Icon Series
Winters
American Icons: Strange Fruit
2020-2021
Global Icons: Exotic Fruit
2021-2022
Universal Icons: Symbolic Fruit
2022-2023
American Icons: Strange Fruit
Full Moon and
Glenn's Corn Seeing Beyond
Oil and Casein Paint
on Canvas
by Vicki Milewski
Intel's Loihi Chip
Intel's Loihi Chip
Military style Argyle, the weave shows the interlocking squares.
Detail of marble veneers, interior of the eastern portico of the Friday Mosque of Damascus, 715 CE. Photograph Manar al-Athar
The LP label for Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit recording
Detail of marble veneers, interior of the eastern portico of the Friday Mosque of Damascus, 715 CE. Photograph Manar al-Athar
Excerpt from Exhibit Essay
"American Icons: Prismatic Fruits:
The evolution of the argyle pattern from Scottish Clan signifier to Persian algebraic pattern to DNA sequencing to
the Loihi Computer Chip"
The American flag, rows of corn growing on dairy farms, Native Americans in regalia, a Fermi Lab resident artist depicting quantum explosions, Intel’s Loihi Chip, Apple Pie or Billie Holiday singing “Strange Fruit” captured by photographer Gjon Mili —what do all these images have in common? They are a part of Galaudet Gallery’s Icon Art Series:
Icon Art Series
American Icons: Part 1:
Strange Fruit
GG’s Winter Show from 11.8.2020—3.18.2020
American Icons: Part 2:
Exotic Fruit
GG’s Winter Show from 11.8.2021—3.18.2022
American Icons: Part 2:
Symbolic Fruits
GG's Winter Show from 11.8.2022--3.18.2023
Curated by sibling gallerists Mike Milewski and Vicki Milewski, the Icon Art Series looks at icons that have shaped our thinking, are shaping our perspective and might possibly change how we see life in the future. Borne from several years of research, discussions with farmers, scientists, children and others, these gallerists bring a new way to enjoy art exhibits through their online viewing rooms, in person gallery space and virtual self-guided tours or virtual tours with one of the curators. The multiplicity of these ways to view this exhibit is iconic in itself since the technology allowing businesses to find a new state of prosperity during the pandemic years is as “American Icon” as it gets.
American Icons begins with Michael Milewski’s How Many Worlds’ Do We Need? series of Cut Outs using Intel’s Loihi Chip as a foundation. [1] Set into argyle patterns with images of earth from Apollo 11, and then graphic illustrations of our warming planet from 1970 to today (where the Earth is completely red). Milewski mimicked the argyle pattern Intel focuses on knowing this ancient pattern’s history. Beginning in 200 AD the tartans of the Scottish tribes were woven in these patterns to distinguish tribes. These same argyle patterns can be seen in Persian tessellations from 800 AD which assisted in the development of algebra. So too we now see DNA sequencing in similar patterns, more abstract argyle patterns, but still in the same square checked pattern.
These ancient pattern makers may have laid the groundwork for deeper mathematical expressions seen in the DNA sequencing and in the argyle patterns in Intel’s Loihi computer chip designed for integration into the neural network that is being built to mirror the physical structure of the human brain in hope that this structure will allow a future Artificial Intelligence the chance to compute like a human brain. This evolutionary march with the argyle pattern as a floor is revolutionary in how we look at the creative arts. The abstracted argyle pattern seen in DNA sequencing, the minute detail in the argyle pattern of neural network circuitry are tied to the woven wools of those ancient Scottish tribes and the tiles and fretwork architecturally created in Persian buildings. Did the ancient Scotts and Persians’ creativity seed our imaginations for further explorations into who we are? Were the argyle tartans creative expressions of a tribe’s DNA?
Seeing Icons as ground seeded for future generations to harvest ideas from is central to Galaudet Gallery’s new art exhibit American Icons. Drawing from Mircea Eliade the curators also take another step in seeing icons as symbols which give an immediate meaning, “symbols can express an enormous number of very precise details; although, they express them simultaneously, not successively as in speech and writing.” [2] Both curators see how this simultaneity inherent in symbols may be the reason icons provide fertile ground for growing new ideas that are built from past thinking. Simply seeing a certain argyle pattern would let someone know what tribe you belong to a symbol which would also tell you where you where in the Scottish isles, what type of people live there and how you might be greeted.
So does any great creative/artistic expression seed our search for greater understanding of who we are? Could Icons like American Icons do the same?
How do these icons contribute to our sense of self, sense of place, sense of innovation, invention or any creative endeavor?
American Icons is the first exhibit in what Mike and Vicki are calling the Icon Series. Designed to look into Icons and symbols in art which have been foundational to our evolution in many different areas. Starting with the nationalistic American Icons then moving to Global Icons: Exotic Fruit before reaching Universal Icons: Limitless Fruit. Using the idea of fruit and the pomologicals that Galaudet Gallery has exhibited in the past ties into a greater art exhibit movement. Other iterations on this exhibit theme are to be expected.
The title for the essay for American Icons is Prismatic Fruits inspired by Billie Holiday singing Strange Fruit which is captured by photographer Gjon Mili that is part of the exhibit. The meaning behind Strange Fruit, the summer 2020 protestors seeking to be valued equally and the resiliency of American communities in the ongoing pandemic shows the bravery of all these Americans that we dedicate this exhibit to them. Those who speak out about the need for equality for everyone, those who care about their communities even more deeply because of the pandemic and those artists visioning the fruit we dream of and make it prismatic. [3] In such prismatic light we hope everyone is valued equally and prospers in their dreams.
To end this short look into Galaudet Gallery’s new exhibit we offer the song Strange Fruit which is featured in the exhibit with a photo of Billie Holiday singing this historic song. It is sad that there is still a type of strange fruit which exists in our society today and that it will take many more people standing together to move us into a new future. When Holiday decided to sing Strange Fruit, by Abel Meeropol, she not only decided to shed light onto the violence of racism but to also say that the continuation of this violence will beget more of it. While the lyrics never mention lynching, the metaphor is painfully clear:
Strange Fruit
Southern trees bear a strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
Pastoral scene of the gallant South,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh,
And the sudden smell of burning flesh!
Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for a tree to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.
Notes
[1] https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/research/neuromorphic-computing.html
Intel’s has identified the necessary relativity inherent in human thought and processing of information. Now seen as “Probabilistic Computing” which can assist in creating uncertainty in processing, Intel sees its Loihi Chip as the net stage in creating an artificial intelligence which can reason with uncertainty as humans naturally do.
[2] Mircea Eliade Symbolism, The Sacred and the Arts 1970
[3] Prismatic means exhibiting spectral colors formed by refraction of light through a prism
spectral of or like a ghost.
Definition of refraction
1: deflection from a straight path undergone by a light ray or energy wave in passing obliquely from one medium (such as air) into another (such as glass) in which its velocity is different
How Many Worlds Do We Need? (detail)
Mixed Media Collage
by Michael Milewski
DNA Sequencing
Campbell Clan Tartan Argyle, the weave shows the interlocking squares.
DNA Sequencing
Detail of marble veneers, interior of the eastern portico of the Friday Mosque of Damascus, 715 CE. Photograph Manar al-Athar
Excerpt from Exhibition Essay for
American Icons: Part 2: Exotic Fruit
“Endings Bring Beginnings: How Design Patterns Inform Future Thinking”
By Michael Milewski and Vicki Milewski
For the Second part of the essay for Galaudet Gallery’s Icon Series, GG’s sibling curators Mike Milewski and Vicki Milewski focus on Michael Milewski’s Art Series “How Many Worlds Do We Need?” a series of cut outs which asks the title question while also offering disparate answers and possible paths toward solutions. The First Part of the Icon Series was titled American Icons: Strange Fruit and it found analogies between the concepts of evolutionary design patterns like argyle and equitable treatment of everyone. This Second Part of the Icon Series is titled Global Icons: Exotic Fruits and it looks at the connection points between global technological crazes like the internet and its “exotic fruits” and the dystopian surety of environmental crises. Milewski’s art series offers meaning to both of these “connection points”.
The title question has been answered from a physical scientific standpoint: How many physical planet Earths do we need to live as we do in 2020? The answer scientists give us is “Seven” Earths. Milewski contemplates that reality with images of the first photograph of the earth taken from the moon in the 1970’s which is credited with creating the modern-day environmental movement. Juxtaposing this image with images showing the literal warming of this planet questions the environmental movement’s impact and continued purpose.
While there are physical worlds to examine there are also virtual ones which leads back to the question Milewski asks—How many worlds do we need? Milewski integrates Intel’s Loihi computer chip which is designed for integration into the neural network that is being built so an A.I. can mirror the physical structure of the human brain in hope information can process more like a human brain.
“It seemed fitting to use this design as a foundation to my Cut Outs creating an argyle pattern with images of this chip while also wondering why scientists would propose a structure that is based upon squares when the natural world (including the human brain) has none of these. The inherent breakdown of fashioning the A.I.’s evolutions thus is almost built into it first because of geometric and architectural flaws and second because it is attempting to assist in the evolution of a new life form based on faulty logic--that the A.I. would evolve better using a human brain’s structuring than a structure of its own creation formed through the process of technological evolution. Does this all set up the A.I.to fail?” Milewski posits.
Michael Milewski
Artist
How Many Worlds Do We Need?
Part 1: Argyle Loihi
with Burning World and
Fragmented Tohokmu
Cut Out with Intel Loihi Chip, fragments from Oscar Howe’s Ghost Dancer, Calling on Wakan Takan and Seed Player, graphic representations of Earth’s temperature 1921—1969 and 1970—2018 and the first photograph of the Earth as seen from Apollo 17 now called “The Blue Marble”
Framed at 16” X 20”
Part of each Cut Out includes what is listed. The two “burning world graphics” as seen in representations of the Earth’s temperature, form a dystopian future and show a parallel thinking process between use of fossil fuels and use of this Loihi chip. Fragmenting Oscar Howe’s idea of the Tohokmu from three of his artworks furthers the breakdown of what is currently seen as “civilization”. Howe’s concept of the Tohokmu, or spider’s web, has far reaching ramifications as shown in Vicki Milewski’s essay “Howe’s Paradox and Anomalistic Legacy”. Howe’s Tohokmu uses the idea of a spider’s web as an analogy just as Vicki Milewski uses the idea of the internet web; to show different ways to connect diverse worlds, dimensions and ways of living. Annihilation of these types of ideas and connection has been attempted throughout history and even today but these ideas’ metaphysical underpinnings still exist so that something like Intel’s Loihi chip and Michael Milewski’s cut out artworks continue to push evolution forward as well as reminding us of past lessons that need to be learned again.
Just as scientists currently propose a structure for the brain of an A.I. instead of assisting in the creation of a new neural network structure, so too scientists not too long ago proposed that Native American peoples needed to structure their lives based upon a European concept of civilization instead of how the different tribes had lived for possibly a millennia. It is only in recent times that we are beginning to understand that forcing conformity creates cultural losses which could have informed the evolution of our species. As Charles Darwin found species variation adds in adaptions which assist in the survival of a species.
Just as Scientists are training A.I.’s through mimicking human ideas instead of seeing what a machine might choose to learn. the 17th Century English Parliament in London sought to crush the rebellious clan systems in the Scottish Highlands by outlawing tartan and its corollary argyle patterns; instead, the Parliamentary actions created an underground, cult-like following of the argyle pattern, thus making it a symbol of rebellion. 300 years later the punks of the 1970’s chose the argyle pattern for similar rebellious reasons.
Milewski explains that he chose to put the Loihi computer chips into a 21st Century argyle pattern for similar rebellious reasons and to remind us of the past use of argyle patterns which were to identify a distinct people and their chosen way of life. Both the Highlanders and the Punks rebelled against a society that they knew should include them as they are—not a society which exerted pressures on individuals to conform to one way of living. The losses we have sustained as a race cannot be counted because of such short-sighted actions. These losses are now just that—lost.
It is in the same short-sightedness that created the unknown cultural losses that we now misuse our planet and its resources causing some scientists to say that we need about seven Earths to sustain present-day humanity. One day we may really learn how many worlds we need; it should be one that we all can share and live on as we see fit. Maybe the learning that needs to take place is more along the lines of how Plato saw learning. Plato said that his teacher Socrates felt that no one learns anything; instead, it is “remembering that takes place.”
For remembering.
