Science centre, artists spark up relationship
Some artists like to create privately in their studios, away from it all.
Calgary artist Tyler Los-Jones, with the assistance of Telus Spark, is turning that notion on its head by embracing the idea of creating publicly.
He’s creating in front of the thousands of visitors to Telus Spark each day, where he just spent 10 days as the science centre’s first artistin-residence.
It’s all part of Telus Spark’s Art Pilot Project, funded by a grant from the Rozsa Foundation, that brings in different artists and throws them into a highly public, scientific-themed setting to see what they come up with.
It’s all part of creating a science centre that’s more interested in asking questions that engage visitors than in providing all the answers.
“In the old (science centre) model,” says Telus Spark exhibit developer Kristofer Kelly, “they don’t have authentic challenges. They know how it’s going to turn out.
“(However),” he adds, “when you introduce an authentic challenge — whether it’s an artistin-residence or making something fly — the whole parameters of innovation and how people respond (to the science centre) change.”
For Los-Jones, working in full public view has proved to be a dynamic experience.
“As an artist it makes so much sense to put yourself in situations that are going to expand upon the context of your work, (as well as) the content of your work,” he says.
“This institution is really present,” he says, “asking really informed questions, really challenging what you’re doing — and the public that comes with this institution really challenges you.”
For his Telus Spark residency, Los-Jones has been examining our contemporary relationship to time.
One project involves working with a 17,000-yearold split rock in Confluence Park (West Nose Hill), where he’s been producing a series of rubbings using different coloured crayons that create a kind of analogue scan of the old rock.
(Rocks aren’t entirely alien to Los-Jones, whose stepfather is a geologist. “There was a lot of rock talk in my family growing up,” he says.)
The other time scale project involves producing a series of experimental clocks that measure time in unorthodox ways.
Los-Jones has enlisted the suggestions of both children and adult visitors to the science centre to create his experimental clocks, which provoke interesting reactions from both demographic groups, he says.
“One kid was really into hockey,” he says, “so I said, ‘Well, at the start of the season, the smell of your gym bag is different than the smell of your gym bag at the end of the season.’ That’s kind of like a clock for your hockey season,” he adds, “a way to discern that time has passed.
“His mom thought it was awesome,” he says, “and I was totally into it, but he was just not ready to go there.”
However, the sheer range of visitors that the science centre attracts — everyone from jewellers to auditors to engineers to families — has produced a wide-ranging ongoing conversation.
“For me as an artist, thinking about what Spark can offer me, one of those is this incredible public it has,” he says. “When somebody’s coming to Spark, they’re a curious individual and so for me, trying to tap into that amazing knowledge base is really important.”
As it turns out, one of the inspirations for the Artist Pilot Project is the City of Calgary’s own Art Pilot Project, Watershed Plus.
Founded by the Utilities and Environment Protections department of the City of Calgary, that project has incorporated artists into its own projects to explore sustainability and our management of the environment.
Those themes echo eerily in the work of Rachel Duckhouse, who is also working in a pop-up studio at Telus Spark, giving the science centre a distinctly artist-centre-driven vibe this summer.
It turns out Duckhouse’s project, which she’s been working on for a while now, centres around the water flow of the Bow River — she’s creating a series of drawings that “explore the way water moves through, over, under and between the urban and rural landscapes of Calgary,” according to a release.
For Kelly, the time has never been riper for a collision of artists and science.
“Over the longer term, I would love to do something with more artists,” he says.
“Tyler’s (been) this (kind of) guinea pig,” he says. “Scientists and engineers take ideas out into the world — artists and designers ought to, too.”
For Los-Jones, incorporating artists into the scientific and municipal institutions signals to him, and others in the arts community, a growing recognition of the myriad ways in which artists can help shape cities.
“Artists are figuring out how they can participate in the city in a different way,” he says. “The city is figuring out, ‘Hey, there’s a bunch of these (artist) people, super committed to what they’re doing’ — (which is) totally valuable.
“That’s what you see in exciting, metropolitan places that are confident about themselves as a city,” he says.
“That’s super exciting to me, and great for places like Watershed or places like Telus Spark to show that to other institutions in the city.”