“Animal Warmth #12” by Ali Momeni (2010)






The Bell Museum’s new quarterly social brings together contemporary art and science for an evening social activities, performances, and presentations on a theme. Each event features the creative work of a Bell Museum Artist-In-Residence, who will mine the museum’s collection of art objects, scientific specimens, and other curiosities to present a new research-based work.

Ali Momeni: “For my residency, I used light as a theme to bring life to our hairy friends on the mammal floor of the museum using a number of biomemetic algorithms for generating movement (e.g. bird flocking, brownian motion…). Animal Warmth #12 continues my exploration of what my old composer friend Masonic called “animal warmth”, the elusive human quality present in certain composed sounds and sights, to which I am drawn.  This work is a continuation of my previous experiments with visual rhythmicity in other works from the Animal Warmth series.”

Thanks to The MAW for their helping in pulling of this performance; thanks to Andrea Steudel for the video documentation; thanks to Luke Anderson for live sound during the performance.