Intersections of Art and Science

The Prescience of Octavia Butler

Octavia E. Butler Tribute NYC, June 5, 2006 (by Houari B. CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED via Flickr).
Octavia E. Butler Tribute NYC, June 5, 2006 (by Houari B. CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED via Flickr).

A 1993 dystopian novel imagined the world in 2024. It’s eerily accurate – the Washington Post

Excerpt:
Octavia Butler’s ‘Parable of the Sower’ predicted devastating climate change, inequality, space travel and ‘Make America great again’

The effects of climate change are reshaping America. Those with sufficient resources retreat inside protected communities. Those with even greater resources finance an exploratory Mars mission, presumably in an attempt to one day escape Earth’s destabilization.

In the political realm, a populist presidential candidate denounces claims made by scientists, promising the electorate that he’s going to “return us to the glory, wealth, and order of the twentieth century.”

This is life in 2024.

Or at least it’s life in 2024 as imagined by the writer Octavia Butler 31 years ago.

Parable of the Sower,” a 1993 novel by the late science fiction writer and MacArthur Fellow, depicts a future America ravaged by ecological collapse and civil unrest. The book’s narrator, African American teenager Lauren Olamina, begins writing a journal in July 2024 documenting the upheaval.

In the time it’s taken us to reach 2024 for real, Butler’s story has been adapted as an opera and a graphic novel; a movie adaptation is also in the works. In 2017, director Melina Matsoukas cited Butler among the Black thinkers who inspired her “Formation” video from Beyoncé’s award-winning album “Lemonade.”

In September 2020 — perhaps fueled by an interest in apocalyptic fiction prompted by covid-19 lockdowns — “Parable” appeared on the New York Times bestseller list for the first time, 27 years after publication.

Butler didn’t live to see the renewed interest in her ninth novel — she died in 2006 — but she indicated that the issues faced by the characters in “Parable” and by the United States today were inevitable…

ADDITIONAL READING . . .

How Octavia Butler Told the Future - the Atlantic

Coming World By Koen Vanmechelen (photo by Eric Huybrechts CC BY-ND 2.0 via Flickr).

Excerpt:
We live in an era where commercial flights to the moon are a real possibility, and evolutionary scientists at American company Colossal Biosciences are hoping to pluck the Dodo from extinction after extracting mitochondrial DNA from a 17th Century Dodo preserved by the Natural History Museum (a fascinating story that is told in The Hunt for the Oldest DNA, a documentary which premiered recently at the Science Museum)…

It isn’t only scientists and NASA technicians who are pushing the boundaries of what is possible, there is also a growing number of artists creating and innovating at the frontier between art, science and tech. The evolving conversation between art and science is happening 65 years since British scientist and writer CP Snow lectured on ‘The Two Cultures’ at Cambridge University, stressing the huge divide between the humanities and sciences, and lamenting that there was “…to be no place where the cultures meet.”

This September a month-long exhibition programme funded by the Getty foundation took place in Los Angeles—’PST Art: Art & Science Collide’ featured more than 70 galleries exploring the intersection between art and science. There hasn’t been such a close relationship between art and science since Leonardo Da Vinci excelled at both during the Renaissance. Legend has it that, to produce Mona Lisa’s mysterious smile in his most infamous painting, Da Vinci dissected bodies and studied muscles in the basement of the hospital Santa Maria Nuova.

I spoke to Belgian artist Koen Vanmechelen, known for his scientific collaborations, British artist innovators Rob and Nick Carter and Dr. Bettina Kames, CEO and Co-Founder of the LAS Art Foundation in Berlin, about the work they are doing at the interface of art, science and new technology.

I spoke to Koen Vanmechelen over a zoom call from his studio in Genk, Belgium. A Belgian artist with an international profile, Vanmechelen has exhibited frequently at the Venice Biennale and his work has been shown at the Uffizi in Florence, Biennials of Moscow, Havana, Dakar and Poznan and he has addressed the World Economic Forum and various TED conferences. Koen Vanmechelen (b. 1965) is situated at the confluence of art, science, philosophy and community.

Vanmechelen travels the world looking for answers to fundamental questions that touch on issues which are both timeless and capture the zeitgeist including diversity, globalisation and human rights, and weaves those answers into enigmatic artworks. His exhibition at the Kunsthall 3,14 in Norway is the latest phases of his ongoing ‘Cosmopolitan Chicken Project’. Over the last 20 years, the Cosmopolitan Chicken Project has been presented in renowned art institutions around the world, and through it Vanmechelen explores the boundless potential hidden in biocultural diversity and the richness that springs from difference.

Vanmechelen’s fascination with chickens began at an early age. He explains: “When I was five years old, I had an incubator in my room. And I got two chickens from my parents. The incubator was a gift from my godfather, who was a biologist. So as a young kid, I was looking at how a little chick was struggling to come out of the egg. I saw that one third of the egg is air, and two thirds of the egg is chick. Then there is a division between the air and the chick, so it has to take the air, break the shell and come out. Then I saw on TV the space shuttle going to the moon. And I thought, this is the same action. You have to break the scale of the atmosphere, and then you have to find the right corner to get in. Otherwise you get burnt and game over. And I thought in life it’s like this—you have to find the right corner to exist. The rebirthing of your ID, and that’s the way you become an artist…”

The Visions of Octavia Butler | Interactive - the New York Times

Coming World By Koen Vanmechelen (photo by Eric Huybrechts CC BY-ND 2.0 via Flickr).

Excerpt:
We live in an era where commercial flights to the moon are a real possibility, and evolutionary scientists at American company Colossal Biosciences are hoping to pluck the Dodo from extinction after extracting mitochondrial DNA from a 17th Century Dodo preserved by the Natural History Museum (a fascinating story that is told in The Hunt for the Oldest DNA, a documentary which premiered recently at the Science Museum)…

It isn’t only scientists and NASA technicians who are pushing the boundaries of what is possible, there is also a growing number of artists creating and innovating at the frontier between art, science and tech. The evolving conversation between art and science is happening 65 years since British scientist and writer CP Snow lectured on ‘The Two Cultures’ at Cambridge University, stressing the huge divide between the humanities and sciences, and lamenting that there was “…to be no place where the cultures meet.”

This September a month-long exhibition programme funded by the Getty foundation took place in Los Angeles—’PST Art: Art & Science Collide’ featured more than 70 galleries exploring the intersection between art and science. There hasn’t been such a close relationship between art and science since Leonardo Da Vinci excelled at both during the Renaissance. Legend has it that, to produce Mona Lisa’s mysterious smile in his most infamous painting, Da Vinci dissected bodies and studied muscles in the basement of the hospital Santa Maria Nuova.

I spoke to Belgian artist Koen Vanmechelen, known for his scientific collaborations, British artist innovators Rob and Nick Carter and Dr. Bettina Kames, CEO and Co-Founder of the LAS Art Foundation in Berlin, about the work they are doing at the interface of art, science and new technology.

I spoke to Koen Vanmechelen over a zoom call from his studio in Genk, Belgium. A Belgian artist with an international profile, Vanmechelen has exhibited frequently at the Venice Biennale and his work has been shown at the Uffizi in Florence, Biennials of Moscow, Havana, Dakar and Poznan and he has addressed the World Economic Forum and various TED conferences. Koen Vanmechelen (b. 1965) is situated at the confluence of art, science, philosophy and community.

Vanmechelen travels the world looking for answers to fundamental questions that touch on issues which are both timeless and capture the zeitgeist including diversity, globalisation and human rights, and weaves those answers into enigmatic artworks. His exhibition at the Kunsthall 3,14 in Norway is the latest phases of his ongoing ‘Cosmopolitan Chicken Project’. Over the last 20 years, the Cosmopolitan Chicken Project has been presented in renowned art institutions around the world, and through it Vanmechelen explores the boundless potential hidden in biocultural diversity and the richness that springs from difference.

Vanmechelen’s fascination with chickens began at an early age. He explains: “When I was five years old, I had an incubator in my room. And I got two chickens from my parents. The incubator was a gift from my godfather, who was a biologist. So as a young kid, I was looking at how a little chick was struggling to come out of the egg. I saw that one third of the egg is air, and two thirds of the egg is chick. Then there is a division between the air and the chick, so it has to take the air, break the shell and come out. Then I saw on TV the space shuttle going to the moon. And I thought, this is the same action. You have to break the scale of the atmosphere, and then you have to find the right corner to get in. Otherwise you get burnt and game over. And I thought in life it’s like this—you have to find the right corner to exist. The rebirthing of your ID, and that’s the way you become an artist…”

ALSO OF INTEREST . . .

TED-Ed (02-25-2019):
Why should you read sci-fi superstar Octavia E. Butler?

Much science fiction features white male heroes who blast aliens or become saviors of brown people. Octavia E. Butler knew she could tell a better story. She built stunning worlds rife with diverse characters, and brought nuance and depth to the representation of their experiences…

Storied – PBS (06-29-2021):
Octavia Butler, The Grand Dame of Science Fiction | It’s Lit

If you are a fan of science fiction a name you should be familiar with is Octavia E. Butler. One of the most prolific and important Black authors in the genre, Butler’s storytelling pushed the boundaries of what Black people were allowed to be in science fiction…Hosted by Lindsay Ellis and Princess Weekes..

EXHIBITION:

Hyde Park Art Center (Exhibit runs from 11-11-2023 through 03-03-2024):
Candace Hunter: The Alien‐Nations and Sovereign States of Octavia E Butler

In The Alien‐Nations and Sovereign States of Octavia E Butler, Candace Hunter presents new works created with synthetic plants, remnants of a sustainable food experiment, a reading nook, and painted doors as imagined portals to other worlds to create what she describes as an “alien lush space.” The exhibition addresses the concepts of nationhood. Candace Hunter poses questions about who is other, and in what situations do we see people as other to ourselves? How do we become universal?

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