Universal Inquiry: Methods of Encounter with the Natural World

Roundtable with Joey Orr, Andy Yang, and Lucianne Walkowicz

October 5, 4:30–5:45 p.m.

The LeRoy Neiman Center, 37 S. Wabash Ave., 1st floor

The work of Joey Orr (MA 2006–08) explores the boundaries between art and research. He is a founding member of the idea collective, John Q, whose collaborative projects investigate public scholarship and archival practices. An alum of the Visual and Critical Studies graduate program at SAIC, Orr holds a practice-based, interdisciplinary PhD from Emory University. He served as Associate Editor for the Journal for Artistic Research; coeditor for “Participatory Research,” a special issue of Visual Methodologies; and currently coeditor for “Inhabiting Cultures,” a special issue of the Journal of American Studies. Currently the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, he is curating three concurrent exhibitions located at the intersection of art and research. In 2017, he begins his new post as the Andrew W. Mellon Assistant Curator of Research at the Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas.

Dr. Lucianne Walkowicz is an astronomer at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, where she studies stellar magnetic activity, how stars influence a planet’s suitability as a host for alien life, and how to use advanced computing to discover unusual events in large astronomical data sets. Also an artist, Walkowicz works in a variety of media, from oil paint to sound. Walkowicz holds a BS in Physics from Johns Hopkins University, and an MS and PhD from the University of Washington. She was the Kepler Fellow at UC Berkeley and the Henry Norris Russell Fellow at Princeton University before joining the Astronomy Department at Adler Planetarium in 2014. She is a 2012 TED Senior Fellow, a 2011 National Academy of Sciences Kavli Fellow, and is an internationally recognized advocate for the conservation of dark night skies.

SAIC Associate Professor Andrew Yang is an interdisciplinary artist and scholar whose work interweaves the natural, cultural, and bio-historical. His work has been exhibited worldwide from Oklahoma to Yokohama, Japan, and many places in between. Yang has recently created projects for the 14th Istanbul Biennial and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin and has a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago through December 31. Yang’s writing and research appear in journals crossing biology, art, and philosophy including Biological Theory, Interdisciplinary Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Leonardo, and Gastronomica. He holds both a PhD in Biology from Duke University and an MFA in Visual Arts from the Lesley College of Art and Design. He is a research associate at the Field Museum of Natural History, and in fall 2015 he was a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin.

Co-sponsored by SAIC’s Department of Liberal Arts.

This event is free, non-ticketed, and open to the public.

Image: Hubblle hotbed of vigorous star formation, July 1, 2016. Courtesy of ESA/Hubble & NASA, Aloisi, Ford; Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt

Official Website

More events on this date

Tags: Andy Yang, Conversations on Art and Science, Joey Orr, Loop, Lucianne Walkowicz, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Universal Inquiry: Methods of Encounter with the Natural World