Art can be found in unexpected ways.
In the past few years, art created by unusual means struck my fancy as I poked around my usual favorite websites. Whether created by new technologies or organic materials, art’s definition never ceases to expand, including new ways of presentation to highlight notable human experiences.
The development of technology is now so advanced that the ability to create art out of science is now feasible. Dr. Abigail Zuger, who practices medicine in New York, wrote a column for the New York Times recently regarding new brain-scanning technologies.
These new methods of brain imaging photograph the mind in so much detail that the sheer artistry of the images inspired Carl Schoonover, a neuroscience student at Columbia University, to compile the colorful scans in an art book, titled “Portraits of the Mind: Visualizing the Brain From Antiquity to the 21st Century.” The book features short essays to run alongside the images, although Zuger writes, “But its words take second place to the gorgeous imagery.”
By the same token, Jorge Colombo of the New Yorker uses the iPhone app “Brushes” every week for his cartoon depicting city life, aptly called “Finger Painting.” This week he sketched a scene at a diner counter in New York City that he called “At the Counter,” where he painted an image of a woman at a diner counter where he ate one day.
Indeed, well-developed technology can inadvertently become art. However, art can also be contrived from the simplest means, like food.
The New Yorker’s Steve Brodner, who did a series of political cartoons for the magazine’s website, illustrated various political observations in one cartoon segment he called “Straight Talk Egg-spress,” where he used egg salad to share his views of political events leading up to the 2008 presidential election. Not only did he tie food and politics together, but made an amusing and informative piece of art that pushed the bounds of what I considered (at the time) to be creative expression.
That kind of creative expression fueled an effort to revitalize the lobby in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Yoshio Taniguchi, the architect who designed the layout of the museum, created a space the New York Times’ Carol Vogel called “awkward,” which posed a challenge to the museum’s curators. Vogel wrote in her Dec. 2 article that the museum, which takes up an entire city block, is often used as a detour for city pedestrians who want to avoid street traffic. The ever-fluctuating temperatures of the museum make it difficult to preserve art, resulting in the conclusion to bring in plants””a happy alternative for not just museum employees but passers-by as well.
The new terrariums, which feature a modern design, house ferns that complement the otherwise cold, industrial architecture of the museum.
Art, no matter how or why it is created, can illustrate different sentiments. Whether it is in the form of egg salad to express a political view or in the form of a collection of colorful brain images that grace your coffee table, unusual art can indeed be just as enjoyable and provocative as traditional, standardized forms of art.