Join CAMD’s Center for the Arts at Gallery 360 for a public reception and SciArt Synapse Mixer, a networking opportunity hosted by the SciArt Initiative. This event is free and open to the public. Attendees are encouraged to bring their ideas, contentions, and business cards.
The term “citizen scientist” has become increasingly popular with the rise of DIY and crowdsourcing culture, where volunteer citizens can expand the capabilities and reach of scientists for the creation of larger and more comprehensive studies. Thanks to new apps and web-based platforms, the ability to participate in science is available outside of academia and industry. Citizens from all over the world are helping to solve some of humanity’s biggest and most complicated problems. And some of these citizen scientists are artists.
Artists, at heart, are problem solvers: What shades of blue best describe the bay of Cape Cod? How can you encode empathy into an Artificial Intelligence? How should an outdoor sculpture garden be designed to withstand a Boston winter? These are the types of questions that artists solve on a daily basis in order to create meaningful and thought-provoking experiences for viewers.
Through projects that confront complex problems typically associated with the sciences, such as anthropogenic climate change, chronic health management, and the dynamic structure of the subatomic world, artists are using the tools of art —scale, color, material, form— to create a ground for dialogue and discussion. Citizen artists become agents of personal, social, and societal change. Through visualization, symbolism, interactive experiences, and sensory immersion, Citizen Artists presents the works of six artists (Jonathan Feldschuh, Elizabeth Demaray, Brandon Ballengée, Raven Chacon, Justus Harris, and Ryan Feddersen) who engage with scientific topics too often inaccessible outside of the laboratory. In these works lies an invitation to participate at the citizen level, providing a visual and metaphorical avenue for understanding, connection, and action.
Citizen Artists is curated by Julia Buntaine Hoel. It was originally developed for The College of New Jersey Art Gallery in collaboration with Director Margaret Pezalla-Granlund and is presented at Northeastern University’s Gallery 360 in collaboration with Amy Halliday, Gallery Curator and Director of the Center for the Arts.