Leonardo Art/Science Evening Rendezvous of July 2008

Constructive Interference of the Arts and Sciences

San Francisco, 14 July 2008
c/o SFSU Downtown Centre
835 Market
San Francisco

An event about Artists and Scientists who work/think/imagine/engage at the intersections of the Arts and Science.

Chaired by Piero Scaruffi (p@scaruffi.com)
Part of a series of cultural events


Leonardo ISAST invites you to a meeting of the Leonardo Art/Science community. See below for location and agenda.

The event is free and open to everybody. Feel free to invite relevant acquaintances.

Please RSVP to p@scaruffi.com . Admission is limited.

Like previous evenings (See the January meeting and the March meeting and the May meeting) the agenda includes some presentations of art/science projects, a couple of brief "news", and time for casual socializing/networking.

In order to facilitate the networking, feel free to send me the URL of a webpage that describes your work or the organization you work for. I will publish a list on this webpage before the day of the event so that everybody can check what everybody else is doing. (Not mandatory, just suggested).

See also...

  • Visual Music at Expressions Gallery
  • Sustainable Development (swissnex)
  • Previous Art/Science Evenings
    When: July 14, 2008

    Where: Donwtown facilities of SFSU

    835 Market, between 4th and 5th Streets, 6th floor
    BART and MUNI tip: the building is above the Powell Station
    What:
    • 6:00pm-6:45pm: Socializing/networking. We encourage you to interact with Leonardo ISAST board members:

    • 7:15-7:45: Amy Ione, Director of the Diatrope Institute, on "Art and the Brain" Art practice and appreciation are generally considered products of human culture, rather than areas for scientific investigation. Yet, perhaps because art that is quintessentially exquisite speaks so deeply to us, it is difficult to see human culture as a map for one1s individual experience with art. Now, with the explosion of brain research on cognition, perception, and sensation we are beginning to explore the nature of art in ways that include neurobiological and neuropsychological questions. What is exemplary within this is the way researchers of the brain have begun to open a door for all of us to re-think our ideas about art. In addition, we find that artists respond to the scientific research intellectually and in their work. In this talk I will examine areas where neurobiological studies have advanced our understanding of art, the shortcomings embedded within these investigations to date and artistic projects that are interwoven with recent scientific studies.
    • 7:45-8:00: Roger Malina, CNRS Marseille, on Leonardo ISAST's worldwide activities Leonardo/ISAST serves the international arts community by promoting and documenting work at the intersection of the arts, sciences, and technology. Leonardo/ISAST is celebrating its 40th anniversary with special projects and events around the world such as the recent "Big Bang" conference in Berkeley. Activities of the Leonardo network include publication of the print journals Leonardo; the Leonardo Music Journal; the Leonardo Book Series; and electronic publications including the Leonardo Electronic Almanac; Leonardo Abstracts Service database of thesis abstracts; Leonardo Transactions and our World Wide Web Site, Leonardo On-Line. A sister organization in France, the Association Leonardo, publishes the Observatoire Leonardo Web Site. Other activities include the Leonardo Educators and Students Program and an awards program.
    • 8:00-8:20: Robert Rich, Electronic and Digital Composer, on "Microtonal Music and Just Intonation" A brief introduction to the use of tuning systems based upon ratios, focusing on musical examples and audio demonstrations, with just a bit of history and not much math.
    • 8:20-8:40: Lynette Cook, Artist, on "Art and the Cosmos". Known especially for her collaborations with Geoff Marcy and other exoplanet discoverers, Cook has painted many planet portraits, from those of our own solar system to those orbiting other stars. She will explain how she knows what these distant bodies look like.
    • 8:40: Piero Scaruffi on the next Leonardo Art/Science evening I will simply preview the line-up of speakers for the next Leonardo evening.
    • 8:45pm-9:45pm: Discussions, more socializing

    Bios:
    • Lynette Cook is best known for her illustrations of discovered planets around other stars. She has worked extensively with planet hunters Geoff Marcy and his team, among others, who have found most of the nearly 300 exoplanets known to date. These renderings have been used in press releases and have graced books, periodicals, newspapers, and documentaries both in the United States and abroad, bringing to life worlds too distant to be photographed directly.
    • Amy Ione, an international lecturer, painter, and writer, is presently the Director of the Diatrope Institute in Berkeley. She has published several books, most recently Innovation and Visualization: Trajectories, Strategies, and Myths (Rodopi, 2005), and is working on a special issue for the Journal of the History of Neuroscience on Visual Images and Visualization.
    • Roger Malina is a space scientist and astronomer, with a specialty in space instrumentation and optics, previously Director of the NASA EUVE Observatory at U.C. Berkeley and Director of the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille CNRS. He serves on the Comite National of the French CNRS for astronomy and on the French National Commission on Cosmology. He is also Chairman of the Board of Leonardo/International Society for the Arts/Sciences and Technology in San Francisco and President of the sister association in Paris.
    • Robert Rich has released over 30 albums in the last three decades, mostly instrumental electronic music. He became somewhat notorious for performing all-night Sleep Concerts in the '80s. He studied for a year at Stanford's CCRMA while getting a degree in Psychology, and now tours occasionally, creates sound design for films and electronic instruments, and has begun teaching courses on audio mastering and studio engineering. More at http://robertrich.com.
    • Piero Scaruffi is a cognitive scientist who has lectured in three continents and published several books on Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science, the latest one being "The Nature of Consciousness" (2006). He pioneered Internet applications in the early 1980s and the use of the World-Wide Web for cultural purposes in the mid 1990s. His poetry has been awarded several national prizes in Italy and the USA. As a music historian, he has published ten books, the latest ones being "A History of Rock Music" (2003) and "A History of Jazz Music" (2007). He has also written extensively about cinema, literature and the visual arts. An avid traveler, he has visited 121 countries of the world.

    Directions:

    From Market Street, Enter at SFSU (835 Market) and take elevator to 6th Floor. Signs will be posted If coming on BART, take POWELL STATION exit, enter Concourse Food Court, look for Out The Door restaurant on the left. Immediately past the restaurant, turn left, walk past the first set of elevators to the second set of elevators and go to the 6th floor.

    If coming on MUNI, take POWELL STATION exit, enter Westfield Centre and head through the first mini-food court to main concourse food court. Walk straight across the food court and walk between Amoura and Out the Door restaurants, past the first set of elevators to the second set of elevators and go to the 6th floor.

    If driving, Park in the 5th and Mission Garage. Enter through Market Street or walk through Bloomingdale's, look for the signs to San Francisco State University and take elevator to 6th floor.

    SFSU Downtown Campus 835 Market Street San Francisco, CA 94103

    ICA Office: 415.817.4476


    Confirmed so far:
    Photos