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

"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. 

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

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.

Notebook: Work in Progress from Naoe Suzuki on Vimeo.

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.)

Instagram 

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

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