Featured Member
Jennifer Parker
Artist & OpenLab co-founder
By Julia Buntaine
Editor-in-Chief
Jennifer Parker is part artist, part professor, and part
interdisciplinary research center founder. As an associate
professor of sculpture, interactive art, new media, and kinetic art at UC Santa Cruz, Parker has been interested in the
intersection of art and science since she attended the progressive Waldorf School as a child. “The curriculum didn’t
separate the two, in fact, it was quite the opposite,” Parker
wrote in an e-mail to SciArt in America. “We learned about
the interconnectivity of the world through a kind of systems-based thinking, which was tied to learning and making.” The viewpoint of ‘interconnectivity’ is fundamental
for artists who work with science, and Parker’s own artwork
asks the viewer to question their perceived reality through
strange juxtapositions and forms.
Working in a multitude of media, Parker’s artwork explores a variety of different topics, including the body,
evolution, identity, perception, and disease. Walking the line
between comment and critique, her piece Eve was still a monkey doesn’t discount the popular Adam/Eve origin myth, but
rather presents an update, asking us to incorporate a scientific point of view. In Cohabitating Secretly, Parker presents a
portrait of a local stream not as landscape art, but as a closeup video paired with a wall installation in which all the dead
bugs found in the surrounding area are mounted for display.
Part of Parker’s work at UCSC includes the creation of
OpenLab, a collaborative research center based at the university. Co-founded with astrophysicist and fellow professor
Enrico Rameriz-Ruiz, OpenLab encapsulates the collaborative spirit promoted by its founders. The center is populated
by interdisciplinary-minded students and faculty spanning
the univerisity’s PhD, MA, and MFA programs. Between
16
OpenLab. Images courtesy of
Jennifer Parker.
SciArt in America February 2015