- Art for National Science Week
- Pigs turn a world upside down
- The art of weaving and knitting
EDITORIAL
Since Saturday, 1st of May, Australians have been celebrating National Science Week. During nine festive days, spotlights are turned on, exhibits polished, banquets served and doors to over 700 events are opened to rejoice in science and the achievements of research. Knowledge and entertainment is shared in the hustle and bustle of the crowd.Where celebrations court the senses of the audience, artists are never far away, and if they are involved in research themselves... the National Science Week offers the ideal arena for celebrating the bubbling difference between artistic and scientific research. Difference is the driving power of all progress. (See also: http://www.abc.net.au/science/ )
PIGVISION offers the Australian public a glance into its research project 'Spinning a Yarn with Sisyphus' on Sunday, 9th of May, at the Centre for Education & Research in Environmental Strategies (CERES) in East Brunswick VIC. The National Science Week event is a collaborative project with Dion Sanderson, Ingrid Petterson, Sarah Haymes and the Clench Theatre group, and is kindly supported by Multicultural Arts Victoria. It is organised as an 'open day' at the animal stables of CERES, with plenty of story telling and activities for children and adults. The activities involve three 'extra-terrestrial' visitors on a discovery tour, including Sisyphus and two genetically engineered nymphs, who seek help to push a wooden sphere holding a video camera inside. The video recordings resulting from these activities and two super 8 film clips of a previous pig behaviour experiment are shown in the education room at the stables. Please do come along if you happen to be in Melbourne, and enjoy a day out in the gardens of CERES. There will be many other things to experience at CERES as part of the National Science Week.
Raymond Rohner
WHAT'S NEW:
Pigs turn a world upside down
The first experiment of the research project 'Spinning a Yarn with Sisyphus' has been successfully completed. A large wooden sphere was used to investigate the curiosity of a sow and her six piglets. A few spoons of mashed food sprinkled around the wooden sphere were all that was needed to draw their attention away from other things in the paddock. The pigs hustled around the sphere, pushing it out of their way in search for food. The video camera inside the wooden sphere yielded astonishing pictures of a world rocking gently back and forth, spinning, and at times turned upside down. A photograph of the experiment can be seen at:http://www.artschool.utas.edu.au/pigvision/IMAGES/sispigsphere.jpg
The art of weaving and knitting
The ancient art of weaving and knitting bears witness to the human obsession with linking. Whether by tying knots, pulling cables across continents or thinking through causes and effects, we seek and eventually create links. Along with scientists and engineers, artists share the obsession of inventing physical, virtual or hypothetical links. Artistic research helps pull a new string with a different colour through the growing mesh of links. PORCONTROL is a PIGVISION project which does just that: creating a link where there has never been one before. The project's web page has been updated since the last bulletin and may be seen at:http://www.artschool.utas.edu.au/pigvision/PORCONTROL/index.html
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PIGVISION, PO Box 523, Melbourne VIC 8007, Australia
PIGVISION's Homepage:
http://www.artschool.utas.edu.au/pigvision/
PIGVISION seeks and promotes the refinement of artistic aspects in research. The purpose for which PIGVISION is established is:
- to maintain a portfolio of concrete research projects, set within the field of pig science, which give evidence of PIGVISION's mission and philosophy.
- to foster active debate about the relationship between art and science.
- to develop and engage in collaborations with artists, scientists and people from other fields.