Healing Tiles

A new media artist working with cutting-edge science and technology, Brian Knep is artist-in-residence at Harvard Medical School, where he works side-by-side with scientists, adapting their tools and techniques to explore alternative meanings and ways of connecting to the world. Knep’s works range from microscopic sculptures for nematode worms to large-scale, interactive, architectural installations. Healing Tiles uses custom software algorithms to create a glowing pool of organic patterns on the lobby hallway floor at 21c Museum Hotel Cincinnati. Left alone, the patterns slowly pulsate and shift over the course of each day; when visitors walk across the piece the patterns tear apart and rebuild themselves, but never exactly as before. The change, explains the artist, “is similar to a scar left behind when a wound heals.” Thus the tiles will hold a history, or memory, of all the interactions that occur in this public space from the time the piece is activated in late 2012.