Leonardo@Djerassi 2018 (Scientific Delirium Madness 5.0) | Leonardo/ISASTwith Arizona State University

Leonardo@Djerassi 2018 (Scientific Delirium Madness 5.0)

Leonardo at Djerassi 2018 (Scientific Delirium Madness 5.0)

From the gallery introduction by Djerassi Executive Director Margot Knight: "Selected from more than 200 applicants and nominees, 11 experimental souls arrived as strangers in June and left as friends in July. They included an astrophysicist, a bioengineer, writers, a chemist, visual artists and media artists. Renaissance men and women, all. They came from the east and west coasts of the United States, from England, Switzerland and Chile. All new relationships are tentative, but 30 days turned tentative into tenacious. The residents performed, read and created for each other. They interviewed a bestselling science fiction author for inspiration for their own sci-fi novel. They created ceramic sculptures in riverbeds and performed cello and bass concerts on massive ancient redwood stumps. I have no doubt they and their predecessors are changing the world in seen and unseen ways.

Please enjoy this glimpse into the creative process experienced on our mountaintop retreat. Find the residents’ contemporaneous blogs and share them. I particularly hope those of you who educate young scientists and artists can use the participants’ experiences to break down the either/or of scientific and artistic disciplines. Let’s bend the rules of the academy to reward rather than pigeonhole big thinkers. Discoveries that change the world are often the work of the brave people working on the edges.

This Year's Residents

Scientist
United States
Visual Artist
Switzerland
Literature
United States
Scientist
United States
Media Artist
United States
Professor
United States
Literature
United Kingdom
Music Composition
Chile
Assistant Professor
United States
Scientist
United States
Media Artist
United States

Blog Posts from This Year's Residency

By Barbara Berrie

By David Goodsell

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By Thomas Skalak

Dante wrote "Nature is the art of God", and we feel the art of nature here at Djerassi.  The old master wrote The Divine Comedy while in exile from his daily responsibilities in Florence, while...

By Thomas Skalak

WATCH. A new landscape artwork at Djerassi ranch. This work was constructed by subtractive writing on a historic Djerassi ranch sign bearing the bullet holes of bygone days of exuberance. It...

By Alan Bogana

This year I started to use computer fluid dynamics software, or maybe better said misuse, in my art practice. So far, I have been feeding data from specific environments in technical CFD...

By Anna Yermakova

A little bit about the first performance of the "Harmonic Roots Series" we presented last night in the Artist Barn - with Sebastian Perez and Dasha Lavrennikov .

By Sarah Brady

By Sonia Sheridan

These winners happen to be women but were selected simply because they most represented Steve Wilson's ideas with the quality and breadth of their work. Equally important were their philosophies...

By Sarah Brady

Since my time at Djerassi, one cannot help but admire the beauty of lichen, following their tangles and patterns. It is everywhere, growing on and over things, pale green strings. Each pattern unique...

By Barbara Berrie

The maquette for my sculptural installation completed, I turned to making a larger version: five and half inch square faces. Since I’m working with cubes, the sized is not doubled, but cubed; of...

By David Goodsell

I had a moment of terror yesterday.

By Barbara Berrie

Even though I think I know all about it, a really solid grasp of the distinction between the additive and subtractive primary colors and their separate, nuanced properties can feel just beyond my...

By Barbara Berrie

...

By David Goodsell

...

By Thomas Skalak

Waking to strong offshore breezes, I created a new photographic work, mindful of Nick's observation in The Great Gatsby that "... man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent,...

By David Goodsell

I met a fox today, hiking home on the Ridge Trail. This is our first truly sunny day at the Djerassi Ranch, and I chose, perhaps unwisely, to pack a lunch and go exploring for natural pigments. On...

By Eliot North

 Scientific Delirium Madness, Djerassi 2018. An Essay


Here on the ranch, on the western side of the Santa Cruz mountains, the sea mist begins its slow roll back towards the Pacific...

By Thomas Skalak

While writing a novel at Djerassi, I've been drawn sideways to create a phootographic work capturing the creative fire and awe induced by this place.

By Thomas Skalak

As a writer of a novel, experiencing the first week of the Djerassi Resident Artists Program has been both distracting and provocative.

By Sonia Sheridan

A 2018 fellowship has been awarded to Sarah Rosalena Brady, a 2018 UCLA Media Arts graduate.