PROTO
Art and Culture
Philip Ross’ art crosses the boundaries
of technology and biology.
By John Alderman
Photography by Jonathan Sprague
FROM HIS STUDIO HIGH ON A HILL ABOVE SAN
Francisco, artist Philip Ross has a firsthand view of
the transformation, expansion, and human activity
below — a window onto architecture and ecological
shifts, whether they be human versus earthquake
over 100 tumultuous years, or puffs of fog hydrating
backyard plants on a lazy afternoon.
Within the studio are the artifacts of Ross’ own
shifts, the mulchy, calcified, glassy, wooden, digital,
and pulpy remains of more than a decade of artwork that straddles the border of technology and
biology. Sometimes wrapped neatly, sometimes
just lying on the floor, these objects map Ross’
movements along a path where aesthetic curiosity
has led directly to a hacking of scientific methods.
Ross’ work explores our inescapable roots in a
constantly shifting biological world. It’s a field with
easy appeal: few things are as startling as life in
transformation. And it’s no accident that his art
overlaps with science. The notion of the Greek word
techne, as Ross explains it, allows for discovering
the properties of a thing not just by what it appears
to be, but by what it might be, what it can be: “Both
art and technology look at the world like that — not
necessarily as a given but as potential, possibility,
directions, alternatives.”
Ross himself is a hybrid — born in New York,
transplanted to San Francisco, and not quite comfortable with any particular label. Artist, teacher,
and curator, Ross is a scavenger as well as sculptor
of living objects. His personal quest to engage with,
and teach others with, the fundamentals of life fits
perfectly with our time, when fields like biology and
engineering are merging and raising questions that
call for a keener sense of responsibility for where
we’re taking this planet.
“My agenda is partially an education,” Ross says,
at breakfast, pausing over pancakes at a rowdy
26 Make: Volume 12
Mission District diner. “We have to move beyond
a naive ecological view of where we are situated, in
that we are definitely animals and our technology
is a natural part of our condition, and if we don’t
figure out how to naturalize our technologies or
get them in line with nature, that’s where the real
problem is.”
The pieces Ross makes often place living forms in
a situation where human involvement is formalized,
like Junior Return, a work from 2005 that encases a
plant in a blown-glass hydroponic pod, with digitized
life support dialed to the absolute minimum.
The result is a stunted, live object of rarefied
beauty suspended in an eerily lit, tiny stage. (Ross
recently reprised this work with a batch of 18 pods,
all networked together and powered by central
batteries.)
The body of work is as much about process as
outcome — or at least that’s where the challenge
lies. For Was Below, Now Above (2002), Ross
created a steel frame that he covered with very tiny
oysters and submerged for two-and-a-half years,
allowing a colony to form and mature.
As the day approached to raise up the steel
ribbing, Ross knew that if he wasn’t careful he’d
soon have a ton of rotting mollusk meat on his
hands — a hazard to his piece and possibly public
health as well. Finding out how to safely and quickly
rid the frame of the meat was a challenge that led
him to universities and museums, and finally to
some not-so-salty water, where the change in
salinity killed the oysters, and bacteria ate the
soft tissues but not the shells, leaving stunning
skeletal remains.
Then there are the reactions from viewers. While
building an installation for the Exploratorium in San
Francisco, Ross learned that one out of every 1,000
children is a “whacker,” or someone who will just
