LOS ANGELES — Historic Knowledge for a Future Ecology: Bushes, Time, and Expertise on the Skirball Cultural Heart is a mind-bending set up and studying library by the Bay Space artist duo Tiffany Shlain and Ken Goldberg. Offered along with the Getty’s PST ART initiative, Artwork & Science Collide, the exhibition pays homage to the continued human quest for information by documenting its evolution by way of 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 timber, 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 art work. 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 heart with easy queries that early Homo sapiens may need requested, comparable to “Why do I exist?” and “Can we create fire?” As they unfold outward, the questions develop into extra complicated and related — as an illustration, “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 vital 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 heart reminded the artists of a query mark and the spiral from Leonardo da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man” ideally suited proportions diagram, they left this space unarticulated. “DendroJudaelology: A Timeline of the Jewish People” consists of the same old 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 report 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 photos from Google Maps and Google Earth into AI, maps the timber alongside 4 main LA thoroughfares. A participatory venture associated to this invitations guests to create a tree tribute by taking a tape measure dwelling to measure a favourite tree, after which {photograph} it up shut and from afar. The tree’s zip code, information, and pictures are then submitted to an internet site and AI will decide the tree’s age, write a short description of its location and historical past, and create a pristine idealized picture of it, all of which will be seen in a web based gallery. Utilizing the most recent expertise, the artists cleverly prolong the Jewish customized of honoring family members by planting timber to celebrating timber themselves inside the digital panorama of the World Broad 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 images 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 Heart (2701 North Sepulveda Boulevard, Bel Air, Los Angeles) by way of March 2, 2025. The exhibition was co-curated by Affiliate Curator Vicki Phung Smith and Visitor Curator Selma Holo.