Collaborations
The Ant Game - interactive web game
Collaboration with Danielle Neeman and Kenji Yoshino at Grin City Culture Lab, Summer 2014
Danielle Neeman, a neurobiologist, Kenji Yoshino, inventor of the $10 Microscope, and I developed this link-based web game at a science-themed summer artist residency, Grin City Culture Lab.
The game chronicles the adventures of Larry the Ant as he searches for sugar and attempts to avoid death.
Total game play is about 3 minutes.
Learn more about Grin City and their Culture Lab program here
Check out Kenji's Instructable to learn how you can build a $10 microscope here
Grin City Culture Lab Exhibit
Science Center of Iowa, 2014
I've had one other opportunity to work with scientists. I was curated into a show at Gallery F, where science-related art was exhibited alongside research and related imagery from working scientists. An interesting dialogue grew out of the exhibition. I took the opportunity to write a quasi-love letter to scientists through my artist's statement.
untitled painting for collaborative exhibition with artists and scientists
46" x 54"
acrylic, xerox transfer, mixed media on canvas
Artist's Statement
Dear Scientists,
I have this fantasy of what scientists are like. The fantasy may be slightly influenced by Dr. Ian Malcolm from Jurassic Park. So I kind of think of you like intellectual sex symbols. But don’t worry, my intentions are noble (like the gas! Science joke!) I really want us to be friends, I want to hear about your favorite parts of doing experiments. In exchange I could tell you about Xerox transfers and other art techniques. And I could give you great advice on your rivalries with Evil Scientists.
Before we go any further, I should be honest with you. I’ve been working with microscopic imagery in my art for two years, and, well, I’ve been trying to co-opt some of your prestige in my artistic persona. The expectation of a scientific image is that it is educational, and I like exploiting that reference point to take on an affectation of expertise.
It feels like I’m discovering things with my microscope because they are new to me, but then I doubt myself because they already existed, I just didn’t have the ability to see them. Sometimes the natural world at a microscopic scale seems to belong to scientists and professionals, that you have to be this tall to enter and I don’t have the credentials. But there are no science police and no one’s ever made me feel unwelcome. When I meet science types I’m always astounded by how casual they are about science, the lack of preciousness with which they regard the subject.
Scientists, thank you for making the world easier to understand. And for, yknow, finding cures for diseases.
Your friend,
Jaime Raybin
Exhibited
2014 Grin City - Culture Lab (pop-up exhibition), Science Center of Iowa, Des Moines, IA
2011 Figure 1, Gallery F at the Scarritt Bennett Center, Nashville, TN