Colliding Worlds by Arthur I. Miller

Author:Arthur I. Miller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

7.12: Joe Davis, Bacterial Radio, 2011.

Davis is regularly invited to address science departments and symposia, though he finds that “often I speak a language that nobody understands.” He feels passionately that artists should not pander to market tastes. “Artists should create things that hold an idea, no matter what it is. That’s what art is.”

The firefly brain: Jun Takita

Jun Takita is another outsider, dreaming unimaginable dreams. A highly contemplative Japanese artist, he is inspired by Zen gardens which depict water using only sand. “The concept of a garden is in your head. The Zen monk watches over it.”

Born in Tokyo in 1966, as a child Takita was enthralled by natural landscapes and deeply affected by urban development leading to the death of plants, animals, and insects. “Most of all, the little fireflies that I loved were disappearing.” He studied arts at Nihon University, then moved to Paris and did his master’s degree at the École Nationale d’Art, while also reading books on science, “because without science there is no way to visualize the world.” In Paris he studied under the unconventional Polish artist and architect Piotr Kowalski, who looked for ways to express natural phenomena through the senses. His projects included explosions, electronic devices, plant growth, and gravity. After he died in 2004, Takita took over his large garden.

With the help of physicists and geophysicists Takita has continued Kowalski’s work exploring gravity and how we keep our balance. He muses about whether there could be a connection between gravity and light, as both penetrate everything. He is particularly interested in bioluminescence, the power of living organisms to produce light, and what that tells us about our relationship to nature. Very few species glow in the dark. Among them are fireflies, glow worms and Dinoflagellata, a kind of plankton which has characteristics belonging to both plants and animals.

Takita believes that “artistic action” is necessary in the modern world where “nostalgia for paradise [and] the impact of a technocratic future” clash, a world where even fireflies may become extinct. Through his art he tries to create a landscape that is “a direct extension of the body, of my body, the landscape of a dreamed reality.”

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.