From the Curator of Museum Services at the University of Dundee:
Tomorrow - Monday 9th June - at 5.30pm sees the latest Artist’s Talk – Ellen K Levy: Interactions - at the D’Arcy Thompson Lecture Theatre, Tower Building, University of Dundee.
Ellen K Levy is an American visual artist whose work explores biological science through mixed-media installations, forums, curatorial projects and writing.
During June, she will be undertaking a residency in the D’Arcy Thompson Zoology Museum, and in this free public talk to mark Universities Week she will reflect on the profound influence of D’Arcy Thompson’s work on her and other artists.
Levy has developed a body of work that applies his theory of constraints and his view of organisms as dynamical systems to a changing world, one that is increasingly out of balance. Several of her works focus on the interaction between a biological system and a radically transformed site, showing glimpses of how the built environment and some of the smallest forms of nature might jarringly intersect. Levy integrates details from nature’s micro-organisms with information from the internet and other human-made systems, juxtaposing static prints and paintings with rapidly changing animations.
She investigates the convergence of biology and information systems through the implementation of cellular automata and probes the boundaries between the animate and inanimate, envisioning hybrid solutions as we increasingly cope with environmental disruptions.
Levy is currently Special Advisor on the Arts and Sciences at the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts at Portland, Maine and has had numerous group and solo exhibitions, including at the New York Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. She has since published widely on art and complex systems.