Skidmore Scope Magazine Annual Edition for 2017

25 SKIDMORE COLLEGE larly fascinating “when we can create a model using equa- tions that can actually generate that same natural form.” Artist-scientists Janko Gravner and David Griffeath, in the show’s Modeling Snow Crystal Growth, presented computer-simulated images inspired by the century-old microscopy work of Wilson “Snowflake” Bentley, whose photographs of natural snowflakes were displayed nearby. Both old and new invited close scrutiny. Here was the fractal patterning modeled in the Fibonacci sequence, there the sixfold symmetry of the show’s title. But while the six sides of a snowflake “are fundamentally equivalent,” says Roe-Dale, “there are slight imperfections.” Gravner and Griffeath’s computer model was based on the actual phys- ics of water molecules either adhering to a snowflake or starting a new branch of crystals. In that small randomness, art imitates nature. Roe-Dale, who had never done museumwork before, says being part of a curatorial project “opened up a new door for me. I’ve become really interested in howwe can in- tegrate the museum experience with our science and math classes on a more regular basis.” Symbology, rhythm, and line Grace Burton brought her “Communicating in Spanish” class especially to see the eye-tracking installation she worked on with psychologist Rebecca Johnson, addressing the phenomenon of “expectancy grammar”: As we learn to expect certain patterns when we read, our eyes and brains process short or common words faster than others. In the gallery, videos demonstrated the increasingly orderly eye movement patterns of a pre-reader, a beginning reader, and a skilled reader, as well as showing the breakdown of that order in a reader who has had a stroke. Skidmore’s Gamelan Banyu Wali ensemble, coached by Liz Macy, performed in the gallery’s Balinese gamelan installation, which invited listeners to appreciate the cyclic patterning of the music. A number of classes came in the fall to talk with and observe Nigerian-American artist Victor Ekpuk as he cre- ated an intricate chalk drawing, inspired by the traditional Nsibidi script symbols of the Igbo culture’s ukara cloth, on two blackened gallery walls. Joe Underwood’s art his- tory class “Ephemeral Exhibitions” was a natural: as with all of Ekpuk’s site-specific wall drawings, this one was to be erased when the exhibition closed in the spring. Class member Claire Bernson ’17, who had helped research art- ists as an exhibitions assistant at the Tang, felt fortunate “to watch himwork and discuss his process.” Others watching Ekpuk at work ranged from Bina Gogineni and her postcolonial literature class “The Empire Strikes Back” to Mark Hofmann and students in his Scrib- ner Seminar “Math and Escher” to Hédi Jaouad with his Scribner Seminar “Africa Through Its Changing Cinema.” Ekpuk responded to some thoughtful and complex questions from the students and talked about the way his work has evolved from Nsibidi -related shapes to his own very personal vocabulary of forms. Students watched as he added detail to the wall, working fast, chalk dust flying, long continuous lines forming intricate patterns. Navigating and transcending Greg Spinner brought religion students and colleagues to ex- plore the gallery wall of cosmograms—maps of space or time, such as Tibetan mandalas, Shaker gift drawings, and Kab- balistic diagrams—created for visualizing salvation or en- lightenment. Spinner observes, “A fundamental aspect that religions share is the ability to conceptualize a cosmos, to conceive a world that is organized, orchestrated, patterned, and regulated and in which human existence has its proper order, its proper place.”Whether from Jewish, Buddhist, or Christian traditions, he says, cosmograms are intended to “help you navigate toward a goal, transcending this mundane reality to get to heaven or reach enlightenment.” Art history major Bernson, when leading patrons through the exhibition in her job as a Tang guide, typically asks “what they think of when they picture pattern, and the general consensus involves plaids or geometric shapes.” But after viewing the show, she found, the visitors began to think about pattern as more than visual—“it is underneath almost all things we do.” Opposite: Victor Ekpuk creates his Drawing Memory on a Tang Museum wall. Top left: Thomas Bangsted’s Last of the Dreadnoughts recreates the “dazzle camouflage” used on old battleships. Top right: Skidmore’s gamelan ensemble set up in the gallery to demonstrate symmetries of sound. Courtesy of the artist and Marc Strauss LLC; Arthur Evans “Why do humans seek out, create, replicate pattern?Why do we desire it, and how do we use it?”