Visual Culture Program
Abstract
Are art and science connected by a footbridge or are they utterly distinct practices? Los Angeles-based artist Landon Ross and microbiologist and photographer Scott Chimileski will lead an open discussion on what connections there may be, if they can inform the other in meaningful ways, and where some common comparisons go wrong.
Bio
Landon Ross is a Los Angeles-based artist whose mediums span painting, sculpture, video, and installation. Ross' work engages with science, philosophy and naturalism. With exhibitions at LA><ART, and ongoing collaborations with Clifford Cheung and Sean Carroll at Caltech, Ross has explored the ontology of mathematics, the "hard problem" of consciousness, the historical frictions between mysticism and modernism, and origin stories. The role of the artist in channeling the numinous, transcendent, and sublime, regnant for millennia with the possible exception of the last century, is one that Ross seeks to revive within the framework of naturalism.
Scott Chimileski is a microbiologist, photographer and author based in the Kolter Lab at Harvard Medical School. Scott is a guest curator of the Microbial Life exhibition currently on view at the Harvard Museum of Natural History. He received a Passion in Science Award in Arts and Creativity from New England Biolabs in 2016 and the FASEB BioArt award in 2016 and 2017. Chimileski's images have been published in many popular outlets, including Time, Wired, The Atlantic, Stat, NPR, Scientific American, and Smithsonian magazine.
About the Visual Culture Program
Caltech's visual culture program, which is funded by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and based in the Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS), features new undergraduate course offerings, guest lecturers, and other programming to foster conversations between humanists and scientists. Its activities are organized by HSS and other Caltech faculty in collaboration with scholars at The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.