remixing science michael paulus

Remixing Science: Michael Paulus' Unnatural Wonders

New work by mixed-media artist Michael Paulus always gets my

attention, and he has a new series up in Portland beginning today and

running through August 1 (Stumptown, 3356 SE Belmont). The new series,

"Ten Commemorative Plaques of Prototypes from the Millenium

Bioengineering Conference in Hartford, CT" purports to document "lost"

bioengineered species whose prototypes were purloined from a

scientific conference. The grace with which he executes his strongest

works keep us in that amorphous zone between science and art where

anything can happen; in fact, it looks as though it did happen in some

lost epoch in which the twenty-first and ninteenth centuries collided.

For now Paulus has a couple of the project's ten pieces posted to his

website; hopefully there will be more up soon.

I've been a big fan of Paulus' work since I stumbled across his

Skeletal Systems series, which imagines the skeletons of cartoon

characters from Betty Boop to Shmoo (a detail from Hello Kitty, his

first in the series, is pictured above). Paulus' work blends curious

concepts with anti-pop craftsmanship using methods and forms that seem

at once refreshingly alien and old-world; in his Skeletal Systems

pieces, acetate is laid over parchment paper on wood with a faithful

rendering of the cartoon character on top and the skeletal structure

inferred from their outward appearance, an exercise that renders the

cute playfully grotesque and the plastic and Platonic utterly

corporeal. I'd show his work alongside Harri Kallio's dodo

reconstruction photographs in a heartbeat. Both artists play with our

notions of evidence and authority and our fantasies' guerrilla war

against it all - Paulus by directly referencing formalisms of the

grand 19th-century style of scientific display and edification, Kallio

striking at the heart of the matter with his reconstructions of the

tragic icon of the naturalists who handed that style down to us.

"I liked the idea of representing these characters from a physical

point of view, as though they truly existed with those features,"

Paulus said in an interview in Pig magazine last year (Italian, my

translation). "So I decided to investigate 'clinically,' in a more or

less objective way, the structure of some of these characters as

though I were a scientist with a living organism that presented

particular characteristics. I did it to capture their essential nature

and to see them in a new light."

One interesting outgrowth of Paulus' "Skeletal Systems" work was that

the artist worked with a profoundly hip middle-school teacher in

Oregon who asked him if he'd mind if she used his artworks as

inspiration for her students to draw skeletons for the cartoon

character of their choice. Kids spent time prior to the activity

learning the bones of the human body and attempted to incorporate them

into their skeletal drawings of characters ranging from Homer Simpson

and Pluto to the teacup from Beauty and the Beast. Below, from Paulus'

website, is a grading rubric the teacher created for the activity

(click on it to view it at a larger size).

"The interaction with the students was great," Paulus told me in a

response to some questions I emailed him yesterday. "Actually the

teacher, Mrs. Duncan, contacted me and asked if I would be open to her

students using the skeletal systems model I had done for their science

class dealing with the human anatomy - specificaly the skeletal

system. I received a handwritten letter from every student and a xerox

of each student's work. I love them. I have them all." You can view

some of the student drawings and letters here.

It's easy to forget the role of imagination in science, and despite

artists' frequent plundering of the riches of recent discoveries,

little traffic goes the other way. Bringing art into the science

classroom - whether it be to approach learning from a different

perspective or simply to show how scientific knowledge is "remixed" by

contemporary culture - can help bridge that mental gap for all kinds

of learners.

Here is what my fantasy high-school science teacher would assign as

homework:

View the selection of works from Michael Paulus' "Commemorative

Plaques" series and answer the following questions.

1. What concerns about genetic engineering does the artist raise with

his work? What tone does Paulus use to express his concerns? What

reaction does he hope to achieve in viewers?

2. What safeguards does the scientific community hope will prevent

Paulus' worst fears from being realized? What are the limitations

of these measures?

3. (After a class discussion.) With Paulus' work in mind, draw your

own genetically engineered life form that represent your own

concerns about the future of bioengineering. Write a paragraph

comparing the two creatures, explaining how each reflects the

tensions between scientific progress and a respect for the natural

world.

Lesson extension: Shop class.