July 13th – Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous

These events invariably contain interesting presentations, and a good opportunity to meet like minded practitioners of the ars technologica.

Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous
University of San Francisco
San Francisco, CA

LASER is a monthly series of lectures and presentations organized by Piero Scaruffi on behalf of Leonardo/ISAST

Schedule:

6:30pm-6:45pm: Socializing/networking.

6:45-7:10pm: Jamie McHugh of John Kennedy University and Tamalpa Institute on “Inner and Outer Landscapes”

We are nature: our soma and psyche are reflections of the elements. This informs my work both as a “body conservationist” (somatic movement educator) and as a photographer of Nature’s body. My images – Nature Being Art – transmit the living earth not as figurative landscape but as contemporary abstract art, reflecting the dynamic balance of movement and stillness found both in nature and in body. I will present my images of the natural environment as contemplative objects in tandem with an embodied approach to meditation.

7:10pm-7:35pm: Daniel “Cosmo Kichman” Grupp (Artist in residence at DeYoung Museum) on “Yielding to Irony: Understanding the Illusion of Importance in Art and Science.”

Both art and science can attain levels of great importance in our lives. We start from a clear intention, and may end up in a place where the importance itself is what is important. In both art and science, we may present with magnified importance an idea or an object, completely without irony. In this talk I explore the joy we can experience when we yield to the irony of our seriousness.

7:35pm-7:50pm: BREAK

7:50pm-8:15pm: Rhonda Holberton, artist, on “Geopolitical Ruptures: How Science, Technology, and Repo-modernism will save the World”

My discussion will address visual language and how it operates within a cultural paradigm to reinforce political ideology. Is it possible that cultural indexes are beginning to suggest the end of one imaginary totality and the beginning of another; Post-Industrial, Post-postmodernism, Post-materialism, Post-oil, Post-technology, Post-capitalism, Post-global warming, Post-cultural revolution, Post-autonomous, Post-democratic? How are the arts, sciences, and technology fields working together within the ruptures of our current system to prepare us for this ideological shift?

8:15pm-8:45pm: Terrence Deacon (U.C. Berkeley) on “The Aesthetic Faculty”

8:45pm-9:30pm: Discussions, more socializing

This LASER is sponsored by: ZKM|Center for Art and Media

More information about previous LASERS, see: http://www.leonardo.info/isast/laser.html