[spectre] jumping back in..............some side pocket points

[hight at 34n118w.net]

I am good friends with the geneticist/artist ruth west (the west coast one
not the east coast one)  she won several awards in genetic research and
still does it but also got an mfa in new media art from ucla a few years
ago.  We met when we were both in a show at UC San Diego.    She made a
project that was a turning record on a turntable but with a laser
needle....it spun in a dark room .......and triggered noises only when
hitting spaced out shapes on the material above the record

she had mapped the sadly forgotten trajectories of the hugely influential
early programming team on one of the earliest supercomputers 
................they were all women and when the men returned they were
forgotten..........it is one of the great feminist and human tragedies in
technology and science in america in the last 50 years......in fact the
anniversary party occured a few years ago.........and they were not even
invited.......

she loves science but also always wanted to be an artist.............and
combines the two.....

another project was a database of images that were slowly degraded by a
floating point on the screen (again in a dark room)  that moved based on
the ambient noise levels in the room...............the images were family
photos  and the piece was about the alzheimers that her father had and
ultimately the related complications that took his life............it was
also about the psychology of observation, interaction   and a sort of
meditation when witnessing.........

forgot to mention that she also is trained as a psychologist.....


so those layers of such different careers   ......so societally diametric
and compartmentalized...........combine seamlessly into her work ....

amazing.....


I am also in contact with a geneticist in scotland  that selected me to do
a project based on his research on the history of genetic development in
humans in relation to other species sets .....

I don't know him well,   but he seems to just be jazzed to work with
artists to get a breath of fresh air and see what his work can generate.  
     Not sure if it will be a go. Will see.

Met "pegleg" joe davis when I was mit.      He is really hard to
categorize...........was a bike mechanic that drove up to mit many years
ago to talk about some ideas  he had...........and when he was about to be
thrown out he got an hour with a prof that announced.....he cannot work
here.........but he gets a lab....

he has done projects like a functional fishing pole that "catches"  single
cell organisms......and a way to hear the sounds produced by entities like
protozoa...

he also has other projects that loose me............a bit out there...

he is a controversial figure..........hard to pin down.......was an
incredibly gracious host.......

he seems to just have endless curiosity and a mad scientist/untrained
genius dichotomy going on  (cliche I know but he is really that
way.......)

My grandfather was a thwarted inventor  that made an invention before the
transistor radio that you put in your ear and spun a dial and it changes
radio stations(!)    1955  I believe......but he got screwed by hisw
partner who apparently for years sent the biggest gaudiest christmas cards
 to rub it in.........he only invented some sort of better developed valve
but ran into complications there too.........I only learned these things
years after he passed away.....knew him only as a bitter mean
man................then it made sense..................when he gave up he
worked at technicolor and raced stock cars.....

that same night .....a christmas eve......I learned that the photographer
alfred steiglitz  had a secret love he carried his whole life for my
grandmother       I was floored........overwhelmed..............I'm sure
it sounds absurd.................my grandmother was a wonderful
person.....kindest person in the world......funny.....failed her drivers
test three times  twice driving into someone's yard during the test!

but I forgot that the other artist in the family.........2 generations
before me.........pasquale napolitano........rebel of the italian
immigrant family      that instead went to study in paris........had a
pretty strong art career going with paintings, frescoes and
sculptures...........was getting some work into museums and a cieling of a
building on catalina island......when he stopped altogether....   but   he
told me once at 101 years old that he used to bug his buddy frank loyd
wright about his work  " this no good.....you do again frankie"

I'm rambling now.............reel it in...........

anyway the thing with my grandparents that makes this not a complete
sliding tangent from hell is that   you would never know these things of
them........their deepest
motivations........entanglements................prismatic sense of
identity...........they never spoke of it.......he out of bitterness at
what might have been and anger at the world.........her out of  a
disinterest in the past...........

so the motivations of a scientist     or an artist are so
layered.............so complex...........that i wonder if it can be
quantified in any tangible way in discourse.....

speaking of that........steiglitz only spoke of his love for her in a book
before he died