Audra Wolowiec is an interdisciplinary artist whose conceptually-driven work explores the material qualities of language and sound. Complex Systems is the result of Wolowiec’s residency with the lab of Professor Eric Corwin in the Department of Physics at the University of Oregon. For one month, Wolowiec became a working member of the lab, keeping office hours and attending meetings with undergraduate and graduate research students. She became particularly interested in the ways in which scientists deal with failure and in the ways in which humans communicate complex ideas to each other.

Wolowiec’s experiences in the lab resulted in a participatory postcard series, Complex Systems, in which she considers what it means to be “complex.” Each postcard features a graph and descriptive sentence taken from a textbook, Multivariable Feedback Control, by engineering professors Ian Postlethwaite and Sigurd Skogestad. Created using a laser cutter in the Corwin Lab, the artist mailed them to fifty artists and writers across the country in the hope of gaining feedback into a language whose terrain was difficult to navigate for a non-native speaker. Values were removed from each sentence of the postcard, providing an empty space for the participant to fill in the blanks. Through this act of generosity, the participants created new meaning out of misinterpretation.

Complex Systems is the first project to result from a pioneering Visiting Artist Program in the Corwin Lab. This program is funded by a 2012 National Science Foundation CAREER Award, the foundation’s most prestigious award in support of early career faculty. For more information on Complex Systems, please visit http://complex-systems.tumblr.com.

Brett Weston in Oregon features several recent gifts from the Brett Weston Archive. One of four sons of noted photographer Edward Weston, Brett Weston was the most artistically close with his father. Weston created multiple photographic series grouped by location of the places he lived and visited (among them, Alaska, California, Hawaii, Japan, Mexico, and New York). He began visiting Oregon in the late 1960s, which coincided with a greater use of high contrast and abstraction in his work. Weston quickly developed an affinity for the state’s natural beauty and the effects of its change of seasons on such familiar subjects as water, ice, logs, and sand.

Argentine photographer Gustavo Germano restages snapshots of Brazilian and Argentine families whose loved ones are among the “disappeared,” people who were tortured and murdered by dictatorial regimes in South America from the 1960s to 1980s. The JSMA’s presentation includes four of his diptychs of original and recreated photographs, with one or more of the original subjects missing. Each pair is a powerful statement of pain, suffering, and loss. The exhibition is made possible through a JSMA Academic Support Grant to support several courses in Latin American Studies and is organized by Professor Monique Rodrigues Balbuena, Associate Professor of Literature in the Robert D. Clark Honors College and Program Director for Latin American Studies. The exhibition is sponosred by the Oregon Humanities Center’s Endowment for Public Outreach in the Arts, Sciences, and Humanities.