A Signal in the Noise
- Speakers
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Jules GimbroneVisual and Sonic Artist
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Maximiliano Isi, Ph.D.Flatiron Research Fellow, Gravitational Wave Astronomy, CCA, Flatiron Institute
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Lumi TanCurator and Writer, New York City
Max Isi and Jules Gimbrone first met in the busy, candlelit basement of a New York City restaurant. They were ready and eager to engage in conversations centered around a topic they’d both spent much of their lives thinking about: sound.
Isi is an astrophysicist at the Simons Foundation’s Flatiron Institute who studies gravitational waves (like sound waves, but rippling through the fabric of space-time) made by colliding black holes. These waves can tell us about the fundamental nature of the universe. Gimbrone is a visual and sonic artist whose primary modality, “Trans-Sensing,” highlights how transgender people and individuals outside the dominant culture intuitively navigate the world through unique ways of sensing and experiencing society’s complexities.
Isi and Gimbrone approach sound from different directions, but they found common ground together in that candlelit basement when a single question sparked a tantalizing conversation: What does a black hole sound like?
Just over two years later, their creative collision has led to a continued conversation between the two that culminated in “Dark Fringe,” an upcoming multi-room new-media installation being brought to life with the help of curator Lumi Tan and Performance Space, a non-profit arts organization. In its essence, the work explores the parallels between the scientific tools that detect gravitational waves and the ways the body senses, interprets and embodies states of flux and transformation.
Join Isi, Gimbrone, and Tan as they sit down for a conversation that delves into deep questions. What does it mean to represent the imperceptible? And how can tools of science and art help us pick up on signals we can use to interpret the ungraspable, whether in space-time or within our own identities?
About the Speakers:
Gimbrone is a visual and sonic artist invested in how an unstable subjectivity engages with social and internalized cognitive technologies. The work synthesizes physical and sonic material, sensory perception, the physical body, electronics and objects. Gimbrone works in a third space to produce synesthetic, hybrid content. They developed a rubric that they call “Trans-Sensing.” Trans-Sensing modalities are methods that trans people — specifically those who identify as transgender, but also people whose subjectivity is unmoored or unrecognizable to the dominant culture — intuitively cultivate to navigate the world. An emphasis on sensory presence and integration is part of the trans experience in explicit and nuanced ways, and in their work, they evoke these unstable states of being. Over the past decade, Gimbrone’s work has been showcased internationally across museums, interdisciplinary spaces, music venues, galleries, and theaters, including the Walker Art Center, SculptureCenter, Pioneer Works, REDCAT, Stellar Projects and the Théâtre de l’Usine.
Isi is an astrophysicist who uses gravitational waves to learn about the nature of gravity, astrophysics and cosmology. He is a member of the LIGO team that detected gravitational waves for the first time in 2015, leading to the 2017 Nobel Prize in physics. Max is currently a research fellow at the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics in New York City. Before that, he earned his Ph.D. in physics from Caltech in 2018 and was a NASA Einstein fellow at MIT.
Tan is a curator and writer who works in the performance and visual art sectors. She recently served as the curatorial director of Luna Luna, a revival of the world’s first art amusement park created by André Heller in 1987. Previously, she was senior curator at The Kitchen in New York City, where she commissioned exhibitions and performances, including dance, music, theater and opera. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Artforum, Frieze, Art in America and numerous exhibition catalogs. She has taught at the School of Visual Arts, the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College and the Yale School of Art.