Exhibitions & Presentations

 

• Echo Leahy Center for Lake Champlain—ECHO Innovation Playground
1 College Street, Burlington, Vermont 05401
Opening Friday, Oct. 5th, 5:30–7:30pm;
on exhibit through January 6, 2019 www.echovermont.org

World of Plankton touch pool installation
At the confluence of game design, art, and science the World of Plankton touch pool installation includes a virtual touch-pool aquarium that explains the role of plankton in freshwater ecology. The installation consists of a giant digital touch table where one can capture and explore zooplankton, phytoplankton and fish species, surrounded by an original 32-foot digitally painted mural and an animated Plankton Zoo featuring three-dimensional print sculptures in resin. Visitors can bring the plankton sculptures to life on their mobile devices by scanning QR codes found in the installation to activate original animation and music.

• Radical Preservation and Aquatic Survival: experiential transmission through art by becoming water, snorkeling with plankton, and traveling through deep time, by Kathleen Ruiz, invited guest speaker for New Perspectives: Innovations by women intersecting science, media and sonic arts, at the University of California, Santa Barbara, AWMAT 2018 Alliance of Women in Media Arts and Technology, February 8-10, 2018

• AWMAT Art Exhibition: The World of Plankton touchscreen, curated by Lena Mathew & Kathy Rae Huffman at University of California, Santa Barbara February, 2018

 

• World of Plankton is featured in The ACM SIGGRAPH on-line exhibition, Science of the Unseen: Digital Art Perspectives http://science-unseen.siggraph.org/ 2016- currently on exhibit

Curatorial statement: Artworks in Science of the Unseen: Digital Art Perspectives think creatively about questions of scale and how unseen processes animate larger effects. By using digital tools and computational programs, we see with new eyes as we view visual material from the microscopic cell to the cosmic universe. Technology increasingly alters the senses and our experience of the biological, astrological, and geological landscape. From our new ways of seeing, questions emerge such as: how does nano-technology mirror and magnify the art of nature? How does visualizing insect burrows in trees allow us to interpret a larger ecosystem? Or we can ask what still remains unseen: how do organisms form new imperceptible habits in response to technology?

Art can be both inspired by and resistant to accepted scientific practices for visualizing the world. Artworks in Science of the Unseen: Digital Art Perspectives experiment with innovative research methods that also critically examine what drives the disciplines of art and science. In this exhibition, artistic interpretation of the unseen emphasizes the political dynamic of both the human public and nonhuman ecologies. How does art represent and empower the relationships between micro and macro, unseen and seen, situated and global that would otherwise be invisible? What can art see that science cannot see alone?

• World of Plankton presented at the HASS Humanities Roundtable: Developing a Digital Infrastructure for Humanities Research and Collaboration at Rensselaer, Sage 3205, 12-2PM, November 11, 2016

• World of Plankton presented to Kirk Schell, an RPI alumn and senior VP of Commercial Client Solutions for Dell, Alumni House, 9:30- 11:30AM, November 11, 2016

• World of Plankton presented by Kathleen Ruiz at meeting with Kirk Johnson, Ph.D., Sant Director of the Smithsonian National Museum of National History, Washington D.C., with Deepak Vashishth, PhD., Director, Center for Biotechnology & Interdisciplinary Studies, Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Prabhat Hajela Ph.D., Provost, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; and Mimi Katz, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Earth and Environmental Sciences, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, CIBIS September 1, 2016

• World of Plankton presented by Kathleen Ruiz, Ian Stead and Christina Chiusano at the Margaret A. and David M. Darrin ’40 Fresh Water Institute Open House, Saturday, August 20, 2016

• World of Plankton presented at the Revolutionary Learning 2016 Conference, by Kathleen Ruiz, Evan Gonzalez, and Jerry Huang, Grand Ballroom, Roosevelt Hotel, 45 East 45th Street, N.Y.C., August 18, 2016

• World of Plankton presented at the international ACM SIGGRAPH conference, Anaheim, California, July 24 - July 28, 2016.

• World of Plankton presented by Kathleen Ruiz at the NYSCA Electronic Media/Film & Visual Art (New York State Council on the Arts) and G4C (Games for Change) Match Up, at Parson School of Design, Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, Parsons School of Design, 2 West 13th Street, NYC. June 22, 2016

• World of Plankton prototype presented at Gamefest, at Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute April 29 – 30, 2016

• World of Plankton prototype was presented by Ben Chang at the international Game Developers Conference (GDC), Moscone Center, San Francisco, California March 14-18, 2016

 

• World of Plankton research was presented by Kathleen Ruiz, Justin Cirigliano, Leo Antelyes, Christiana Chiusano, and Domenic Cristaldi at the Jefferson Project meeting at Lake George Feb. 3, 2016

• World of Plankton, presented by Kathleen Ruiz in Professor Jefferson Kielwagan’s sculpture class to inspire the creation of 4 to 5’ physical hanging sculptural zooplankton paper prototype models for the World of Plankton installation, Feb., 2016

• World of Plankton prototype presented by Kathleen Ruiz at TVGScog (Tech Valley Game Space Center of Gravity), Troy, N.Y.  Feb., 2016