Leah Heiss

I have just had confirmation that I have received a $10,000 Australia Council Visual Arts Grant to develop new jewellery based projects with Nanotechnology Victoria. This project has a really different focus to the Subtle Technologies residency as it is more focused on material exploration. Here is the meta-blurb (blog coming soon):

Material Poetic
In this project I will create jewellery from materials engineered at the nanoscale. As an artist I am interested in augmenting the emotional relationship between people and their cherished possessions through the agency of nanotechnology.

The intimate scale prototypes I will develop utilise materials that exist at the extremes of the poetic spectrum: Aerogel - which is 99.8% air; carbon nanotubes - one of the strongest materials on earth; shape change alloys - which manipulate form when warmed; and magnetic fluids - which change shape in the presence of a magnetic field. Thus the jewellery to be created will defy our understandings of matter and its expected behaviour. It will draw from and intensify ideas of delicacy, longevity, fragility and mutability which intimate jewellery often symbolises.

‘Material Poetic’ will build from an existing body of work that I have developed over the past 8 months as an artist in residency with Nanotechnology Victoria. This current project ‘Subtle Technologies’ has investigated imbuing jewellery with therapeutic applications. My residency has necessitated that I develop new modes of artistic practice. This innovation in tools and techiques will intensify through ‘Material Poetic’ as the materials I will be working with require a completely new arsenal of working methodologies.

Through this project I am seeking to develop a series of small scale artefacts for exhibition in addition to a broad range of less tangible outcomes: innovation in arts practice, new ways of engaging in arts/science
collaborations, the potential demystification of nanotechnologies, and innovation in technical and material processes.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 8th, 2008 at 10:27 am and is filed under Projects. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.