What would your (science) PhD look like in dance?

Category: GRADUATE STUDENT

Name: Lara Park

PhD Title: "The role of folate in epigenetic regulation of colon carcinogenesis"

PhD Institution: Tufts University

Date: 2012 (expected completion)

Current affiliation: graduate student, Tufts University

Structures Beyond the Cube

Disc Felxigon


Hexaflexagon (movement demo)


Origami Hexaflexagon in 3D

Interesting Cube Structures

simple cube flexigon


Cube gear sculpture


Yoshimoto's Cube (with Star)


Moving Cubes

Body Portraits and Man of Medicine

By way of an introduction to poetics we were required to write a "portrait of the body" prior to our meeting at The Wellcome Collection:

twain
a broken vessel, pained
with the light leaking out
not well contained

endeavor
to fit life into a neat little box
the body box
and the borders strain

better
to let spill
flow free
the outside inside light of me

The workshop on poetics was fairly wasted on me, but the exploration of the collection was interesting; probably would have been more so if left to my own devices. The permanent collection Medicine Man was striking in its variety: from artificial limbs to dental tools to mummified remains to infant identity bracelets.

Once free to follow my own interests I spent a good deal of time in the museum bookshop and found quite a few books I intend to look up:

Formulas for Now - by Hans Ulrich Obrist
Art & Science - by Sian Ede
Science, Not Art: 10 Scientists Diaries - edited by Jon Turney
Strange and Charmed: Science and the Contemporary Visual Arts - by Sian Ede
Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything - by Don Tapscott & Anthony D. Williams (There's also a blog)

Portrait of the Body - Initial Research

The iconography of the hand outline is one that has recurred in my work over the years. I'm drawn to the duality of the image; implying both aggressive (stop) and passive (I surrender) emotion. Hands, like fingerprints, are unique to the individual (a miniature body portrait) and function as a tactile connection to others and to the world outside the body.

My artwork gravitates more towards the body/self in the context of others: community, civilization, city. Any portrait of the body should, for me, have some relevance in these contexts or it becomes less interesting.

The artists books that I find most compelling are those in which text and image tend to intertwine, the text IS image, or the text is minimal but concise.