Laura Splan will discuss her interdisciplinary art practice that combines experimentation, production, & collaboration. Her conceptually layered work explores the sublime complexity of the biological world while unraveling entanglements of natural and built systems. Her research-driven projects connect hidden artifacts of science to the everyday with embodied interactions and sensory experiences. Recent exhibitions have included immersive installations, networked devices, and tactile sculptures.
DATES AND TIMES: Saturday March 11, 2023 from 1-3 pm
LOCATION: Online
Bio:
Laura Splan will discuss her interdisciplinary art practice that combines experimentation, production, & collaboration. Working at the intersections of Science, Technology, and Culture, she creates conceptually layered and carefully crafted artworks that explore the sublime complexity of the biological world while unraveling entanglements of natural and built systems. Her research-driven projects connect hidden artifacts of biotechnology to everyday lives through embodied interactions and sensory experiences. Recent exhibitions have included immersive installations, networked devices, and tactile sculptures. Splan often engages audiences with themes in her work through companion programming, including participatory workshops covering laboratory techniques, specialized software, and textiles methods that she uses in her own studio practice. Her artworks exploring biomedical imaginaries have been commissioned by the Centers for Disease Control Foundation and the Bruges Triennial. Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Arts & Design, Pioneer Works, and New York Hall of Science and is represented in the collections of the Thoma Art Foundation, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, NYU’s Langone Art Collection, and the Berkeley Art Museum. Reviews and articles including her work have appeared in The New York Times, Wired, Discover, designboom, American Craft, and Frieze. Publications featuring her artwork include the “Antennae Journal of Nature in Visual Culture,” “The Routledge Companion to Biology in Art & Architecture,” and “Manufractured: The Conspicuous Transformation of Everyday Objects.” Her writing and interviews have appeared in Art Practical and SciArt Magazine. Splan’s research and residencies have been supported by the Jerome Foundation, Institute for Electronic Arts, Harvestworks, the Knight Foundation, and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation.
As a collaborator, Splan explores artifacts of the expanded biotechnological landscape through research-based co-creation. She was a member of the New Museum’s NEW INC “Creative Science” incubator imagining creative applications for science and technology. As a Bioartist-in-Residence at the Philadelphia Science Center, she collaborated with scientists to interrogate interspecies entanglements and invisible labor in biotechnology. She is currently exploring virtual representations of molecular systems with theoretical biophysicist Adam Lamson for a project supported by the Simons Foundation. As a NEW INC Artist-in-Residence at EY, she is collaborating with engineers to develop hybrid VR installations that reveal “virtual residues” persisting in the physical world while exploring possibilities for new materially liminal experiences.
As a speaker, Splan’s artist talks and lectures have been presented by the Frontiers of Science Institute, the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute, the International Symposium on Electronic Art, Concordia University, and the Anderson Endowed Lecture Series at Pennsylvania State University. She was the keynote speaker for the Digital Fabrication Symposium at the University of North Texas presenting her lecture “Bits & Pieces: Material Epistemologies & Digital Fabrication”. Her recent artist talk, “Syndemic Sublime,” was co-presented by the New Museum and Science Sandbox for NEW INC’s “Radical Evolution.” Splan has been a featured guest on MicrobeTV, hosted by Dr. Vincent Racaniello of Columbia University, SciArt Initiative’s LunchBreak series hosted by Julia Buntaine, and the Sound and Vision podcast hosted by artist Brian Alfred. She has participated in panel discussions and roundtables at the Brooklyn Museum, SciFoo at Google’s Headquarters in Silicon Valley, and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona.
As an educator, Splan has held academic appointments at Stanford University, teaching interdepartmental Art courses to Engineering, Computer Science, Biology, Math, as well as Art majors. Splan was a Digital Arts Fellow supported by the National Endowment for the Arts at AS220 Industries, where she taught creative coding and physical computing workshops. Splan is currently a mentor at NEW INC, where she advises interdisciplinary practitioners working at the intersections of Art, Science, and Technology.
As a curator, Splan has produced new media art projects, including “Stimulus Transmit”, a moving image series that premiered on San Francisco public access television in 1997. Other curatorial projects have included interdisciplinary programming and exhibitions for Creative Tech Week, as well as her experimental project space Plexus Projects. Her recent curatorial projects include GUI/GOOEY, an online group exhibition of technological explorations of the biological world.