Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous
February 4, 2016 7-9pm
Presentation Space, CNSI 5th floor

Live Stream:

Confirmed Speakers:

ANNA DUMITRIU (artwork pictured above) is a British artist whose work fuses craft, technology and bioscience to explore our relationship to the microbial world. She is artist-in-residence on the Modernising Medical Microbiology Project at the University of Oxford and exhibited at venues such as the V&A Museum, London and The Picasso Museum, Barcelona. She has recently undertaken a residency in the Liu Lab for Synthetic Evolution at University of California Irvine. www.normalflora.co.uk

ALEX MAY is a British artist exploring a wide range of digital technologies, most notably video projection onto physical objects (building on the technique known as video mapping or projection mapping by using his own bespoke software), also interactive installations, generative works, full-size humanoid robots, performance, and video art.
www.alexmayarts.co.uk

PRATIK SHAH earned his Ph.D. at the Center for Synthetic Biology of the University of Copenhagen, where he developed and applied a number of impressive technologies for detecting microRNAs. Pratik currently researches the biochemistry of orthogonal replication and explores its use for replicating XNA in the Liu Lab for Synthetic Evolution at University of California Irvine.

KATHY HIGH is an interdisciplinary artist working in the areas of technology, science, speculative fiction and art. She produces videos and installations posing queer and feminist inquiries into areas of medicine/bio-science, and animal/interspecies collaborations. She hosts bio/ecology+art workshops and is creating an urban nature center in North Troy (NATURE Lab) with media organization The Sanctuary for Independent Media. High is Professor of Video and New Media in the Department of Arts, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY. She teaches documentary and experimental digital video production, history and theory, as well as biological arts.
www.kathyhigh.com

AMISHA GADANI is an artist, educator and illustrator based in Los Angeles. She is interested in unique animal morphologies and adaptations; from swarming behaviors and elegant defense mechanisms, to superorganisms and animals of the deep sea. Her work ranges from unsettling beak-less bird paintings and underwater videos to her on-going series of interactive animal-inspired defensive dresses that can, for example, inflate like a blowfish when the wearer is intimidated. She has spent over four years working at the art and science focused Exploratorium Museum in San Francisco in education, exhibits and illustration; and two years working at UCLA in two biology labs as an illustrator producing over fifty scientific illustrations featured in journals and research papers and as an outreach educator using drawing and sculpture focused workshops to explain scientific concepts to local elementary school students. Her work has shown in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Pittsburgh, New York City, and Tokyo; has been featured in The New York Times, Fast Company, and Scientific American; and has been published in LIMN magazine, the journal Method Quarterly and the book "Future Fashion: Innovative Materials and Technology" by Barcelona-based maomao publications. Amisha earned a B.F.A in Fine Arts from Carnegie Mellon University in 2007.
www.amishagadani.com

VICTORIA VESNA (artist and Director of the Art|Sci Center) presents her recent collaborative work on Birdsong Diamond Japan, created with Dr. Charles Taylor (evolutionary biologist, UCLA), Dr. Takashi Ikegami (physicist, Univ. of Tokyo), Dr. Hiroo Iwata (engineer, EMP), and EMP PhD students. Bird Song Diamond is an interactive installation based on long-term research (2011-present) allowing multifaceted, interdisciplinary perspectives — uniquely connecting the nodes of evolutionary biology, artificial intelligence, spatial sound, mechatronic art and interactive technologies.

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