Like the weather, stock market and crowds, complex systems exhibit ‘emergence’ – meaning that larger patterns in the system evolve through interactions between the parts (rather than from a predetermined plan or hierarchy of leadership). This is often described as ‘the whole being more than the sum of the parts’.
Rule-based artwork series Drawing on Complexity is a collaboration between visual-conceptual artist Briony Barr and physicist Andrew Melatos using expanded collaborative drawing to enact a process that evolves from the bottom up, in real time.
Join us for this special discussion with Briony and Andrew, hosted by Experimenta’s Curator-at-Large Lubi Thomas – as we explore the ways in which complex systems and drawing can coalesce, and reflect on what has emerged through this interaction.
WHEN: Wed 1 May 2024, 6.00 – 7.30pm
WHERE: ACMI, FedSquare Melbourne – The Gandel Future Lab 1. at ACMI
Presented in partnership with ACMI X.
Speakers
Briony Barr
Briony Barr is a visual-conceptual artist who uses process-based drawing to explores ideas around structure, emergence and the role of different boundaries and generative limits.
Briony BarrBrisbane, Australia
Briony Barr is a visual-conceptual artist who uses process-based drawing to explores ideas around structure, emergence and the role of different boundaries and generative limits. Interdisciplinary research and collaboration are fundamental to her practice, and she regularly works with scientists, writers, musicians, dancers, educators and fellow artists, as well as groups of people to create art, books, workshops, and performances.
She is part of two long term art-science investigations. Ongoing since 2012, Briony has worked with physicist Andrew Melatos on ‘Drawing on Complexity’ a project which uses collaborative drawing to explore and model complex adaptive systems. Since 2008, Briony has collaborated with microbial ecologist Gregory Crocetti as ‘Scale Free Network’. Together they have created a diverse range of projects which explore and visualise ‘invisible’ micro-worlds, including five storybooks and two graphic novels about microbial symbiosis.
Briony’s work has been presented in schools, libraries, festivals, conferences, galleries, museums and science institutions around Australia and internationally. She is an Honorary Fellow in the School of Physics at the University of Melbourne.
Andrew Melatos
Andrew Melatos is a theoretical physicist with research interests in astrophysics, quantum mechanics, and non-equilibrium systems. He is deeply interested in the interplay between art and science and is active in public outreach.
Andrew MelatosVIC
Andrew Melatos is a theoretical physicist with research interests in astrophysics, quantum mechanics, and non-equilibrium systems. He received his PhD from the University of Sydney, held postdoctoral research fellowships at the California Institute of Technology and University of California at Berkeley, and now works at the University of Melbourne. He is a member of the team that made the historic first direct detection of Einstein’s gravitational waves in 2015.
Melatos is deeply interested in the interplay between art and science and is active in public outreach. He collaborates closely with visual artist Briony Barr on the Drawing on Complexity project, a sequence of participatory, rule-based, expanded drawings – and undrawings – whose rules are inspired by the principles of non-equilibrium systems. He has served as a scientific consultant for the art-science collaborative Scale Free Network and for contemporary dance productions by the Australian Dance Theatre and Melbourne Theatre Company. He co-supervises PhD projects in the art-science domain with academics at the Victorian College of the Arts.