MORPHONANO: Works by Victoria Vesna with James Gimzewski

FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION, IMAGES, AND RESOURCES, PLEASE VISIT:
www.beallcenter.uci.edu
www.victoriavesna.com
artsci.ucla.edu

The Beall Center for Art + Technology at the University of California,
Irvine exhibits innovative media artworks that use the latest
experimental artistic and scientific digital, audio, and visual
technology.

MORPHONANO will be on view at the Beall Center from February 2, 2012 –
May 6, 2012.
Meet the artist at the public opening reception on Saturday, February
4, 6pm – 9pm.

Tours by Beall Interns are available free of charge during business hours.
Private group tours available by appointment: contact the Beall Center
at (949)824-6206.

MORPHONANO marks a decade of an artistic collaboration (2002-2012) of
media artist Victoria Vesna and nanoscientist James Gimzewski. Their
work is focused on the idea of change and consciousness at
intersection of space-time and embodiment. Participants interact with
the works in mindful ways resulting in rich visual and sonic
experiences within a meditative space. By reversing the scale of
nanotechnology to the realm of human experience, the artist and
scientist create a sublime reversal of space-time.

Victoria Vesna is a media artist and Professor at the Department of
Design | Media Arts at the UCLA School of the Arts and director of the
UCLA Art|Sci center. Currently she is Visiting Professor at Art, Media
+ Technology, Parsons the New School for Design in New York and a
senior researcher at IMéRA – Institut Méditerranéen de Recherches
Avancées in Marseille, France. Her work can be defined as experimental
creative research that resides between disciplines and technologies.
She explores how communication technologies affect collective behavior
and how perceptions of identity shift in relation to scientific
innovation. Her most recent experiential installations — Blue Morph,
Water Bowls, Hox Zodiac, all aim to raise consciousness around
environmental issues natural and human-animal relations. Other earlier
notable works are Bodies INCorporated, Datamining Bodies, n0time and
Cellular Trans_Actions.

James Gimzewski FRS is a distinguished Professor in the Dept. of
Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCLA. He is director of Pico and Nano
core laboratory at the California NanoSynstems Institute (CNSI). He is
also scientific director of the Art | Sci center and a senior fellow
of IMéRA. He is a satellite co-director and PI of materials
nanoarchitectonics at the National Institute of Material Science in
Tsukuba, Japan. Until February 2001, he was a group leader at the IBM
Zurich Labs, where he was involved in Nanoscale science since 1983. He
pioneered research on electrical contact with single atoms and
molecules, light emission and molecular imaging using STM. His
accomplishments include the first STM-manipulation of molecules at
room temperature, the realization of molecular abacus using
buckyballs, the discovery of single molecule rotors and the
development of nanomechanical sensors based on nanotechnology, which
explore the ultimate limits of sensitivity and measurement. He is a
fellow of the Royal Society.

LIST OF WORKS:

BLUE MORPH is an interactive installation that uses nanoscale images
combined with sounds derived from the microscopic undulations of a
chrysalis during the period of its metamorphosis into a butterfly
recorded using nanotechnology. The work is designed to be responsive
to minute, subtle, mindful movements of the participant creating a
rich visual and sonic experience of morphing. Most is revealed in
complete stillness.

NANOMANDALA is a video projected onto a disk of sand, 8 feet in
diameter. Visitors can touch the sand as images are projected in
evolving scale from the molecular structure of a single grain of sand
– achieved my means of photography, optical and scanning electron
microscopy (SEM) – to the recognizable image of the complete mandala,
and then back again. The original Chakrasamvara mandala was created by
monks of the Ghaden Lhopa Khangsten monastery. Patience will allow
experiencing the whole.

ZERO@WAVEFUNCTION plays with the idea of scale and molecular
manipulation from a distance with the participant changing the
structures of the buckyballs with their shadows, a real time
interactive metaphor of the scanning tunneling microscope (STM). Slow
motion makes change happen.

BRAIN STORMING: SOUNDS OF THINKING a premier of a work of self
organization in progress focusing on scale invariant and the brain
using biometric data. A number of brain storming sessions with cutting
neuroscientists, nanotechnologists, philosophers and monks will take
place throughout the exhibition. In many ways the works in this
exhibition reverse the scale of nanotechnology to a visible realm and
time in nano scale creating a sublime reversal of space-time.

EVENTS:
ARTIST RECEPTION: Saturday, February 4, 6pm-9pm
FAMILY DAY: Saturday, April 21, 11am-4pm
ARTIST LECTURE: Date/Time TBD
BOXED MUSIC EVENT: Thursday, March 15, 6pm-9pm

ADDRESS:
Beall Center for Art + Technology
University of California, Irvine
Claire Trevor School of the Arts
712 Arts Plaza
Irvine, CA 92697-2775
www.beallcenter.uci.edu

CONTACT:
Lesly Martin, Sr. Marketing Director
Claire Trevor School of the Arts
(949)824-2189 email: elmartin@uci.edu

Tours and General Info:
(949) 824-6206
email: syoungha@uci.edu

HOURS:
Sundays & Wednesdays, 12 – 5pm
Thursday – Saturday, 12 – 8pm
Closed Mondays & Tuesdays