INFORMATION

Alyce's work appears in exhibitions internationally. She is represented in New York City by Klemens Gasser and Tanja Grunert Gallery.

For a comprehensive history please see: CURRICULUM VITAE (PDF)

STATEMENT:

I am a multimedia conceptual and social/environmental practice artist with a foundation in marine biology and scientific illustration. Awe at the unquantifiable, intangible mysteries inherent in the natural world first inspired me to explore the connections between art and science, and to begin using sculpture, sound, installation, performance, video, and printmaking in my “illustrations”. It was a desire to better know nature that led me into science – and then to the realization that the aspects of nature I was most interested in exploring – the infinitely wondrous – cannot be studied using the classical scientific method with its emphasis on measurement, repeatable results, and detached observation. While we can use science to generate certain kinds of knowledge, without careful attention paid to empathic, emotional responses to the data, we risk using it to cause more harm than good.

Like 17th century writer Wolfgang Von Goethe, I believe that in addition to analysis carried out according to the scientific method, it would behoove “Westernized” peoples to develop a separate form of nature study that, rather than actively striving to separate researcher from subject, would include intuitive feelings and emphasize interrelationship with the ecosystems of which we are a part. Goethe called investigation that embraces subjective input delicate empiricism. Other Westerners have called for a kind of compassionate, non-dualistic “Green Hermeticism”. For many who are part of indigenous cultures that have endured largely uninfluenced by the scientific revolution, a reciprocal, reverent, animistic worldview simply persists as the accepted norm.

As one who wishes to challenge the influence of dualistic thinking on contemporary culture, I have become more of a philosophical illustrator than a scientific one. Through my work, I am actively exploring the question posed by Joseph Beuys in his Appeal for an Alternative, “Before considering the question WHAT CAN WE DO? we have to look into the question HOW MUST WE THINK?” While the discovery of hard-and-fast answers may remain out of reach, I believe the insights, dialogs, and relationships that form through these investigations contain the potential to generate significant positive effects.

Pleaase visit the PHILOSOBLOG for the latest updates.

Alyce is available (via Skype or in person) to give lectures and lead discussions
on the intersection of art and science, the value of interdisciplinary endeavors, permaculture
techniques and experiments for life and art, and to demonstrate the philosoprops.

Please direct all inquiries to alyce at alycesantoro dot com