Science + Art + What's Possible

My lectures, workshops, and projects are rooted in both SCIENCE and ART. Both are based on deep research.
Both are creative, experimental, trial-based processes.
Both take time and feedback and collaboration.
Both require communication.
Both benefit from public understanding and investment.

BOTH ARE ME...

I find myself seeking out people and organizations that combine the two with public engagement. Science affects our lives in local and personal ways but the often overwhelming and seemingly remote flood of data makes it hard to relate to. My goal is to shape the interaction with data into a personal, tangible, and participatory experience that is thought provoking, embodied, imaginative, and perhaps even fun.

Projects + Collaborations

Sunk Shore

Timelines Through a Fish-Eye lens

Sunk Shore, 2018, Photo: Robin Michals

Sunk Shore

Climate + Ecology + Art

Sunk Shore is a collaboration between artist/microbiologist Clarinda Mac Low and dancer/historical marine ecologist Carolyn Hall. It is built to make the climate emergency concrete and personal--a walking tour of the future, tailor-made to specific sites; an interactive speculative fiction based on predictive climate change data. The “tour” uses imagination, sensory exercises, surrounding structures and landscapes, and evocative props to make abstract information viscerally present.

Since 2017, we have created multiple versions of Sunk Shore as walks, installations, videos and more. See documentation of all Sunk Shore versions here.

Sunk Shore is a passionately pragmatic response to the climate emergency. Through the power of imaginative - and enjoyable! - embodied experience, it seeks to make the facts of climate change, typically hard to absorb, present in the body. Sunk Shore brings the past into the present to evoke the future, partnering with local experts and activists to get a complete picture of how each “shore” has functioned, is functioning, and might change. The past, including the physical configuration of a waterway as well as the varied cultures around it, serves as fodder for an invented future. Our approach is hyperlocal and we build tours based on specific waterways and the surrounding communities and ecologies.

We want Sunk Shore to be a jumping-off point for discussions of the questions posed by anthropogenic climate change, inviting audiences into committed, holistic activism.

Residencies with Works on Water (WoW)

2017 - WoW 1st Triennial at 3LD Art & Technology Center

2018 - WoW on Governors Island

Sunk Shore, 2018, Photo: Robin Michals

robin+michals_boat+sunk+shore+GI+2018.jpg

Sunk Shore, 2018, Photo: Robin Michals

Sunk Shore, 2018, Photo: Carolyn Hall

Sunk Shore, 2018, Photo: Robin Michals

Sunk Shore, 2018, Photo: Carolyn Hall

Sunk Shore, 2018, Photo: Robin Michals

Sunk Shore, 2018, Photo: Laura Nova

Timelines Through a Fish-Eye Lens

Ecosystems + Economy + Time

From the fish-eye lens, how do we visualize that which we’ve altered or that which we’ve lost or that we wish to recover? Is recovery even possible? Or is resilience what is needed to defend against more loss and to best prepare for future necessary and inevitable alterations?

I am asking these questions about New York City’s long history and current relationship to fish and fisheries through an installation and embodiment of timelines. Timelines that span from "prehistory" to today. Timelines that explore connections stemming from documentations of fish species in NYC waters to our past and current questions about residence, im/migration, fluid boundaries, consumption, the value of an object vs. a living contributor to an ecosystem, and economy.