MEMBER SPOTLIGHT
June 5, 2023
This week we recognize Amy Youngs Amy Youngs, and her expansive body of work at the interstices of technology and the natural world for over twenty years.
Cricket Call (above) from 1998, was a technologically-enhanced nature experience attempts to facilitate communication between crickets and humans. The cricket participants live in a glass-walled, human-like environment which, when a human participant is present, includes a televised human on their own scale. For the human, there is a telephone interface which receives the amplified chirping sounds of the actual crickets and sends voice-activated electronic chirping sounds to the crickets.
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"This living sculpture [Farm Fountain 2007-2013, above] is designed to inspire participation in lowering greenhouse gas emissions through personal, local food production. It is a functional chandelier, water fountain, garden and fish farm—all in one interconnected, constructed ecosystem. Based on the concept of aquaponics, this hanging garden fountain uses a pump, along with gravity to flow the nutrients from fish waste through the plant roots." "This project is an experiment in local, sustainable agriculture and recycling. It utilizes 2-liter plastic soda bottles as planters and continuously recycles the water in the system to create a symbiotic relationship between edible plants, fish and humans. The work creates an indoor healthy environment that also provides oxygen and light to the humans working and moving through the space. The sound of water trickling through the plant containers creates a peaceful, relaxing waterfall. The Koi and Tilapia fish that are part of this project also provide a focus for relaxed viewing.”
Live Feedings, 2015-2017 (above) was a live feed webcam located in Young's office at the Ohio State University and broadcasted the activities of composting worms in action. The meals were made of waste foods that worms like—carrot pulp, asparagus ends, coffee grounds, banana peels—on a bedding of shredded newspaper and coco coir. The worm bin was illuminated with infrared light to protect the worms from visible light, which can harm them. Multiple LIVE Feedings occurred over four months, with the worm bin webcam live streaming 24/7.
Becoming Biodiversity, 2019 (above) is an augmented reality application that encourages participants to explore and experience local, ecological networks present in an urban park site. Cell phones and headphones are used to experience this artwork, which includes mixed-reality animations and storytelling as an overlay to the actual park. The experience is an embodied one, designed to connect humans empathetically with the biodiversity, symbioses, and unseen worlds in public park spaces. Fantastic ecologies exist everywhere on earth and at many scales, many of which are invisible to us. Though we mostly ignore and disrespect the non-humans in these networks, our lives depend upon them. This artwork is a guided tour which will allow us to inhabit the worlds of multiple species along the network, allowing them to become visible and “sense-able” to us.”
Grasping Permeability, Flushing Meadows Corona Park, 2019 (below) was a virtual reality installation that invited viewers to interact with images by grasping them with hand controllers. The images were a spatial simulation made from photographs the artist took at Flushing Meadows Corona Park in New York City. The experience was designed to alter the viewer’s sense of self in relation to the hollow virtual skins—the surface representations of place. A ring of phragmites plants provided a semi-permeable layer that could be touched by real and virtual hands.
Amy Youngs creates biological art, interactive sculptures and digital media works that explore interdependencies between technology, plants and animals. Her practice-based research involves entanglements with the non-human, constructing ecosystems, and seeing through the eyes of machines. She has created installations that amplify the sounds and movements of living worms, indoor ecosystems that grow edible plants, a multi-channel interactive video sculpture for a science museum, and community-based, participatory video, social media and public web cam projects. Youngs has exhibited her works nationally and internationally and she has contributed writing to interdisciplinary publications such as Leonardo and the recent book, Robots and Art. Her work has been profiled in books such as Art in Action, and Nature, Creativity & our Collective Future. Youngs received a BA in Art from San Francisco State University and attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago on a fellowship where she earned an MFA in 1999. In 2001, she joined the faculty at the Ohio State University where she's currently working as an Associate Professor of Art, leading interdisciplinary grant projects and teaching courses in moving image, eco-art, and art/science. hypernatural.com
Featured images (top to bottom): ©Amy M. Youngs, Cricket Call, 1998, live crickets, plant, custom electronics, amplifier, telephone, video camera, copper, glass, fabric and wood, exhibited 2003-4 in the exhibition Bug-Eyed: Art, Culture, Insects curated by Patricia Watts at Turtle Bay Exploration Park, Redding, California; Farm Fountain, 2007-2013, exhibited at Te Papa, Tongarewa, Wellington, New Zealand, The National Art Museum of China, Beijing, China, Banvard Gallery, Knowlton School of Architecture, Columbus, Ohio, and Kontejner, Bureau of Contemporary Art Practice, Zagreb, Croatia; Live Feeding, 2015-2017, network webcam, live composting worms, plastic bin, food waste, paper waste, infrared light, video; Becoming Biodiversity 2019, exhibited at the New York Electronic Arts Festival, June 1 - August 11, 2019; Grasping Permeability, Flushing Meadows Corona Park, 2019, installation with Phragmites (common reeds), virtual reality experience + wetland particulates on paper; Self portrait of artist.
