The LASERs are a national program of evening gatherings that bring artists and scientists together for informal presentations and conversation with an audience. See the program for the whole series.
The event is free and open to everybody.
Email me if you want to be added to the mailing list for the LASERs.
Like previous evenings,
the agenda includes some presentations of art/science projects,
news from the audience, and time for casual socializing/networking.
This event is kindly sponsored by the Minerva Foundation.
Where: UC Berkeley
Soda Hall, Room 310
NOTE: Use the WEST-entrance of SODA Hall entering from Etcheverry Plaza.
Campus map
What (the order of the speakers might change):
- 7:00-7:25:
Cherie Hill (Choreographer) on "Moving Space & Time: Dub Dance Project"
An investigation of dub reggae music, applying its effects to choreography... Read more
- 7:25-7:50:
Margot Knight (Executive Director of the Djerassi Resident Artists Program) on "The Scientific Delirium Madness program"
A retreat that links artists and scientists for 30 days of collegial interaction... Read more
- 7:50-8:10: BREAK. Before or after the break, anyone in the audience currently working within the intersections of art and science will have 30 seconds to share their work. Please present your work as a teaser so that those who are interested can seek you out during social time following the event.
- 8:10-8:35:
Roberta Buiani (Artist, Critic and Curator) on "Beyond mapping; or, how to cope with ecological complexity"
Creating artifacts and interventions that are itinerant to better explore the complex ecologies of the city... Read more
- 8:35-9:00:
Fabrice Florin (Artist and Technologist) on "The Pataphysical Slot Machine"
A community-created poetic oracle created by a collective of artists, engineers, teachers and students... Read more
- 9:00pm-9:30pm: Discussions, networking
You can mingle with the speakers and the audience
See also...
Other LASER series
Leonardo ISAST
Art, Technology, Culture Colloquia
Other LASER series
ScienceSchmoozer
LAST Festival
Bios:
- Roberta Buiani is an interdisciplinary artist, media theorist and curator based in Toronto, where I co-founded the ArtSci Salon at the Fields institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences. Her work balances theoretical and applied research at the intersection of science, technology and creative resistance. She is interested in exploring the way that scientific and technological mechanisms translate, encode and transform the natural and human world, and in turn how they may be spatially and materially remediated. My work is mobile, itinerant and collaborative. She brings it to art festivals (Transmediale, Encuentro), community centers (Immigrant Movement International), science institutions (RPI) and in the street of Toronto. http://atomarborea.net
- Fabrice Florin is a multimedia innovator who has worked with innovators such as Apple and Macromedia. He now consults on worthy projects, with a focus on content strategy, community engagement and product development. He previously worked as movement communications manager at the Wikimedia Foundation, where he managed and edited the Wikimedia blog -- and helped nurture a 'culture of kindness' across Wikipedia communities. Prior to that, he was product manager, leading the development of many new tools for Wikipedia, such as Notifications, Media Viewer and Thanks. His previous ventures include: NewsTrust.net, a nonprofit social news network, helping folks tell apart fact from fiction; Handtap / GoComics, a wireless content provider for mobile devices; Shockwave.com, a web entertainment site we started at Macromedia; Zenda Studio, award-winning multiplayer game developer; Apple Computer's Multimedia Lab, a research and development group; Videowest, a producer of rock journalism and entertainment for young adults.
- Cherie Hill aka IrieDance is a choreographer, dancer, teacher and scholar, whose art explores human expression and how it is conveyed through the body in collaboration with nature, music and visual imagery. Her choreographic works juxtapose alternative and cosmic existence with "real-life" experience to provide insight into the causes and rationalities of the universe's time and space continuum. IrieDance works have been showcased at the Live Oak Theatre, Shotwell Studios, the African American Cultural Center, the Black Choreographer's Festival, Anschultz Theatre, Bao Bao Festival, P.L.A.C.E Performance, the San Francisco Cathedral, Omni Oakland Commons, Kinetech Arts, and the Dance A World of Hope Festival in Holland, MI. A lover of dance research, Cherie has published essays in Gender Forum, The Sacred Dance Journal, and In Dance, is the creator of the Sacred Dance Guild's blog, Sacred Dance Trends, and has presented at multiple conferences including the International Conference on Arts and Humanities, the Black Dance Conference, and the National Dance Education Organization Conference. She is currently on faculty at Luna Dance Institute, and a research assistant for hip-hop dance legend Rennie Harris. Learn more at www.iriedance.com .
- Since November of 2011, Margot Knight is Executive Director of the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, her seventh job in the arts and humanities in 35 years. Each position has incorporated the things she loves--history, challenges, artists, scholars, education and access. She has the privilege to oversees one of the foremost artist communities on the planet AND is encouraged to pursue her own literary pursuits. Previous positions include the presidencies of United Arts of Central Florida and United Arts of Raleigh & Wake County, executive director of the Idaho Commission on the Arts and Washington State University's Oral History Office and staff positions with the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies and Washington Commission for the Humanities. She serves on the Private Sector Council for Americans for the Arts and is a proud recipient of the Michael Newton Award. A frequent consultant, speaker and grants panelist, she has also served on over 25 chamber of commerce, tourism, regional planning and cultural boards, including the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs, Visit Orlando, and Florida Cultural Alliance.
- Piero Scaruffi is a cultural historian 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. His latest book of poems and meditations is "Synthesis" (2009). As a music historian, he has published ten books, the latest ones being "A History of Rock and Dance Music" (2009) and "A History of Jazz Music" (2007). His latest book of history is "A History of Silicon Valley" (2011). The first volume of his free ebook "A Visual History of the Visual Arts" appeared in 2012. His latest book is "Intelligence is not Artificial" (2013). He has also written extensively about cinema and literature. He founded the Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous (LASER) in 2008.
Extended abstracts:
Buiani
My work explores how scientific and technological mechanisms translate, encode and transform the natural and human world, and how these very mechanisms perform when transported to different locations or reproduced using different media.
Thus, I explore ways to relocate science outside the laboratory, or to encourage the general public to think past the lab as a sanitized and dehumanized space;
I create artifacts and interventions that are mobile and/or itinerant to better explore and to bring attention to the complex ecologies of the city, the university, the laboratory. For instance, the recent "Transitions in progress" and "The Cabinet Project" (in progress) combine in vivo and technological approaches to explore the more-than-human encounters and the often-hidden, often-unforseeable dynamics that animate a variety of complex realities. Today's technologically-enhanced mapping techniques are excellent to identify and seize general trends, or to discover intersections that nobody had noticed before. However, it is only by "getting closer", by experiencing things in their physicality, by interacting with human and non-human protagonists that one can start grasping complex phenomena and can restore an appreciation for their "messiness" and non-measurable significance.
Knight
Margot H. Knight, executive director of Djerassi Resident Artists Program will share the outcomes and lessons from the 2014 and 2015 30-day collegial residencies of artists and scientists. She will also formally announce the 2016 residents of Scientific Delirium Madness 3.0.
Florin
The `Pataphysical Slot Machine is a poetic oracle created by an art collective in Mill Valley that includes Fabrice Florin, Howard Rheingold and dozens of artists, engineers, teachers and students. Their unique exhibit invites you to face mysterious `cabinets of curiosity', hear words of wisdom from a surreal character called Ubu, and open magical "wonderboxes" for more inspiration. Along with the exhibit, the group also offers maker workshops to help students of all ages create their own interactive art. This collaborative project is inspired by the maker culture, combinatorial poetics - and `Pataphysics, the "science of imaginary solutions." In this talk, Fabrice will discuss how this project came about, what they discovered together, and how it has now grown into a "peer learning network" that lets them experiment together, learn from each other and create something greater than any of them had imagined.
Hill
Electronic music is sometimes referred to as "spiritual technology" utilizing repetitive beats to access the brain and create metaphysical connections. These connections can change states of consciousness, resulting in sensations of oneness and unity with self, community, and other. In this talk, I will explain my investigations of dub reggae music, and discuss the effects that are found within the sound. I will share my process of applying the effects to actual movement and choreography, and discuss how the filming of my dances incorporates improvisation and site-specific environments.
Photos and videos of this evening
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