[spectre] Arts/Sciences exhibition in NYC: The Islands of Benoît Mandelbrot: Fractals, Chaos, and the Materiality of Thinking, September 21, 2012 – January 27, 2013

[// nina / samuel]

Dear members of spectre,

Please let me introduce myself. My name is Nina Samuel and I am Visiting
Assistant Professor at the Bard Graduate Center in New York City. I am an
art historian originally from Berlin working on the intersection of the
arts and sciences since many years.

I would like to get in touch because I curated an unusual exhibition on
scientific images that is opening on Thursday, September 20, 6-8p, in the
Focus Gallery of the Bard Graduate Center in NYC, and I hope that this
could be interesting for you.

The exhibition "The Islands of Benoît Mandelbrot: Chaos, Fractals, and the
Materiality of Thinking" shows never exhibited images, objects and films of
the office of mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot that I was allowed to visit
last Fall - left exactly in the state it was after his demise. It also
includes material of other historic protagonists working in the field of
chaos theory and complex dynamics (Lorenz, Rössler, Douady). These
materials reveal aspects of visual thinking that had not been discussed for
this field before (e.g. the astonishing importance of hand drawing to
understand computer images). It brings a wholly new answer to the question
of how images work as thinking tool in that field that became so known in
the 1980s and 90s.

The exhibition does not focus on the "pretty pictures" that had become so
famous in this field but is interested in the interaction of the visual and
the thinking process - as well as in the "visual waste" or the
"experimental detritus" that is produced during this process. It is
generally based on the assumption that the form and design of scientific
images are no less important than the facts and objects they visualize, and
that the transformations associated with imaging are an integral part of
the aquisition of knowledge.

I also edited an extensively illustrated catalogue that is published with
Yale University Press in conjunction with the exhibition. If you are
interested to publish a review, we will be happy to send you the catalogue.
Please get in touch and just send me your mailing address (to
samuel at bgc.bard.edu, please also mention what kind of media you would like
to publish the review in).

If you are in NYC, please join us for the opening on Thursday, September
20, from 6-8 pm. The Bard Graduate Center Gallery is located in New York
City at 18 West 86th Street, between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue.
The show will be on view from September 21, 2012 – January 27, 2013.

I hope that this subject raises your interest and I would be very happy if
you could consider to publish an article about the exhibition and / or the
catalogue, or to distribute the info on your website, or to forward it
people that you know that could be interested in the subject.

Thank you and have a wonderful day.

All best,
Nina


This is the link:
http://www.bgc.bard.edu/gallery/gallery-at-bgc/focus-gallery-4.html


*Exhibition and publication: The Islands of Benoît Mandelbrot:
Fractals, Chaos, and the Materiality of Thinking*

The Bard Graduate Center Gallery, New York City, 18 West 86th Street

On view September 21, 2012 – January 27, 2013

Exhibition Explores the Role of Images in Scientific Thinking

Featuring never before exhibited works on paper and objects including
dynamic black and white drawings, computer print-outs, photographs,
and computer-generated films

Focusing primarily on the work of one of the most notable mathematicians of
the twentieth century,
"The Islands of Benoît Mandelbrot: Fractals, Chaos, and the Materiality of
Thinking"
explores the role of images in the development of what has become
known as fractal geometry and chaos theory. Nina Samuel, visiting
professor from Das Technisches Bild in Berlin, is the curator of this
exhibition, which will be on view at the Bard Graduate Center from
September 21, 2012 to January 27, 2013.

For thousands of years, Western thought assumed that fundamental
geometry consisted of regular, ideal forms, such as cubes, spheres,
and cones, with straight or evenly curved faces and edges. Benoît
Mandelbrot (1924–2010), however, explored mathematics as he saw it— in
all its untidiness and irregularity, devoting himself to the study,
for example, of the forms of the coastlines of real islands, with all
their unpredictable inlets, creeks, and furrows. Mandelbrot, in other
words, looked at the world. In so doing, he flouted what was in effect
a prohibition pervading much of mathematical thinking against the use
of visual representation. To reintroduce the visual, Mandelbrot took
the groundbreaking step of harnessing the potential of computers,
thereby transforming mathematics into an experimental science. The
result was his invention of fractal geometry, a geometry of actuality
rather than of abstraction, as exemplified in his classic work, The
Fractal Geometry of Nature (1982).

The notion of islands is central to Mandelbrot’s work, associated in
his thinking with both the inspiring and the seductive role of images.
They challenge his own dictum that “seeing is believing” and point to
the interaction between the hand and computer visualizations to
generate new ideas. Frequently, the computer alone is unable to give
an insight, and hand drawing becomes necessary for transforming a
confusing computer image into a new idea or theory.

At his death in 2010, Mandelbrot left a mass of idiosyncratically
organized drawings, computer print-outs, films, manuscript scribbles,
objects, and polaroids in his office in Cambridge, Massachusetts— an
extraordinary trove to which Mandelbrot’s wife, Aliette, generously
allowed Professor Samuel access. “To explore it was like wandering
through the mathematician’s brain,” said Samuel. “It was like
witnessing the ephemeral traces of his very thought processes.”
Selections from these materials form the core of the exhibition.

Along with this rare look into Mandelbrot’s working process, sketches
from his contemporaries — the French mathematician Adrien Douady and
the German biochemist Otto E. Rössler — will also be publicly
exhibited for the first time. The work of the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology meteorologist Edward N. Lorenz, a pioneer of chaos
theory, will be represented by loans from the Library of Congress.
The Islands of Benoît Mandelbrot: Fractals, Chaos, and the Materiality
of Thinking allows the viewer to question the idea that the
illustration of a work must always be secondary to the work itself. On
the contrary, substantive images often play generative roles in the
scientific process, constituting a kind of material thinking conducted
by producing and interpreting visual traces, such as
computer-generated images. These images are often aesthetically
compelling even if they are initially scientifically impenetrable.
This constitutes another revelation of the exhibition: the beauty of
material thinking that can be found in the visual detritus of
scientific investigation.

The Bard Graduate Center Gallery is located in New York City at 18
West 86th Street, between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue.
Gallery hours are Tuesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and
Thursday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. The admission fee is $7 general, $5
senior and students (valid ID); admission is free Thursday evenings
after 5 p.m. For more information about the Bard Graduate Center and
upcoming exhibitions, please visit bgc.bard.edu.



Nina Samuel
Visiting Assistant Professor

Bard Graduate Center:
Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture
38 West 86th Street, New York, NY 10024
E samuel at bgc.bard.edu
W bgc.bard.edu <http://www.bgc.bard.edu>
W bgc.bard.edu/degree-programs <http://www.bgc.bard.edu/programs.html>

BGC Exhibitions:
W bgc.bard.edu/gallery <http://www.bgc.bard.edu/gallery/gallery-at-bgc.html>
-------------- nächster Teil --------------
Ein Dateianhang mit HTML-Daten wurde abgetrennt...
URL: http://post.in-mind.de/pipermail/spectre/attachments/20120918/53bdaedb/attachment.htm