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Join us for a conversation featuring artist Cy Keener, landscape researcher Justine Holzman, climatologist Ignatius Rigor, and scientist John Woods, who collaborated over a four year period to create the work in our current exhibition Arctic Ice: A Visual Archive (on view through February 15, 2023). Their work is the result of the integration of field data, remote satellite imagery, scientific analysis, and multimedia visual representation and documents Arctic ice that is disappearing due to climate change. What is unique about this art based on scientific data is that Keener and Holzman were involved in the design and construction of the tools that collected the data as well as their placement in the environment. With this work, their goal is to make scientific data tangible, visceral, and experiential. They ask how artistic and creative practices can contribute to scientific endeavors while making scientific research visible to the public.

Agenda:

6:00 – 6:30 p.m. Doors open, audience takes seats in NAS Building Fred Kavli Auditorium

6:30 – 6:50 p.m. Event begins with welcoming remarks and community share, Fred Kavli Auditorium

Anyone in the audience working at the intersection of art and science will have 30 seconds to share their work. Please speak at one of the aisle mics in the room and present your work as a teaser so that those who are interested can seek you out during social time following the event.

6:50 – 7:40 p.m. Panelists presentations (12 minutes each)

Cy Keener, artist and assistant professor of sculpture and emerging technology, University of Maryland, College Park

Justine Holzman, landscape researcher and historian of science PhD student, Princeton University, New Jersey

Ignatius Rigor, climatologist at the Polar Science Center, Applied Physics Laboratory, and an affiliate assistant professor, School of Oceanography, University of Washington, Seattle

John Woods, retired US Navy Meteorology and Oceanography Officer, current Deputy Director for US Navy International Engagements, Washington, D.C.

7:40 – 8:20 p.m. Discussion

8:20 – 9:00 p.m. Reception in the Great Hall and Upstairs Gallery

About DASER

This program is co-sponsored by Cultural Programs of the National Academy of Sciences (CPNAS), Issues in Science and Technology Magazine, and Leonardo, the International Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Technology. DASER fosters community and discussion around the intersection of art and science. The thoughts and opinions expressed in the DASER events are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the positions of the National Academy of Sciences or of Leonardo.

COVID-19 Policy and Operating Status

This is an in-person event with the option to watch the webcast. A government-issued photo ID (such as a driver’s license or passport) and proof of up-to-date vaccination against COVID-19 per CDC guidelines are required. Masks are optional. For more details about the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s operating status and COVID-19 vaccination policy, visit this webpage.

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Assistant Professor of Art Cy Keener Collaborates on a New Exhibition at the National Academy of Sciences

Date of Publication: 
2022-11-28
11/28/22

By Jessica Weiss ’05

Images of massive chunks of ice collapsing from Greenland’s glaciers into the ocean have become emblematic of a changing climate and the need to drastically reduce global carbon emissions.

University of Maryland Assistant Professor of Art Cy Keener is working to characterize some of these icebergs—capturing their unique identities and the ways they change as they drift in the sea.

His collaborative “Iceberg Portraiture” series is part of an exhibition now on view at the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in Washington, D.C., which Keener created with landscape researcher Justine Holzman, climatologist Ignatius Rigor and scientist John Woods. It’s the result of almost four years of trips to the Arctic in which they placed trackers onto the ice to collect data with the hopes of making that information tangible and visceral.

Cy Keener art exhibition

At NAS, the 7-foot-tall digital ink-and-pastel portraits provide a glimpse into the life of four icebergs with vastly different scales and shapes—some the size of a car and others a third of a mile wide—observed and recorded in August 2021 in western Greenland.

“Each of these [icebergs] is a piece of 10,000- to 40,000-year-old ice coming off the Greenland ice sheet into the ocean,” Keener said. “In this exhibition we understand them as living things, falling apart in front of your eyes, constantly changing. We show their diversity and beauty.”

Keener’s efforts began with the development of a low-cost, open-source buoy to collect meteorological and oceanographic data to use in his work. He first traveled to the Arctic in Spring 2019 with Rigor, a senior principal research scientist at the University of Washington and the coordinator of the International Arctic Buoy Program, whose members maintain a network of buoys across the expanse of the Arctic Ocean.

At VisArts Gallery in Rockville, Maryland, he and Holzman created “Sea Ice 71.348778º N, 156.690918º W,” an installation that used hanging strips of 6-foot-long, blue-green polyester film to reflect the thickness and color of the Arctic ice based on the buoy data.

He also created various versions of “Digital Ice Core,” a sculpture piece that used electronics, data and satellite communication to link a remote field site with a digital light sculpture, made up of 1,000 LED lights. Viewers were then able to see a recreated version of the ambient light in the air, ice and ocean in close to real-time.

In 2020, Keener received a $200,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to continue his work. And in Spring 2021, he spent nine days on a Danish navy ship on the west coast of Greenland.

In addition to the iceberg portraits, the NAS exhibition includes a continuation of Keener’s work to represent the thinning of sea ice. The nearly 8-feet-tall “Sea Ice Daily Drawings,” made of aluminum, acrylic, paper and ink, are based on some 27,000 data points that come from sensors buried meters into the ice. They show subtle temperature and color variation throughout a vertical profile of air, sea ice and ocean.

The drawings, while visually appealing, are yet another stark reminder of the inexorable changes occurring in the Arctic, Keener said: Before the 1980s, the surface of the Arctic Ocean was thoroughly covered with this thick, multi-year ice. Now it’s predicted to vanish by the middle of the century.

“As an artist, I get to go out there, be in this environment and stand on this ice before it disappears, and then try to bring life to that through installation, drawing and sculpture,” Keener said. “I’m using data not to get more statistics, but to make these things that are on their way out physically real—to extend the experience through time and tell a longer story.”

 

4/5/22

We Have an Artist on Our Team

 

In addition to an oceanographer, climatologist, data scientist, and outreach educator, we are lucky to have an artist as a Co-PI (primary investigator) on our team.

 

Cy Keener installing his Light Ice Mass Balance Buoy 100 miles north of Barrow Point on the Arctic Ocean. Photo by John Woods

Cy Keener is an interdisciplinary artist who uses environmental sensing and kinetic sculpture to record and represent the natural world. He is an Assistant Professor of Sculpture and Emerging Technology in the Department of Art. His work includes a range of data-based installations to visualize diverse phenomena including sea ice, wind, rain and ocean waves. He received a Master of Fine Arts from Stanford University, and a Master of Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley. Cy has completed commissioned installations at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Stanford University, Suyama Space in Seattle, and the Rubin Center for the Visual Arts at the University of Texas.

Check out short videos of Cy's work on Vimeo.

Listen to Embedded.fm Episode 365: Barbed Wire Fence and Great Wifi with Cy Keener

 

//19.piksel.no/2019/11/21/digital-ice-core/Digital Ice Core re-presents ambient light readings in the ice and ocean at full scale. photo from https://19.piksel.no/2019/11/21/digital-ice-core/

 

The image above was the piece Cy created after the March 2019 IABP trip to Utqiagvik, Alaska to deploy RGB light and temperature sensors through the sea ice. The data was shared real-time through satellite technology and was displayed as light in the Digital Ice Core. This light sculpture re-presents ambient light readings in the ice and ocean below at full scale, recorded at noon local time between April 5 and June 14, 2019. The sculpture enables viewers to experience a critical but vanishing aspect of the Arctic environment through open source electronics and data.

The Light Ice Mass Balance buoy Cy deployed on April 3, 2022 on this trip, will inspire another art installation in the coming year or so.

 

Cy Keener assembling ice cadet buoysCy Keener assembling ice cadet buoys before deploying them.

11/3/21

By Jessica Weiss ’05

As the COVID-19 pandemic worsened in early 2020, Lecturer in the Department of Art Mollye Bendell felt a growing anxiety that the last time she would see her loved ones might be on a video call. 

Bendell, who works with electronic media to explore themes of vulnerability, visibility and longing, began to attempt to preserve her friends and family through her work using images of their faces from video chats. 

In her video project “Sketch for Sleepers,” Bendell projects those images in 3D onto stock digital silhouettes of human bodies that float across a screen. 

artwork by Lecturer in the Department of Art Mollye Bendell

The work is on display now until Dec. 3 at the University of Maryland Art Gallery as part of a triennial exhibition of professional work by Department of Art faculty and adjunct faculty. Part of the campuswide Arts for All initiative, which seeks to spark new ways of thinking through collaborations across the arts, sciences and other disciplines, Faculty Exhibition 2021 showcases works from 20 faculty members in a range of mediums. It is the first in-person art exhibition held at the Art Gallery since it closed in March 2020. 

“The exhibition honors faculty work while emphasizing that their scholarship and teaching is grounded first and foremost in an art-making practice,” said Art Gallery Associate Director Taras W. Matla. “Having been closed for 18 months due to the pandemic, this is a terrific way to reintroduce the Art Gallery and art department faculty to the campus community.” 

Professor of Art Foon Sham’s “Covid 19, 2020” wood and acrylic wall sculpture emerged from elements related to his state of mind during lockdown. It’s made of wooden sticks that represent the many people affected by the virus. 

artwork by Professor of Art Foon Sham

“There are various colors of wood sticks and some are stained with red and blue, implying all the damage this virus could do,” he said. 

Many of the works also address socio-political issues and social justice. For instance, Lecturer Julia Kwon’s “Dissent” is inspired by the fight for abortion rights, via the format of traditional Korean object-wrapping cloth with embedded patterns. And Assistant Professor Jessica Gatlin’s “Work Related” is a series of wearable canvas “paintings” that comment on themes of sustainability, labor, consumption and capitalism.   

Assistant Professor Cy Keener, whose work blends art, science and technology, is exhibiting “Terminal Front,” a virtual reality experience that allows people to visit a remote and uninhabitable landscape in Greenland. Using scientific data gathered from the site—via custom laser scanners built by the Army Corps of Engineers Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory—paired with detailed drone photography, the VR user can immerse in a massive and detailed landscape of a glacier’s surface. 

art by Assistant Professor Cy Keener

Keener and Bendell are among faculty instructors in the new immersive media design major, co-taught by faculty from the Department of Art and the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences. The program prepares students to use digital tools and technologies including virtual and augmented reality, digital art, projected imagery, computer graphics, 3D modeling and user interfaces spanning audio, visual and tactile platforms.

Additional participating faculty artists include: Emily Conover, Patrick Craig, Pete Cullen, Brandon Donahue, Wendy Jacobs, Richard Klank, Matthew McLaughlin, Brandon Morse, Irene Pantelis, Narendra Ratnapala, John Ruppert, Justin Strom, Athena Tacha, Jowita Wyszomirska and Rex Weil. 

In addition, an In Memoriam section recognizes the vast contributions to the Department of Art made by longtime faculty members David C. Driskell (1931-2020) and James Thorpe (1951-2021). 

Visit the Faculty Exhibition 2021 at the University of Maryland Art Gallery in the Parren J. Mitchell Art-Sociology Building until Dec. 3, 2021. Free and open to the public, Monday-Friday, 11 a.m.-4 p.m. 

Photos from top to bottom of page: Visitors at Faculty Exhibition 2021; Mollye Bendell's video project “Sketch for Sleepers;" Foon Sham’s “Covid 19, 2020; " A visitor experiences Cy Keener’s “Terminal Front.” Photos by Thai Q. Nguyen.

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