Artist Lab Report:
ARTIST LAB REPORT_Miguel Novelo
by Miguel Novelo

Space to embed myself into minds and curiosity.

I found myself at Iowa Lakeside Laboratory, where I engaged with plenty of brilliant minds from Americorps and faculty from Iowa State and the University of Iowa. I also had great conversations with Zach Poff, the current artist in residence.

A big shout out to Brent Mortensen and his Ecology class. Thank you to Mia for letting me follow turtles and all the Americorps who made my stay beyond enjoyable and my confidants. Thank you to everyone at the lab I crossed paths with during the residency. Thanks, Alex Braidwood

Heat, Lavoisier

thermodynamics

torture calorie

live of living,

flower painful flow,

thinking sand.

Game engine, projection, binaural sound, microcontroller, temperature sensor, computer, and poem.

H.L.t.t.c.l.o.l.f.p.f.t.s is a machine that collects heat/calories/energy to move in the game engine; the experience is a diatom field*, where each diatom is a word. The soundscape composition is binaural, ever-changing through interactivity. The poem is synthetic, a continuation of a poem written in response to the book “The Fire of Life: An Introduction to Animal energetics” by Max Kleiber

Chapter 1 “Life as a Combustion Process”

Paraphrase:

Joseph Priesly’s sprig of mint in an enclosed air space did not vitiate the air but, on the contrary, improved the phlogisticated air so that it again became fit for supporting the life of a mouse. This was the first observation of the nature of photosynthesis.

Chapter 2 ” Survival Time”

Paraphrase:

TOTAL STARVATION LEADS TO DEATH

A human lasted 17 days without food or water. The master starver, however, was a dog, a collie named Oscar (Howe et al., 1912). He learned to starve. On the first try, he was near death on the forty-fifth day. He recovered on refeeding and then survived a total of 117 starvation days. On the one-hundredth day, he still jumped 1 meter high into his cage!

“Artists and scientists are both asking questions about the world, they’re just doing it in different ways”
Alex Braidwood
Director, Iowa Lakeside Lab Artists-in-Residence Program

MEMBER