The Learned Pig

Art – Thinking – Nature – Writing

Tag: art-science

  • Isomorphology

    Isomorphology

    For interdisciplinary artist Gemma Anderson, drawing is a mode of knowing and seeing. While drawing is often understood in terms of isolated observation, by sharing the process with a community, for Anderson, it becomes a type of agency for collective knowledge and critical vision. Drawing therefore functions as a bridge between public and private, between…

  • The Barometer of My Heart

    The Barometer of My Heart

    On 20th February 2002, at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), in Paris, philosopher Jacques Derrida asked an audience of students the following question: “The phallus, I mean, the phallos, is it proper to man?” This question opened the eighth session of a series of lectures given by Derrida between 2001 and…

  • The Decomposition of Cetaceans

    The Decomposition of Cetaceans

    Working as a whale-watching guide offers many perks. I get to see live whales regularly, photograph them, and share the joy of encountering these giants. Over the last two years I have dedicated much time to working with cetaceans in Húsavík, northern Iceland. But there is one thing that can dampen the experience for many…

  • Hvalreki

    Hvalreki

    Hvalreki is an installation piece, which explores and interrogates human relationships with whales through their residual bones. The work began through a personal interest in the history that links us humans to the mammals that inhabit the sea. It came about after spending four months in Húsavík, Northern Iceland; exploring the research done by whale…

  • The Waldorf Project, Chapter II: Colour

    The Waldorf Project, Chapter II: Colour

    “Let me, O let me bathe my soul in colours; let me swallow the sunset and drink the rainbow.” Kahlil Gibran   Colour perception. First noted by Aristotle, later defined by Newton: the spectrum of visible light interacting with sensors on the human eye. That is all. Yet, in his work on colour theory, Goethe…

  • Chasing Suns

    Chasing Suns

    The arc of the sun across the sky is one of the most enduring images: repeated every day for all to see. And yet, each time it’s a little different, varying according to geographical location, visibility, and time of year. Chasing Suns is an ongoing long-term photographic project by artist Pauline Woolley. The images were…

  • Lost in Fathoms

    Lost in Fathoms

    Stumbling dim across the surface of the earth: humanity. Our legacy not culture or religion or science, but ruin. Our lasting traces that of footprints, not brain waves. Is this what makes us unique? A geological force in our own right? Certainly this is the view announced in 2012 at the 34th International Geological Congress…

  • Modern Naturalism

    Modern Naturalism

    In 1958, the great Austrian artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser published the Mould Manifesto against Rationalism in Architecture. In it he declared, with characteristic chutzpah, that: “Only the engineers and scientists who are capable of living in mould and producing mould creatively will be the masters of tomorrow.” As far as we’re aware, few have taken up…

  • The Sensorial Invisibility of Plants

    The Sensorial Invisibility of Plants

    Laura Cinti’s work stretches the boundaries of our understanding of plant behaviour. Cinti is best known as an artist who works with biology, and, in addition to her own practice, she is also co-founder (with Howard Boland) and co-director of C-LAB, an internationally recognised interdisciplinary art platform that generates and participates in both artistic and…