Jenn Karson - Friday, June 12th
Machine Arts Gallery is pleased to present a new exhibition of work by artist, researcher, and educator Jenn Karson, opening Friday, June 12 from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM at Machine Arts Gallery in Peekskill, New York.
The exhibition features a collection of new works and live oak saplings that explore the relationship between ecology, technology, and human creativity. Drawing from recent research into forest health, machine learning, and computational drawing systems, Karson's work examines how artists can collaborate with both natural and technological processes to better understand the living world around us.
Combining field research, data collection, machine learning, and pen plotting, the work reflects Karson's ongoing interest in human-machine collaboration and the ways emerging technologies can be used as tools for observation, interpretation, and care. The resulting pieces bring together scientific inquiry and artistic practice, creating a body of work that is both visually intricate and conceptually rich.
Visitors are invited to join us for the opening reception on Friday, June 12 from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM. The event is free and open to the public.
Artist Statement:
Karson's work explores human-machine collaboration through a specific ecological event: the sudden and devastating spongy moth (Lymantria dispar) outbreaks that swept through Vermont's forests in 2021 and 2022. Over those two seasons, Karson collected more than 12,000 leaves that had fallen from infected trees. Students in Karson's Plant Machine Design research group at the University of Vermont assisted in preserving and photographing the resulting herbarium, which also serves as a dataset.
Working with CycleGAN, a machine learning model for image-to-image translation, Karson and her team are training the model on two unpaired datasets, approximately 10,000 damaged leaves and 2,000 whole specimens, to generate a second herbarium of computationally “repaired” leaves. From these outputs, she extracts the leaf outlines (also known as the leaf margins). The internal mark-making is her own: drawn with a pen plotter, these interior lines are the product of her sustained inquiry into where plant geometry and machine geometry converge. Her practice values the pattern recognition available through machine learning and the line precision afforded by pen plotters.
Both herbaria are at the center of Karson's compositions. The exhibition acknowledges what each agent — artist, algorithm, oak, moth — brings to the work, and proposes that technology can be turned toward the observation and care of living systems.
Exhibition Information
Opening Reception: Friday, June 12, 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM
Location:
Bantam Tools Machine Arts Gallery
107 S Division St
Peekskill, NY 10566
Free Slushies!
Gallery hours are Friday through Sunday, 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM.