Art meets science

For Thai artist Lalinthorn Phencharoen art is "equal to science and equal to religion."
The Bangkok-based artist seeks to explore the crossover between two seemingly unrelated domains of art and science through small synthesisers, slides of blood stains and verses from sacred texts.
Detailed scientific illustrations form part of her exhibit created for the ongoing second edition of "The Undivided Mind," a six-week art and science residency at the Khoj International Artists' Association here.
Phencharoen's work titled "LALINLAB", is adorned with illustrations of human and animal anatomies, microscopic representations of cell structures besides the central wall which has a magnified illustration of the human brain.

The artist seems to have made a deliberate attempt to blend the essence of both the rational and irrational sides of the brain.
"My work is an installation that portrays my ideas and methodologies through documentation of myself, or my story, simultaneously using text, scientific drawings, specimens of earth and water collected from around Khoj," says Phencharoen.

Phencharoen together with other participating artists Jaden Hastings, Paribartana Mohanty, Shreyasi Kar and Bidisha Das, who have transformed the residency into a diverse laboratory where sound, video, text, drawing, biology, physics and chemistry co-exist.
Through an interesting set of experiments, Bidisha Das and Shreyasi Kar from Bengalaru explore the relationship between man and nature and reflect on how plants react to human environment.

Inspired by polymath J C Bose's experiments with plants, they seek to establish some sort of communication with the plants in the eclectic laboratory that they have created in the residency.
With several mini-labs inside it - a bio lab, an electronics lab, a sound lab, a photo lab, the duo attempt to blur the distinctions between art and science, all using plants as the basis of experimentation.
"Using simple electronic devices, which can be built in a community setting, we have constructed a public laboratory in which we open a sonic communication channel with plants," they say.