USU Professor's Work Featured in Microcosm Exhibit
This artwork was created by Mark Lee Koven, with the assistance of Fen-Ann Shen, using the USU Microscopy Laboratory's Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). The captured images were digitally manipulated, colored and composited with 3D models created through Computer Assisted Design (CAD) software. The final images are fabricated "MicroScapes" that only exist as these fictitious landscapes.
Mark Lee Koven, an assistant professor in Utah State University’s Caine College of the Arts, has been invited to display his work in Microcosm, an exhibition of six artists whose artworks explore the intersections between art and science. The works offer thought provoking perspectives of objects and organisms at the atomic and cellular level that are invisible to the naked eye.
The exhibition is curated by Edie Carpenter and runs through Nov. 10 at the Greenhill Art Gallery in North Carolina.
Lee Koven’s installations depict various types of bacteria as a metaphoric representation of the beginnings of life. They include live cultures, stereographic images that recreate 3D microcosmic landscapes as well as photographic lenticular images. The images and data collected are then used to produce 3D printed physical sculptures 1,000 times the original size utilizing a Stereo Lithographic 3D printer, which are included in the exhibition.
His installation, “Spit Culture,” examines the oral ecology of bacteria in the human mouth and their possible relationship to various socioeconomic factors.
“Since 2012, gallery-goers at various venues throughout the United States have been asked to contribute to the data through spitting into the appropriate petri dish,” Lee Koven said. “Which petri they spit into has been based upon a variety of factors that include gender, income, race and weight.”
The data continues to be collected, classified and analyzed for any correlations between the types and number of bacteria and that of external factors, Lee Koven said.
A video camera system in the installation shows the breakdown of income levels and types of bacteria collected in Logan.
“In using art as a data collection tool as well as visualization, this work combines art with science throughout the scientific investigation,” Lee Koven said.
More information about the exhibit can be found online.
Related links:
USU Department of Art and Design
Writer and contact: Whitney Schulte, 435-797-9203, whitney.schulte@usu.edu
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