Tag: ant ballet

Echoes of Disruption by Dubmorphology / commissioned by Invisible Dust

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I feel honoured to have been interviewed by Trevor Mathison and Gary Stewart from Dubmorphology about ants as part of their work Echoes of Disruption. The work forms part of the new exhibition UnNatural History, a major new exhibition exploring natural history and climate change curated by Invisible Dust at The Herbert Art Gallery & Museum in Coventry.

More about the video:

Echoes of Disruption, 2021

Digital video

18 min

Courtesy of the artists

Echoes of Disruption is video entry 11543.1 from the laboratory log-book of time-travelling researchers, with journal notes narrated by an Artificial Intelligence program. Having travelled back to the 21st century the researchers begin decrypting clues by exploring natural history collections, carrying out observational experiments and assembling interviews and content from scientific researchers, social scientists, cultural theorists, writers and poets. Their objective is to gain an insight into the turning point after which a dramatic change in the Earth’s delicate and precarious ecosystem leads to a catastrophic fracture in the future timeline.

Credits:

In conversation with Deborah Wolton and Ollie Palmer
Voice over Aniruddha Das
Processing ant simulations Ollie Palmer
Soundtrack Dubmorphology and DSPSSSSD

More about the exhibition:

UnNatural History features 26 international artists working in Aotearoa New Zealand, Austria, Belgium, Germany, India, Ireland, Kenya, Mexico, Singapore, Turkey, UK and USA. It includes four newly commissioned works responding to the Herbert’s Natural Science Collection by Frances Disley, Dubmorphology, Tania Kovats and Gözde İlkin.

The observational skills and techniques of artists, including their speculations, have enabled us to learn about plants and animals in drawings, long before the advancements of technologies such as microscopes and photography. Featuring drawings, paintings, sculpture, installation, lens-based, digital media and new technologies, UnNatural History will connect these valuable collections to the past, present, and future of our relationship to nature through depictions, scientific representations and imagined realities created by artists.

The exhibition is open from 28 May – 22 August 2021. More information here.

Talk with Natalie Jeremijenko and Kasia Molga

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I am privileged to be giving a talk with Natalie Jeremijenko and my friend Kasia Molga tomorrow evening at the Arcola Theatre in Dalston. Please do come if you’re in town!

Here is the press release:

Sky, ants and talking to plants

Invisible Dust invites you to a presentation by New York experimenter, environmental engineer and artist Natalie Jeremijenko together with the ‘Ant Ballet’ artist and designer Ollie Palmer discussing with Invisible dust host and artist Kasia Molga how technology is being driven by artists to explore, conserve and relate to our environment.

Speaker Profile:

Natalie Jeremijenko is an artist whose background includes studies in biochemistry, physics, neuroscience and precision engineering. She was recently named one of the 40 most influential designers by I.D. Magazine and listed in Fast Company’s most influential women in technology. Jeremijenko is the director of the environmental health clinic and associate professor at New York University.

Ollie Palmer is a designer and artist. He is a collaborator with Open H2O and Protei (open source projects developing oceanic technologies) and a tutor in the Interactive Architecture Workshop at the Bartlett School of Architecture UCL.

Host:

Kasia Molga is a media artist who explores changes in our perception and relationship with the planet in the increasingly technologically mediated world. She deals with real time environment and data visualisation – where the data becomes a pretext, motor and platform behind the work. Kasia Molga is one of the artists working on a research proposal for Invisible Heat, Invisible Dust’s new project about climate change and health.

6.30-8.30pm Tuesday 4th June 2013
Arcola Theatre ,
 24 Ashwin St, Dalston, London – E8 3DL.
Train: Dalston Junction overland station.
Tickets: £5 / cons £3

Material Matters Talk

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I am giving a lecture on Thursday evening at the Bartlett School of Architecture as part of Ruairi Glynn and Xavier de Kestelier‘s Material Matters series.

Ant Ballet

An entymological adventure coaxing choreography from a company of obstinate insects

As humans, we are used to hierarchical control systems. Ants are different – they use pheromones to communicate and connect with each other, building complex networks from simple feedback loops.

Working with a team of chemical scientists and entomologists, Ant Ballet is an attempt to ‘hack’ the communication protocols of ants. Witness the trials and tribulations of the first attempts to create choreography, and intercontinental ant colony communication through the use of synthesised chemical compounds.

The Bartlett School of Architecture
Royal Ear Hospital
21 Capper Street
London WC1E 6AP
Thursday 17 January 2013, 7pm

Bio
Ollie Palmer is an artist and designer. Based at the Bartlett School of Architecture, he is a tutor in RC3 on the Graduate Architectural Design course. He has travelled around the world, hitchhiked across Iceland and taught IT skills in the heart of the Amazon. He is a collaborator with Open_H20 (developing open source oceanic technologies) and a Getty Images contributing photographer.
www.olliepalmer.com

Phase IV. Destruction (Undetermined)

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Katya Ganyushina interviewed me last month for an article in Christies Education’s magazine C#12. It was a really fun interview – and as a bonus, there’s a Russian translation too!

Read the article online here (pages 24-29), or download a pdf here.

Wilderness Festival

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I have been invited to give a talk about dancing ants at the Natures Stage of Wilderness Festival, taking place between 10-12 August 2012 in beautiful Oxfordshire. I can’t wait to get there and take in a wealth of music, talks, food and country air!

More information and tickets available at the Wilderness Festival Website.

UPDATE: I’ll be on the Natures Stage on Saturday at 4pm. There are some other top-notch presentations there too, including Alan Moore and the New Dawn Traders.