JOERILEY.WORK




joriley@ucsd.edu
@pleasedontfront
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Photo: Natalie Conn

  Joe Riley is an artist, historian, and Ph.D. candidate at UC San Diego Visual Arts in a joint environmental research program with Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation. 

  Joe’s research has recently been supported by the Getty Scholars Program, a UCSD Rita L. Atkinson Fellowship, and the UC Humanities Research Institute. His dissertation, Fixing the Sea: Case Studies Toward A Critical Environmental History of Ocean Art and Science since 1970, foregrounds and critically examines histories and practices of interaction between artists, oceanographers, and marine life situated within California’s university-military-research complex.

  From 2020–2025 Joe has been a participating artist and co-curator for the Pacific Standard Time exhibition Embodied Pacific, featuring projects by thirty artists working with researchers in laboratories, field sites, and archives in Southern California and the Pacific Islands. 

  Previously, he was an Ocean Fellow with TBA21-Academy and participated in the Whitney Independent Study Program. Joe holds a BFA from The Cooper Union School of Art and has taught at UC San Diego, Cal State San Marcos, Stevens Institute of Technology, and The Cooper Union.


AMD 316: Art, Science, & TechnologySpring 2023 - Spring 2024
Cal State San Marcos

AMD 316 is centered on the juncture of art and science in contemporary art practice. Throughout the semester, we will explore the research agendas of various areas of science, art, and design. We will examine key issues and histories of visual representation across science and art, and encounter critical discussions about the power of images, creative interventions, and critical practice in the context of those domains. We will investigate different approaches, materials, and technologies used by artists today, focusing especially on research trajectories in contemporary art and design that interact with environmental and ecological concerns. Projects for the course will be developed based on themes including environmental art and science, physical phenomena (like space, time, light, etc.), research-based art practice, and multispecies relations. 

This course will be a combination of lectures, demonstrations, hands on experimentation, field trips, site visits, and dialogues with practicing artists. Generally, we will begin each class with a lecture on the day’s topics and/or hold class discussion and critiques. The second half of the class will be hands on studio time where students will engage in projects designed around the course material. There will be field trips that will require us to meet off campus on occasion. Students will be informed when they are required to meet off campus.



A central task of this course is to take excellent notes on lectures, presentations, screenings, lab activities, and anything else that takes place in class. Both written and visual notes should be recorded in your Field Notebook, which I will check periodically via Canvas. Evaluation of the Field Notebook is based on the thoroughness of your note-taking and creative visualization of the connections you draw from the information. Labs and hands-on workshops are also central to this class, as are required field trips which will take place both on and off campus. Through these opportunities to observe and conduct fieldwork, we will come to use and understand research (particularly science research) as an artistic strategy and methodology. For your final project, you will conduct original artistic research.

Learning for the course include:

  • Describe historical intersections, divergences, and exchanges of art, science and technology. 
  • Define and use appropriate terminology for hybrid art and science practices.
  • Identify and evaluate recent practices/methods of collaboration between artists and scientists including ecological and multispecies practices. 
  • Critique, compare, and contrast various artists, artworks, and strategies associated with the interface of art and science
  • Practice individual and collaborative research to develop ideas for visual projects in the intersection of art and science
  • Demonstrate skill in basic visual principles, materials and tools in the creation of artistic designs, projects, and prototypes. 
  • Demonstrate knowledge of the history, key figures, politics, strategies, and research agendas of art & science



Student work samples:

Lauren Vega
Anitza Juarez Reyonoso
Alan Lopez 
Crystal Rivera Camarillo
Jordan Lanter
Peter Whitley
Megan Honeck
Tyler Cook
Peter Whitley
Jack McCabe
Peter Whitley
Jacob Wilhelm
Crystal Rivera Camarillo
Reggy Ishaq
Carlos Esquivel
Cia Soto
Peter Whitley
Edson Arcos