A conversation with exhibiting artists, scientists, architects and creative professionals exploring the intersection of art, design and science

Tuesday, August 2, 2022

6 - 7:30 pm

Free

Image: Rafael Atticus, Looney Island, 2022. Video still (video on view in Rising Tide through August 13)

ABOUT THE EVENT: The island of Jamestown is defined by its relationship to the Narragansett Bay. As climate change and rising sea levels are becoming an omnipresent concern, collecting data and building a consistent relationship with the ocean is paramount in gaining understanding.

Join multidisciplinary artist, designer and professor at RISD, Rafael Attias, to learn about his collaborations with marine scientists from the URI Oceanography Bay Campus and their exploration of the Narragansett Bay. Through sound and video, they communicate and relate scientific data through sensory means, providing a new way of interpreting scientific data.

Vis-a-thon is a program designed to reimagine visualization as an evolving process of inquiry, indivisible from research itself. The program provides opportunities for participants to collaboratively experiment with new and innovative ways to create and use visual imagery and language. Participant projects are completed over a two-day period and in partnership with faculty and graduate students to develop and enact their proposals.

In addition to Professor Attias’ work, two of the creators of Wrack Line: 2050, Anne Kuhn-Hines and Mary Meagher, will discuss their sculpture, part of the 2022 Biennial: Passages, an Outdoor Arts Experience, and how it relates climate change to the island of Jamestown.

MEET THE PANELISTS:

Left to right: Emir Cem Gezer, Rafael Attias, Anne Kuhn-Hines, Melody Drnach,* Janie Harris,* and Mary Meagher.

*not on the panel

Emir Cem Gezer is a robotics researcher at the University of Rhode Island in the Ocean Engineering Department. He studied computer engineering at Ankara University, Turkey. While he was an undergraduate, he worked in the swarm robotics field. During and after his time in college, he collaborated with Umut Reyhanlı and Doğu Güneş Bozkır on their interactive installations. He composed the soundtrack for the theater play "The Glass Menagerie" for Ankara Based theater company, Fareler Tiyatrosu. In collaborating with Rafael Attias from the Rhode Island School of Design, Emir continues to pursue his passion for art installations.

Rafael Attias is an experienced designer and art director, Attias has focused on communication strategies and brand building through the development and application of well thought-out design practices. As a multidisciplinary fine artist, curator and promoter of the arts, he has worked in diverse fields, navigating the spaces between fine art practice and design, often searching for where the two worlds intersect. Attias has taught at RISD since 1998. He has successfully balanced his professional design life with an academic career and finds the two arenas to be mutually beneficial and dynamic.

Anne Kuhn-Hines is a senior Research Physical Scientist at the US Environmental Protection Agency based in Narragansett. Her research focuses on the cumulative effects of multiple anthropogenic stressors on coastal watershed ecosystems and developing web-based mapping tools allowing coastal communities to geographically visualize where their strengths and weaknesses are relative to strengthening resiliency within their jurisdictional areas. She has a PhD from URI in Environmental Science. Anne is also the Chair of Jamestown’s Conservation Commission and has led the effort to prioritize the protection of Jamestown’s natural resources by implementing salt marsh and dune restoration-adaptation projects across the island. 

Mary Meagher has wanted to be an architect since she was six years old and saw photos of Harry Gesner’s Wave House in Life Magazine. In college, design gave way to the studio arts, with a focus on printmaking. Post college was an amalgam of odd jobs in the arts and teaching until she enrolled in the Masters in Architecture program at MIT. While there, Mary continued to take classes in painting, drawing and animation, and became a Tutor (instructor) in Harvard’s Visual and Environmental Studies Department in the mid 80’s. She returned to Jamestown to open her own architectural design practice in 1987. She’s been at it ever since. She has dedicated her efforts on this project to Lou Bakanowsky, architect, sculptor, teacher extraordinaire, mentor and inspiration in the art of seeing and seeing the art.