Leonardo Art/Science Evening Rendezvous of March 2012

Constructive Interference of the Arts and Sciences

San Francisco, 12 March 2012
c/o University of San Francisco
See below

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) and Tami Spector
Part of a series of cultural events


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

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.

See also...

  • Artists Redefine Turing
  • Interdisciplinary panels
  • DASERs
  • Art, Technology, Culture Colloquia
  • ScienceSchmoozer
  • Antarctic Science and the Cultural Arts
  • Previous Art/Science Evenings


    Program:
    • 6:45pm-7:00pm: Socializing/networking.
    • 7:00-7:25:
    • Indre Viskontas on "Music that Moves: the art and neuroscience of effective performance" We are constantly bombarded by a cacophony of sounds and yet music still has the power to influence us, often outside our awareness. Read more
    • 7:25-7:50:
    • Rebecca Kamen (Northern Virginia Community College) on "Making the Invisible, Visible: Discoveries Between Art and Science" Discoveries between art and science revealed during research residencies at the American Philosophical Society and the Chemical Heritage Foundation libraries and collections. 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:
    • Shamit Kachru (Stanford Physics Dept) on "Are there more dimensions of space?" Some leading approaches to theoretical physics suggest that there may be extra dimensions of space, "compactified" to such small size that we have not yet detected them Read more
    • 8:35-9:00:
    • Scott Kildall (Artist) on "Tweets in Space" An art project that uses Twitter messages from participants worldwide to an exoplanet 20 light years away Read more
    • 9:00pm-9:30pm: Discussions, networking You can mingle with the speakers and the audience

    Bios:
    • Shamit Kachru (Stanford) is a Professor of Physics at Stanford University and at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. He obtained his A.B. from Harvard University in 1990 and his Ph.D. from Princeton in 1994. He was a Research Associate at Rutgers University in 1996-1997. He became an Assistant Professor at the University of California at Berkeley in 1997, and moved to Stanford in 1999. He was also a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton in 1999. Dr Kachru won an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship in 1998, the Bergmann Memorial Award in 1999, and a Packard Foundation Fellowship in 2000. In 2008, he was awarded the 2008 American Chapter of the Indian Physics Association (ACIPA) Outstanding Young Physicist Prize "for fundamental contributions shedding light on the nature of string theory ground states, and on the origin of dark energy in string theory, leading to an accelerating universe." Dr. Kachru is interested in the physics of string theory and M theory. His previous work has focused on stringy modifications of geometry, duality and exact results in supersymmetric compactifications, and supersymmetry breaking. Most recently, he has been doing research at the interface between string theory and cosmology.
    • Rebecca Kamen's work explores the nexus of art and science. Her recent large- scale sculpture installation, Divining Nature: An Elemental Garden has been informed by wide ranging research into chemistry, cosmology, spirituality and philosophy. She has also investigated rare books and manuscripts at the libraries of the American Philosophical Society and the Chemical Heritage Foundation, utilizing these scientific collections as a muse in the creation of her work. She has exhibited and lectured both nationally, and internationally in China, Hong Kong, and Egypt. She has been the recipient of a Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Professional Fellowship, a Pollack Krasner Foundation Fellowship, a Strauss Fellowship, and a travel grant fellowship from the Chemical Heritage Foundation. Her work is represented in many private and public collections such as, KPMG Peat Martwick Corporation, Gannett Corporation, IBM, Capital One and the Institute for Defense Analysis.
    • Scott Kildall (Artist) is a new media artist working with video, installation, prints, sculpture and performance. He gathers material from the public realm to perform interventions into various concepts of space. He has a Bachelor of Arts in Political Philosophy from Brown University and a Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago through the Art & Technology Studies Department. He has exhibited his work internationally in galleries and museums in New York, Los Angeles, Berlin, London and Hong Kong. He has received fellowships, awards and residencies from organizations including the Kala Art Institute, The Banff Centre for the Arts, Recology San Francisco , Turbulence.org and Eyebeam Art + Technology Center. Scott is a founding member of Second Front - the first performance art group in Second Life. He currently resides in San Francisco.
    • 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. 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). He has also written extensively about cinema, literature and the visual arts.
    • Indre Viskontas straddles the line between music and neuroscience, holding a Master of Music degree in Voice Performance from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience from UCLA. An affiliate of the Memory and Aging Center at UCSF, she continues to publish research related to memory and creativity. An active Bay Area performer, she is the co-founder and Director of Opera on Tap: San Francisco, an opera company whose mission is to change the perception of opera as elitist and stuffy by producing high quality performances in unusual venues. She is also the co-founder and leader of Vocallective, a collective of singers and instrumentalists dedicated to the art of vocal chamber music. Passionate about bringing science to the public, she co-hosted a 6-episode docuseries on the Oprah Winfrey Network called Miracle Detectives, in which she represented the scientific side of a believer-scientist team investigating real claims of miracles. She continues to educate and provoke the lay public via her blog (www.indreviskontas.com/blog/blog.html), as a host of the podcast Point of Inquiry (http://www.pointofinquiry.org/) and via public speaking appearances.

    Address and directions:


    University of San Francisco
    2130 Fulton Street
    SF, CA 94117
    Room: UC 222

    See the campus map and directions


    Extended abstracts

    Photos and videos


    Tweets in Space is a new art project by Scott Kildall and Nathaniel Stern, where we will beam Twitter messages from participants worldwide to Gliese 581d - an exoplanet 20 light years away that can support extraterrestrial life. Using DIY technology, we are building a optical signaling device to dispatch the millions of voices in the Twitterverse into the larger Universe. This will be a live performance, which will activate a potent discussion about communication and life that traverses beyond our borders and understanding.
    Download the presentation


    Are there more dimensions of space?. Some leading approaches to theoretical physics (for example, the so called String Theory) suggest that there may be extra dimensions of space, "compactified" to such small size that we have not yet detected them with modern experiments (or our eyes!). I briefly discuss the role that such dimensions may play in explaining and unifying some of the puzzles of modern physics.
    Download the presentation | Watch the video


    Music that moves. We are constantly bombarded by a cacophony of sounds and yet music still has the power to influence us, often outside our awareness. What is it about this art form that draws people in? What distinguishes a performance that is technically accurate but unmusical from one that elicits the chills? We will explore how music engages the brain and why it continues to be a worldwide addiction.
    Download the presentation | Watch the video


    Making the Invisible Visible. Discoveries between art and science were revealed during research residencies at the American Philosophical Society and the Chemical Heritage Foundation libraries and collections. They have been a muse in the development of Kamen's artwork. We will discuss the notion of scientist as artist and artist as scientist, highlighting historic images from these library collections. We will also discuss several collaborations with scientist and the work developing from these dialogues. The main focus will be the genesis of a large sculpture/sound installation, Divining Nature: An Elemental Garden and the different research areas that have informed its development. Divining Nature has also been a catalyst for several other collaborative projects, which will also be discussed.
    Download the presentation | Watch the video


    Sponsored by:

    School of the Art Institute of Chicago,
    the University of Illinois' eDREAM Institute,
    the University of Calabria's Evolutionary Systems Group,
    Srishti School of Art, Design & Technology,
    School of Visual Arts Computer Art Department,
    and USF Dean's Office of Arts and Science.