LOS ANGELES — Historic Knowledge for a Future Ecology: Bushes, Time, and Expertise on the Skirball Cultural Middle is a mind-bending set up and studying library by the Bay Space artist duo Tiffany Shlain and Ken Goldberg. Offered together with the Getty’s PST ART initiative, Artwork & Science Collide, the exhibition pays homage to the continuing human quest for information by documenting its evolution by a sequence of timelines inscribed over the rings of fallen tree fragments, culled from salvage yards, utilizing the age-old strategy of pyrography (wooden burning). These timelines tackle the histories of such matters as information itself, California bushes, science, and Judaism.
On the core of set up stands “Tree of Knowledge,” a sculpture crafted from a tree that’s rugged on one facet within the method of an Ursula von Rydingsvard paintings. On the opposite facet, a smoother floor is etched with 160 questions organized into six classes (thoughts, humanities, society, sciences, beliefs, and philosophy). They start on the middle with easy queries that early Homo sapiens might need requested, similar to “Why do I exist?” and “Can we create fire?” As they unfold outward, the questions develop into extra complicated and related — for example, “How will we live in a changing climate?”
Tiffany Shlain and Ken Goldberg, “DendroJudaeology: A Timeline of the Jewish People” (2024), reclaimed poplar wooden sculpture, 62 inches diameter x 3 inches depth (157.48 x 7.62 cm)
Tiffany Shlain and Ken Goldberg, “DendroJudaeology: A Timeline of the Jewish People,” element
One of the intriguing tree sculptures is “Abstract Expression,” which paperwork the evolution of equations from Pythagoras to ChatGPT. As a result of the sample of nicks within the wooden on the middle reminded the artists of a query mark and the spiral from Leonardo da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man” supreme proportions diagram, they left this space unarticulated. “DendroJudaelology: A Timeline of the Jewish People” consists of the standard citations, such because the story of Moses and the Holocaust, but additionally lists popular culture occasions like Marilyn Monroe’s conversion to Judaism and the field workplace document of “Fiddler on the Roof.”
Taking their documentation into the current, Shlain and Goldberg created a video homage to Ed Ruscha’s “Every Building on the Sunset Strip.” The imagery, created by feeding photographs from Google Maps and Google Earth into AI, maps the bushes alongside 4 main LA thoroughfares. A participatory challenge associated to this invitations guests to create a tree tribute by taking a tape measure house to measure a favourite tree, after which {photograph} it up shut and from afar. The tree’s zip code, knowledge, and photographs are then submitted to an internet site and AI will decide the tree’s age, write a quick description of its location and historical past, and create a pristine idealized picture of it, all of which might be seen in a web based gallery. Utilizing the most recent know-how, the artists cleverly prolong the Jewish customized of honoring family members by planting bushes to celebrating bushes themselves throughout the digital panorama of the World Vast Net.
Tiffany Shlain and Ken Goldberg, “Speculation, Like Nature, Abhors a Vacuum” (2024), video, 4:40 minutes
Tiffany Shlain and Ken Goldberg, “Abstract Expression” (2024), reclaimed redwood sculpture, 82 inches diameter x 3 inches depth (208.28 x 7.62 cm)
Tiffany Shlain and Ken Goldberg, “Abstract Expression,” element 
“Tree #30” from Seeing the Forest: Gallery of Private Tree Tributes, 2024. AI generated picture of a Jacaranda mimosifolia tree, primarily based on measurements and pictures taken by the writer of a tree in his neighborhood and submitted to the web site ancientwisdom.artwork.
Historic Knowledge for a Future Ecology: Bushes, Time, and Expertise continues on the Skirball Cultural Middle (2701 North Sepulveda Boulevard, Bel Air, Los Angeles) by March 2, 2025. The exhibition was co-curated by Affiliate Curator Vicki Phung Smith and Visitor Curator Selma Holo.
