Science and Art: Part One

Techspressionism Roundtable #03
Recorded June 12, 2024

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The first in a two-part series of Techspressionist roundtable discussions exploring the relationship between science and art. Artists are Cynthia DiDonato, Karen LaFleur and Cynthia Beth Rubin. The moderator is Michael Pierre Price.

Cynthia DiDonato

North Providence. Rhode Island USA  

Cynthia DiDonato is an interdisciplinary artist who creates abstract digital and analog art as well as animations. She lives in North Providence, RI. She has won numerous awards, and exhibits her work both nationally and internationally. She considers herself a Techspressionist.
In 2023-4 her digital still artwork was exhibited in Kolkata, India and Lorne, Australia. In 2019-21 she was part of a three-person exhibition entitled “IMAGINE” in a three city tour of Cuba. In 2022-23 her animations were exhibited in New York at Southampton Arts Center and at MOCA L.I.ghts exhibition as well as the Cotuit Center for the Arts at Cape Cod,MA. Her digital artworks often marry her analog artworks, photography and digitally painted elements together.  She is continually fascinated by the nature of reality. She creates very personal artworks that attempt to conjure up visions of seen and unseen landscapes and mindscapes.

Karen LaFleur

Cape Cod, MA USA  

Karen LaFleur is a Techspressionist artist, writer and moving image animator. Her work explores the interplay between interior and exterior worlds with a focus on adaptability. She reveals vulnerabilities in complex relationships and highlights resiliencies in these ever-shifting landscapes.

Motion is an integral part of her creative process whether digitally rendered or traditionally captured. Her pencil drawings on vellum form a base for her moving image works and include the tiniest of details. Each piece is then digitally painted in a variety of applications. Her skill in visual storytelling combined with Nancy Tucker’s narrative music, brings her moving image works to life with a fluidity of gesture and story rhythm that enriches the work’s believability.

Cynthia Beth Rubin

New Haven, CT USA  

Cynthia Beth Rubin, an early adopter of digital art with decades of fine art practice, began working with the Menden-Deuer lab at the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography (URI-GSO) when she was teaching “Digital Nature” at the Rhode Island School of Design. As her teaching evolved to include plankton imagery, her work followed, and she joined lab meetings with the Menden-Deuer lab. She soon was combining micro-captures and hand-drawing into expressive prints, video, and AR installations. Thus the incorporation of data as an artistic element was the next step.

Rubin’s work has been recognized internationally through exhibitions and film festivals, including Techspressionism exhibitions, Creative Tech Week in New York City, the Jewish Museum in Prague, the Siberia State Art Museum, the Kyrgyzstan State Museum, and in cities such as London, Paris, New York, Toronto, Montreal and elsewhere around the world, and in numerous editions of SIGGRAPH and ISEA. Her awards include multiple Connecticut Artist Fellowships, the New England Foundation on the Arts, among others, and artist residencies in France, Israel, Canada, and Scotland. A recent techspressionist work, “Plankton, Salt, and Picasso,” is currently on exhibition at the London Computer Arts Society.

MODERATOR: Michael Pierre Price

Phoenix, AZ USA  

“My artwork could not exist without modern computers, advanced algorithms, and sophisticated printing technology. They are my vital partners in conveying my creativity. This particular work expresses my deep-felt personal understanding about the nature of the universe and reality. Its fractal-like quality is both precise and chaotic. A beauty felt in the moment, impossible to fully comprehend. All of this emerges from an irreducible core, No-Mind. It is zero and infinity, being and not being.

Our universe is much grander than we realize. We go about our lives within a narrow range of existence that often hinders our appreciation for the fractal-like tapestry of the vast reality beyond our senses. To truly understand our world, we need a profound shift away from the perspective of old notions. My artwork presents just such a shift; weaving elements of chaos theory, quantum mechanics, cosmology, neuroscience, dreams, and technology into a cohesive artistic and spiritual framework.”