Artist Lens
Through the Artist Lens Program, NCM invites emerging artists to enter into dialogue with an artwork currently on display in a Museum-wide exhibition. The project created in response illuminates an aspect or aspects of the original artwork in innovative ways, or brings a new interpretation to that work. Artist Lens projects are highly participatory, thereby helping to engage NCM visitors with the original artwork.

Human Induced Entropic Evolution
Amy Mayfield, 2010
Human Induced Entropic Evolution is an Artist Lens Project interpreting Roman de Salvo’s Apex Chariots. Amy Mayfield is the most recent artist selected from the Artist Open Call to create an Artist Lens project for NCM. Her work invites visitors to ask what if the extinct animals on Roman de Salvo’s Apex Chariots never became extinct? What if humans had taken better care of these creatures by not damaging their habitat, or overhunting them? What would animals like the Golden Toad have evolved into over the years? What special features would they need to survive today? Mayfield has let her imagination run wild and presented some of the fantastic creatures that might have developed had they not been lost to extinction.

Hybrid Zoo
Ross Karre, June 2010 – March 2011
Computer, korg mixer, headphones, stuffed animals, wood, hardware
Artist Lens project interpreting Mungo Thomson’s b/w

Local emerging artist and musician Ross Karre’s interactive work Hybrid Zoo plays off of the notion of distortion present in Mungo Thomson’s sound work b/w. The work features a sound station where children can manipulate and alter a variety of recorded sounds, thereby mimicking the same process Thomson used to speed up and slow down a whale and bird song recording. Visitors are invited to don Karre’s “hybrid headphones” that visually imitate the unique combinations of sounds they produce at the station. Karre’s project helps to illustrate Thomson’s artistic process, and expands the visitor’s experience of b/w by offering a visual and tactile means of engagement.

The Artist Lens program is made possible by a generous grant from the James Irvine Foundation. Additional support is provided by the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture.

BorderBeast
Rob Duarte, 2010
Artist Rob Duarte’s BorderBeast responds to Marcos Ramirez ERRE’s Toy an Horse through a participatory, multi-media project in the Tech Studio. Duarte has developed dual, contrasting projections that recall the border where Toy an Horse was originally placed. The project invites young visitors to re-imagine this setting by letting them select various scenes in which to position the horse, while also re-envisioning the shape of the sculpture itself. Want to learn more about this project? Click here to watch the video.