Friday, October 28, 2016

Data parasite? Collaborating at the Intersection of Art and Science

As the Artist in Residence at Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, I was honored to have participated in a conversation with Todd Golub, Chief Scientific Officer, and Director of the Cancer Program at the Broad Institute. This conversation was a part of HUB Week events and hosted by Catalyst Conversations in partnership with Broad Institute. 

I enjoyed our conversation, and I was especially thrilled to hear Todd talking about the recent controversy on what is called "data parasite" in regards to my activities of tracing the writings around the Broad Institute. Sounds like I'm one of them.

Here's the video from the talk.




HUB Week Event:
Conversation: 3:00-4:00pm
Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
415 Main Street, Cambridge, MA 02142


HUBweek is a creative festival that celebrates innovation at the intersection of art, science, and technology. Founded by The Boston Globe, Harvard University, MIT and Mass General Hospital, HUBweek is a first-of-its-kind civic collaboration that brings together the most creative and inventive minds making an impact in Boston and around the world.

Friday, September 23, 2016

Water on the molecular level - Responses from Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

A scientist at Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard typing his response on a tea-stained Japanese paper, and more responses below. A close look at water on the molecular level by scientists. #Flow











Friday, September 9, 2016

"Flow" at Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

Flow” was installed at Broad Institute last month, and I have been collecting some interesting responses from the participants at the Broad. You can visit the Tumblr site to see some images from this current installation and submit your story about water anytime. 


The beginning. Leveling my mind first.

Installation in progress

I couldn't finish installing before the time for tea & cookies with Broadies. Here some Broadies are engaged with the work.

Broadies are happily swapping the sheets with their typed responses. Now they get to take one of my originals home.

So many people never used or even touched a manual typewriter before. Feeling the cranky keyboards and hitting the keys were fun to many people. 






Thursday, August 25, 2016

Work in progress (Blue notebook #3)

Torn edges become the cliffs and the terrains. 

Divide. Space between. 


You must not be attached to your thoughts. Detach. 
Create a new space. Start all over.

Instagram 6/25

Saturday, August 6, 2016

Artist in Residence at Broad Institute: Working in the Conference Room


I started my Artist in Residence at the Broad Institute in April. In the beginning, I didn't have a studio that I could work on art. I was given a workstation on the second floor with windows. It was nice and worked well when I had to study for the Human Subjects test. (All the Broad employees are required to take this test and must pass. I'm happy to report that I passed with 85% score.) But I couldn't do much else and it was too confined for what I wanted to make.

So, for the first couple of months of my residence at Broad, I did what I called deep observation by walking around the Institute everyday. I wondered around the building at night and traced the writings that were left on the whiteboard. In the copy room, I started making lots of copies of what I've traced, and I took over a conference room as my studio. I spread out papers on a gigantic conference room table, started cutting, pasting and tracing the copies.

This is what I did in the conference room earlier, and some of these "sketches" are now making into much larger work. At the bottom, you'll see a short video showing how images interact from a page to another page.




Sunday, July 17, 2016

Shadow writings on the wall: Broad Institute

Writings on the glass wall were made visible as the shadows on the hallway wall across. I saw this when I was making my "round" at the Broad Institute in the evening. The light from the sunset made me see these writings. Otherwise I may not have noticed them. They were written from inside the office, which meant I could only see them in reverse from the hallway where I was walking. The sunset was strong, and giving me an opportunity to actually see what was on the glass wall. 


One thing you need to know about Broad, almost all the office has glass walls. It's very transparent. Here, I see someone's roadmap as simple as "Do" "Developing" "Doing" "Done" (with smile face between doing and done.)



Friday, July 15, 2016

Work in Progress (Blue Notebook #1 & 2)

In the studio, trying to create space for possibility.

Blue Notebook #1: Possibility. Discovery. Starting over. Moving onto the next idea. 
Instagram 5/30



Blue Notebook #2: 120 pages Faster action. Thought emerges in between spaces, pages, times.
Instagram 6/9



Sunday, June 26, 2016

Flow: investigating our relationship with water

Photo: Emily Edwards

"Flow" is a project which invites people to take time to think about water by asking them a simple question; "What is your relationship with water?"

 Participants are offered a piece of original art in exchange for their thoughts on their relationship with water—an act that may suggest a reciprocal relationship between the artist and the viewer, but also between humans and water.

Participants will leave the gallery with a tea-stained Japanese paper bearing a question or response from another person, which I re-typed from the previous installation. Each sheet also bears some marks in mineral pigment. I see this exchange as an invitation to plunge deeper into the question as I have been doing, or as a reminder for a deeper appreciation for water.

Each time I install this project, new responses will be added, and participants will take what they want to have as a reminder and leave their thoughts for others to ponder. People's thoughts on water will be circulated and passed onto other people. Sheets for participants to choose to “swap” and take home bear splashes of blue, but the sheets they use to type their responses do not. Theoretically, if all the original sheets were to be replaced by new responses, the display will not bear any mineral pigment—blue, and it would look "dry" only to bear stories from people about their relationships with water.

For the Open Studio at the Studios at MASS MoCA, I installed this project, and asked viewers to type their thoughts on water. Making a little splash or ripple effect with each exchange, I feel that together we can make a bigger wave. It's a very small humble act by each of us, but it's a start. 


You can learn more about this project on the website. You can also submit your story on Tumblr.



Photo: Emily Edwards

Monday, June 20, 2016

Flow: Work-in-progress at the Studios at MASS MoCA

Taking over the empty cafeteria as my work place. It was a quiet morning in the cafeteria when the MASS MoCA was closed. A perfect opportunity. Sound of a manual typewriter and me.  







Thursday, June 2, 2016

Installation at the Studios at MASS MoCA

"No man's land' - installation for the Open Studio. Still work in progress.





Small drawings: Mixed media on paper (mineral pigment, watercolor, walnut ink, water-soluble crayon, micro pigment pen, and tea) 7 1/2" x 7 1/2"  2014 - ongoing

Large painting: Mineral pigment on Japanese paper (Kumohada mashi) over panel, 20"x 20"  2016

Saturday, May 28, 2016

Work in Progress at the Studios at MASS MoCA

I started making large versions from "No man's land" series at the Studios at MASS MoCA. The original drawing size is 7 1/2" x 7 1/2", and the enlarged version is 20"x 20". Prior to my residency, my friend Gregg shipped two of the 20"x 20" panels for me, encouraging me to go bigger. He gave me homework and I was ready to start as soon as I got to the Studios at MASS MoCA.

Gregg wrote;
"Make them big and blast them in to the world! In the time from now until you get the panels, think about various methods and materials to assist in enlargement, how to approach a larger scale with your body, what tools and how to use them, best glue to laminate the paper to wood or whatever, what music to play as you dance your work into being, should you seal all wood (front, back, sides) before starting, what clothes would best be worn to facilitate creation, how much fun and pleasure you will derive from doing this work." 

This advice along with a surprised gift from Gregg made me dance in the studio.

Here are the beginning stage. The large version is done in mineral pigment. 



And still work in progress, but here's the big brother and little brother. 


Sunday, May 8, 2016

Studios at MASS MoCA



I wonder if there were factory workers’ spirits at the Studios at MASS MoCA. I was at the residency there for two weeks in April. The Studios at MASS MoCA is a residency program for working artists organized by the museum’s Assets for Artists Initiative

While I was at the Studios at MASS MoCA, I was working from morning till late night, as if cranking up many hours on my invisible timesheet. I worked quietly like a cat, listening to my neighbors making noise and any sounds from outside. My studio windows overlooked adjacent brick building. It wasn’t exactly a view – or maybe not a view at all, but it provided a nice consistent natural light coming from the windows. I liked seeing the weathered bricks on that building.


It was a privilege to be on the MASS MoCA campus. The 16 acres of the MASS MoCA ground was once a booming one factory-campus, going back to the colonial period in the late 1700s with wholesale shoe manufactures; a brick yard; a saw mill; cabinet-makers; hat manufacturers; machines shops; marble works; wagon and sleigh makers and so on.

From 1860 to 1942, Arnold Print Works operated fabric-printing business, and built 25 of the 26 buildings in the present-day MASS MoCA complex by the end of the 1890s. At one point, they employed some 3,200 people. I noticed the paintings of strange looking figures on the pillars under the Route 2 bypass, which I could see from my bedroom window in the apartment. They were the Arnold Print Works Dolls. They were printed on the cloth and sold as cut-and-sew kits from 1892 to 1920. Every morning, as I opened the blinds I looked down to see if those dolls were still there. They look like trolls hiding underneath the bypass.




From 1942 to 1985, Sprague Electric Company operated their business while making extensive modifications to the interiors to convert the former textile mill into the state-of-the art electronics plant but leaving the most of the building exteriors as they were. Sprague physicists, chemists, electrical engineers, and technicians were called upon by the U.S. government during the World War II to design and manufacture crucial components of some of its most advanced high-tech weapon system. To my dismay, this included the atomic bomb. Spague was a major research and development center at that time, employing 4,137 workers by 1966. But as many of the manufacturer companies in the U.S. were forced to close their business from declining sales due to overseas competition for lower-price, Sprague was not an exception. The company closed its operations in North Adams in 1985.

MASS MoCA sits on this 16 acres of grounds that is rich with history and operates in these historical 19th century former mill buildings. The brick buildings reveal many different generations of their former occupants. It is also wonderfully complex with strange pathways to connect buildings. But one of the most wonderful things about MASS MoCA is the ginormous space for artwork. It is both spectacular and breath taking, at the same time, it is also challenging and scary for many artists, especially the football field length gallery space.




Having a studio in one of these buildings on the MASS MoCA campus made me work like those factory workers. Were there any ghost factory workers in our studio? I often wondered what those workers did for fun after work. Did they go out for drinks after work? My fun was stepping into MASS MoCA to see art whenever I wanted, even after hours.


*Historical information was taken from MASS MoCA's website: