Mexico without going to Mexico,” I told them. That didn’t seem to impress them at all. They much preferred their Del Taco wet dream while be-bopping to their iTunes.

    I can’t claim to be an authority on Mexican culture, but living in Los Angeles does lend some street cred. Growing up in Missouri, you couldn’t get any further from Latin culture. My closest encounter were the tacos my Italian-American mom made with ground beef spiced with Lawry’s taco seasoning and topped with shredded cheddar cheese in crunchy taco shells, still warm from the oven. That Taco Bell sensibility kills me now, having lived in Southern California for over two decades.Maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on the Boston teeny-boppers.

    Mexican art has been on my mind for some time. The prospect of devoting an issue to it was met with enthusiasm at an editorial meeting a while ago, but put on the back burner. Now it’s resurfaced, and in this issue my contributors more than make up for my lack of experience south of the border. Some of our writers have collaborated with the artists profiled here or have shown their own work in Mexico. Some have curated contemporary Latin art, or just championed an artist’s work. We have chosen to focus only on artists who are Mexican by birth, who are now living and working either in Mexico or the U.S.

    The result is a rich array of our contributors sharing their Latin passion with Artillery. Chris Kraus delights us with her trip to Mexicali, cavorting with a neo-muralist. Betty Ann Brown recalls her youthful fascination with Mexico, right down to her addiction to hot chilies. Amy Pederson deconstructs rebel artist Joaquin Segura, and Tyler Hubby checks in with Yoshua Okón of Mexico City’s art space SOMA.

    I wanted to do this Mexico issue because I felt ignorant about the art being made there. There’s so much happening in the Mexican and Latin American art scene—more art fairs, more collectors, more artists. And it so happens that the Getty is launching another segment of their PST program, this time calling it LA/LA, short for Los Angeles and Latin America. Maybe the timing is just right.

    But before I sign off, I can’t end without drawing your attention to our newly designed website: artillerymag.com. Check it out. We’re working on adding all of your past favorite columns, articles and reviews, all archived, and preserving seven years of Artillery. We’ll be adding content to it throughout the summer. Something to keep you busy and out of the sun!