ketherine Jackson
Phonotaxis, 2016-7
Glass, Steel, Wood, RGB LEDs, 17.25 x 14 x 2 in
$2,500
 
Phonotaxis was inspired by the attempt of an artist/scientist duo to use AI to facilitate communication between a robot and a cricket. In mating season, male crickets rub their legs together to produce sounds that attract female crickets. The phenomenon of sound-producing movement in an organism is called Phonotaxis. Hence the name of my piece.
Although the two succeeded in creating an exchange of “chirps” between the robot and the crickets, they realized in retrospect that there was no way of knowing whether real communication had taken place. Were the crickets and the robot having an erotic chat? Or were they merely robotically (!) repeating one another’s sounds?
The back panel of the piece contains the algorithms the duo devised to program the robot to respond to a male cricket’s mating sounds. The front panel is my own intuitive drawing in response to the story. Art meets science. I see the drawings as speaking to the playfulness that art can bring to the serious world of science, sometimes bringing out truths that science alone couldn’t reach. The ambiguous outcome of the whole undertaking, for example, perhaps says something about all communication, even within our own species, and the difficulty of knowing if anything substantive has taken place. The glass panels can be opened like a book to whatever degree each viewer desires, and the images shift accordingly. Art is an ongoing conversation.
 
______
Katherine Jackson’s work has been shown in galleries, universities, and public spaces in NYC, elsewhere in the US, Rome, Berlin, and Venice. Solo show venues include Bennington, and Hobart & William Smith Colleges. Her large-scale, long-term exhibitions were placed in Manhattan’s windows, two of which celebrated the centennials of two of New York City’s iconic structures: the New York Public Library and the Manhattan Bridge. Her 6- month windows exhibition, at New York’s Tenement Museum, addressed Immigration. Recent work has been exhibited at Park Place Gallery, 1 GAP Gallery, Kunstraum LLC, Odetta Gallery (Chelsea), and Odetta Harlem. A group of her sculptures was included this fall in a show of art & technology at Southern Connecticut State University. An installation was exhibited in the Palazzo Mora at the Venice Architectural Biennale 2021. This installation is also on view, in the same location, at the Venice Art Biennale 2022. A video in which she discusses her work and process is forthcoming from batteryjournal.org.