Brian Knep : Journal

AIR Contact

Recently met Daniel Kohn and Julie Miller, both also currently or formerly artists-in-residence (AIR) at local scientific institutions.

The first meeting was arranged by Bang Wong at the Broad Institute, where Daniel is in residence. The benches, the tools, the people, the vibe…it’s the same culture as Harvard Med School. Daniel is a painter and has created a studio in the middle of a set of lab benches. It’s a heavy traffic area, and he’s covered the walls and windows with drawings and sketches. A nice way to create opportunities for chance encounters and dialog. His residency is officially over, but he’s hopeful they’ll find some money to keep him around for longer.

Daniel Kohn, Ochre 1, 2006
oil on canvas, 84″ x 72″

At the Broad we saw a bunch of DNA-on-a-chip, or DNA microarray, devices. Each holds thousands of binding sites, each binding to a different bit of DNA or RNA. You can determine what bits of DNA are in a sample by washing it over the microarray and seeing which sites bind.

DNA Microarrays

Julie was at the Boston Biomedical Research Institute, where we met our second time. Her residency has also ended, but her show there was still up. We checked it out and got a quick tour of the lab of one of her friends there. He’s working on protein folding. In particular, he’s trying to understand how a protein changes when it’s activated by a calcium ion. Julie told us that he had been very vocal about her work, arguing that art needs a focus, like a beautiful flower with a blurry background. To appease his aesthetics, she created and showed one flower print in the middle of her show. Very cute; he was appreciative.

Julie Miller, o(11), 2006
ink and paint marker on paper, 11½” x 11½”

I’m not sure how much my work has in common with Daniel’s or Julie’s. I don’t know enough about their process or where their work will go. But I do know that I like to use the science not only as inspiration but also in a direct way to create/push the art—filming frogs or simulating natural patterns, for example. I also like to maintain enough distance to be able to comment on the role of science in our society. The aging pieces, for example, are not only about time and aging, but are a comment on the value we place in scientific research, in using technology to solve our ills, in looking for external solutions to our fears.