After its third semester at the UA, the School of Information: Science, Technology and Arts hosted an art gallery that combined scientific concepts with artistic visuals.
The school hosted a reception for the opening of its exhibit at the Union Gallery in the Student Union Memorial Center on Monday from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. The exhibit displays art by students, faculty and staff members from the UA that mixes scientific, mathematical and technological ideas into visual concepts. The exhibit, which is free and open to the public, will run until Feb. 9.
“SISTA is about finding the heart in the machine, it looks for the beauty in what is a typically cold and emotionless field,” said Joseph Thibodeau, a sophomore studying information sciences, technology and arts.
Technology is used in these pieces to show thought-provoking and beautiful artwork that could be displayed in a home, Thibodeau said.
Ellyn Gardner, a retiree, said she frequently goes to the school’s colloquia series and that she found the exhibit very interesting. She said some of her favorite pieces in the gallery were the nautilus pictures, which are created by a complex mathematical formula and are beautifully displayed as art in the exhibit, Gardner said.
“I don’t know if all of them are art majors but the work is at a level where if you are looking at them, you don’t really discern between them,” said Madelaine Sarbo, a studio art junior.
Sarbo said that although none of the artwork looked the same, all of the sections had a consistent and interesting theme to them.
Matthew Hall, a research programmer and an assistant instructor in the school, created a piece that is currently on display in the gallery.
“This is a simulation of a big chunk of the universe which is a few billion light years wide,” Hall said. “It shows the structures that form in the universe and are there today.”
The exhibit is the first that the school has hosted, and because the school is relatively new, they wanted to showcase student talent, according to Holly Brown, the school’s program coordinator. Not all the artwork is by students in the school, Brown said, but rather a general display of the concepts of what their programs are about.
