Event 2: Pulled Apart: Re-engineering and Re-purposing Human Civilization

For my second event, I attended “Pulled Apart: Re-engineering and Re-purposing Human Civilization”, an online exhibition and panel jointly organized by Stanford University and LASER talks. The speakers included the exhibition’s artists, the gallery director, as well as philosophers and cultural historians who shared their views regarding what it means to dismantle and rebuild systems around us, and in that process, what we learn about ourselves. I highly recommend everyone to view the online exhibition, to digest the differing perspectives on this discussion and how this is expressed in art of different mediums.

The Exhibition Pulled Apart

I find it fascinating that the exhibition brought together five artists with vastly different backgrounds. They were trained in different fields, are passionate about research in different areas and have varying exposure to engineering. This diversity is reflected in the exhibition, as the exhibits produced by the artists differ in medium and in focus. 

For instance, Adam Chin’s art makes use of his background and knowledge in computer systems. Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms, he trains neural networks to produce images based on existing databases of photographs (Chin). Cynthia Hooper paints infrastructural landscapes on canvas. Through them, she examines the environmental and social impacts of these man-made infrastructure and systems. Terry Berlier’s art is centered around exploring queerness, society and identity. She takes apart and puts together everyday objects in order to investigate the links between what is happening around the world, systems created by humans and queerness.

Adam Chin’s Obama (2020), Machine Learning generated.

Terry Berlier’s Waiting For the Other Shoe to… (2020), 

using mechanical contraceptions and pulley systems.

The event allowed me to revisit my assumptions about ‘artists’ and what it means to create art. As evident in the exhibition, there is no ‘one way’ to be an artist, nor is there a ‘correct way’ to create art. Art can be created virtually any medium, to make statements about anything the artist is passionate about – our society, the environment, our relationship with media and technology, and even specific engineering systems. 

Furthermore, the panel’s discussion on pulling apart systems gave me food for thought. In our grandparents’ era, it was common to fix and modify items at home. Today, however, we mostly do not know how things work. This leaves us clueless as to how systems come together to achieve a goal or to execute a particular function. In order to gain a better understanding of our world, and to develop creativity and innovation, we should engage in more tinkering (Schomburg). Who knows what else we might discover?

References 

Kethineni, Namratha. “‘Pulled Apart’ is an engineering fascination.” San Francisco Foghorn, 11 Mar. 2021, sffoghorn.com/pulled-apart-is-an-engineering-fascination/. 

Chin, Adam. “Adam Chin: What does a pixel know?” University of San Francisco Thatcher Gallery, www.usfca.edu/thacher-gallery/pulled-apart/adam-chin. Accessed 15 Apr. 2021. 

Hooper, Cynthia. “Cynthia Hooper: How can infrastructure serve the human and nonhuman with equal care?” University of San Francisco Thatcher Gallery, www.usfca.edu/thacher-gallery/pulled-apart/cynthia-hooper. Accessed 15 Apr. 2021. 

Berlier, Terry. “Terry Berlier: Can the awareness of collapse pull us out of our collective trance of individualism?” University of San Francisco Thatcher Gallery, www.usfca.edu/thacher-gallery/pulled-apart/terry-berlier. Accessed 15 Apr. 2021. 

Schomburg, Aaron. “The Value of Tinkering.” Scientific American, 20 Feb. 2019, blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-value-of-tinkering/.

<Images and Videos>

Pulled Apart – Thatcher Gallery’s Facebook cover image. Facebook, 18 Feb. 2021, www.facebook.com/pg/thachergalleryusfca/photos/?ref=page_internal. 

Adam Chin’s Obama (2020), Machine Learning generated. University of San Francisco Thatcher Gallery, www.usfca.edu/thacher-gallery/pulled-apart/adam-chin. Accessed 19 Apr. 2021. 

“Waiting For the Other Shoe to… by Terry Berlier.” YouTube, uploaded by Thatcher Gallery USFCA, 21 Jan. 2021, www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKItMhlmCRA.