The LASERs are an international 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 and the dates for the Bay Area.
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.
Where: Stanford University, LiKaShing building - Room LK101
There should be ample parking in the structure on corner of Campus Drive West and Roth Way. (Stanford map)
Parking is mostly free at Stanford after 6pm.
If you cannot attend in person, you can watch it on Zoom. Click here to register
or here.
Program (the order of the speakers might change):
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Suyash Joshi (Engineer and Magician) on "S.T.E.A.M. Magic for Education & Entertainment"
If you missed this presentation, you can view it by clicking on the image:  .
Magic tricks and illusions using science and emerging technologies... Read more
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Marjorie Perloff (Stanford) on "Infrathin: Poetry as Verbivocovisual Art"
If you missed this presentation, you can view it by clicking on the image:  .
The “infrathin” was Marcel Duchamp’s playful name for the most minute shade of difference... Read more
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Julia Scott (Healthcare Innovation and Design Program at Santa Clara Univ) on "Biofeedback Integration into immersive Virtual Reality Experiences: Balancing creativity and rigor"
If you missed this presentation, you can view it by clicking on the image:  .
Incorporating user experience and validated metrics into interactive biofeedback applications on virtual reality platforms... Read more
- Discussions, networking
You can mingle with the speakers and the audience
We are still not sure whether this event will be broadcast live on Zoom. Need to test the technology of the room.
Bios:
- Suyash Joshi is a creative technologist, magician and STEAM evangelist based in San Francisco. He has been passionate about magic and technology since childhood and has blended the two in a one of a kind "STEAM Magic Show" for online and in-person performance at schools, maker faire, hackerspaces, and industry conferences. His magic involves emerging technologies - AI, IoT, Augmented Reality with optical illusions, and math-based tricks that not only entertain but also inspire audiences about STEAM subjects. He brings twelve years of work experience as a senior software engineer in Silicon Valley at companies like Oracle and RingCentral.
- Marjorie Perloff is Sadie D. Patek Professor of Humanities Emerita at Stanford University. She is also Florence Scott professor Emerita of English at the University of Southern California. Perloff is the author of many books and articles on 20th and 21st century Poetry and Poetics, including, "Frank O’Hara: Poet among Painters" (1977), "The Poetics of Indeterminacy: Rimbaud to Cage" (1981), "The Futurist Moment: Avant-Garde, Avant-Guerre, and the Language of Rupture" (1986, new edition, 1994), "Radical Artifice: Writing Poetry in the Age of Media" (1992), "Wittgenstein’s Ladder: Poetic Language and the Strangeness of the Ordinary" (1996), "21st Century Modernism" (2002), and "Unoriginal Genius: Writing by Other Means in the New Century" (2011), while "The Edge of Irony: Modernism in the Shadow of the Habsburg Empire" (2016) enlarges on the theme of her 2004 memoir "The Vienna Paradox". "Circling the Canon: The Collected Book Reviews of Marjorie Perloff, 1969-2016" has been published in two volumes by the University of New Mexico Press in 2019, and her most recent book, "Infrathin: An Experiment in Micropoetics",has just been published by Chicago. Perloff’s first English translation/edition of Wittgenstein’s "Private Notebooks 1914-16", has just been published by Liveright in 2022. Perloff is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Philosophical Society.
- Julia Scott is director of the Brain and Memory Care Lab at Santa Clara University. The research program partners with external stakeholders--companies, clinicians, community organizations--to co-design healthcare innovation projects for numerous disciplines, from public health to engineering. The primary technologies engaged are in non-invasive brain sensing and stimulation in application to cognitive decline or impairment and neurobehavioral conditions. Successful integration of EEG derived signals into virtual reality (VR) experiences has seeded ongoing development of VR biofeedback applications that enhance the sense of presence and train self-regulatory skills. Julia Scott, PhD received her training in neuroscience at University of California campuses (Davis, San Diego, and San Francisco). She has published widely on normal and abnormal neurodevelopment as well as brain aging in the characterization of longitudinal change models and neuroimaging markers. She has taught a range of courses in Biology and Bioengineering, including physiology, neural engineering and medical imaging.
- 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. Since 2015 he has been commuting between California and China, where several of his books have been translated.
Extended abstracts:
Joshi
A fun, interactive and educational magic show that not only astonishes but also inspires and educates the audience to look at Science and Technology in a new light. Suyash will perform several magic tricks and illusions that he has built from scratch using cutting edge technologies. After the show, he will explain his approach to Science based Magic and and even teach a new trick that you can perform for your friends. You will not want to miss this wonderful STEAM Magic Show and Lecture.
Perloff
The “infrathin” was Marcel Duchamp’s playful name for the most minute shade of difference: that between the report of a gunshot and the appearance of the bullet hole, or between two objects in a series made from the same mold. “Eat” is not the same thing as “ate.” The poetic, Marjorie Perloff suggests, can best be understood as the language of infrathin. For in poetry, whether in verse or prose, words and phrases that are seemingly unrelated in ordinary discourse are realigned by means of sound, visual layout, etymology, grammar, and construction so as to “make it new.” In her revisionist “micropoetics,” Perloff draws primarily on major modernist poets from Stein and Yeats to Beckett, suggesting that the usual emphasis on what this or that poem is “about,” does not do justice to its infrathin possibilities. From Goethe’s eight-line “Wanderer’s Night Song” to Eliot’s Four Quartets, to the minimalist lyric of Rae Armantrout, Infrathin is designed to challenge our current habits of reading and to answer the central question: what is it that makes poetry poetry?
Scott
When creating immersive experiences, one is attempting to emote an internal state. When designing biofeedback systems, the goal is the same. One must unite the creative process and scientific methodology to achieve the common objective. Julia Scott will share how she incorporates the user experience and validated metrics into interactive biofeedback applications on virtual reality platforms. Examples from collaborations with the San Francisco Asian Art Museum and Saint Francis High School will be highlighted.
Photos and videos of this evening
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