LASER symposium featuring Anna Dumitriu (bio-artist), Alex May (digital artist) and Pratik Shah (biomedical engineer)
February 4, 2016 7-9pm
Presentation Space, CNSI 5th floor
A solo exhibition of speculative morphologies by Amisha Gadani featuring birds without beaks, uni-colored chimeras, and a series of boxfishes that may exist, may have existed, or may exist in the future. The inspiration for the paintings and drawings in this exhibition stemmed partly from Gadani's two year artist residency in both the UCLA fish-focused evolutionary biology lab of Dr. Michael Alfaro and the UCLA Institute for Society and Genetics.
Bio:
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.
12-2pm Luncheon, Presentation Space, California Nanosystems Institute (CNSI)
4-6 pm Fowler Museum at UCLA. Book Release featuring Art|Sci Collaborators
The Art|Sci Center celebrates a decade of intersections between art and science with the release of a book cataloging 200+ collaborative and interdisciplinary exhibitions, lectures, workshops, and curricula.
We begin with a Luncheon at CNSI honoring staff that have contributed so much dedication to the Art|Sci Center.
Then join us for an evening book signing and reception at the Fowler Museum featuring artists and scientists who have contributed to building the Third culture on the UCLA campus and beyond.
This event marks the beginning of a collaborative initiative with the Fowler Museum.
Jason Fahrion, Fasih Ahsan with UCLA IGEM, and Mick Lorusso
October 22, 2015
Workshop | 5-7pm
UCLA Art|Sci Gallery
5th Floor, California Nanosystems Institute
Through the projects of artist Jason Fahrion, who raises silkworms in his garage on local mulberry leaves, and the experiments of UCLA iGEM to genetically engineer unique types of silk for medicine and design, Seres Makers of Silk introduces participants to the processes involved in the production and transformation of silk. We will physically examine and compare silk samples from the lab and studio, while also watching live silk worms and learning how IGEM spins synthetic silk. And by listening to data sonification of DNA sequences from different organisms including spiders and silkworms, we will consider the possibilities and difficulties in genetically engineering silk for future applications.
Robert Gero on his upcoming exhibition: "My recent research as an artist has led me to speculate on the existence of certain unique structures, infinity structures, in which there is a stable exterior and an infinitely expanding interior. A seemingly impossible structure, whose internal dimensions exceed its external ones. These structures are quantitative additions in space at the same time their movement expresses qualitative change. They both conceptually and materially transform static space into dynamic space by weaving superfluity, the void and solid together in an intimate dance.
This project is an empirical one, to actually generate infinity structures and to ground them in the math and philosophy of the infinite to create an installation of these paradoxical structures. This exhibition will include video by AME (Benjamin Lein and Kevin Mitchell) and a soundscape by Randy Greif."
Robert Gero’s work – both built and written - is grounded in the practical and theoretical intersection of art practice, philosophy and social-architectural systems. He holds an M.F.A. in sculpture and an M.A. in philosophy/aesthetics from California State University, Los Angeles, and a Ph.D. in philosophy (with concentrations on philosophy of art/ and art theory) from the New School for Social Research in New York.
He has exhibited nationally and internationally, selected exhibitions include The Museum of Arts and Design, Out of Hand; Materializing the Postdigital, New York, NY, the 45th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy, Artist Space, New York, Holly Solomon Gallery, New York, Tom Solomon’s Gallery, Los Angeles, Dorsky Gallery, New York, Pablo’s Birthday Gallery, New York Favorite Goods Gallery, Los Angeles, Frederieke Taylor Gallery, New York, Makor Gallery, New York, UICA, Grand Rapids, Lab Gallery, New York, Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica CA. He has recently been awarded an Art Matters grant, NY (2011).
In addition to his studio work he writes about art and curates. He is the curator of Doing and Undergoing a large-scale exhibition at Teachers College, Columbia University, 16 October – 15 December 2013, “Brought into Being: Performativity and Formative Performance” exhibition at the Amelie A. Wallace Gallery, New York (2013). This follows two exhibitions he curated at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum in Saint Louis titled “Killing Time” (2012). and Performativity and Performance in Contemporary Art (2011-2012). He also curated Freewaves, the work of Jennifer Steinkamp at The Santa Monica Museum of Art CA, among numerous other exhibitions. He is currently teaching at SUNY College at Old Westbury in New York.
LASER (Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous ) Featured Speakers:
FRIDA CANO (Mexico, 1982) Visual artist and curator. Creator of art project and transdisciplinary research project Arttextum in collaboration with the Subdireccion General de Promoción de Las Bellas Artes, Ministry of Culture, Education, and Sports, Madrid, Spain.
CAITLIN FOLEY and MISHA RABINOVICH, Professors at UMass Lowell, create artworks which respond to culturally relevant, yet sometimes utopic examples of sharing communities, livable ecologies, and the transmutation of waste.
PAUL C. ROSERO (Ecuador,1982) Artist whose cross-disciplinary interests include photography, experimental sound, coding with free software, bio-philosophy and performance as dj.
Start: 12 May 2015 5:00 pm
End: 14 May 2015 4:00 pm
Opening reception:
May 12, 2015
5-7pm
UCLA Art|Sci Gallery 5th Floor, California Nanosystems Institute
The UCLA Art Science Undergraduate Society is a student group that aims to create a community of creative minds from all majors. They foster the artistic and scientific development of our members by working on collaborative art pieces and showing them in a public exhibit at the end of the year. They also explore the work of other artist-scientists through our partnership with the UCLA Art|Sci Center and by going on quarterly trips to galleries and museums in Los Angeles. Students in our organization gain powerful analytical and creative skills while learning how to effectively communicate across many disciplines. In sum, the Art Science Undergraduate Society merges inspired minds from the sciences and humanities. Through lively discussion, artistic exploration, and the building of a supportive community, they have expanded the UCLA undergraduate experience.
The 2014-2015 showcase of member work focuses on the theme Movement. This theme challenged students to consider the many ways in which movement is manifested in artistic practice and how it relates to the science of kinetics. Most members’ pieces focus on motion at a conceptual level, interpreted through the movement of living things, from tracking reptile and amphibian locomotion to the mechanics of human muscles. Movement is a subject with the potential for a diversity of interpretations and wide application across the humanities, the sciences, and the arts.
The OS Fermentation Workshop (OSFW) was part of artist duo Leila Nadir and Cary Peppermint’s Edible Ecologies project—a series of “social sculptures” that worked collaboratively with local communities (human, bacterial and ecological). Taking place thus far at community gardens, academic institutions and public spaces, the OS Fermentation workshop involved participants in a process of reviving the ancient practice of fermentation as an alternative to industrial methods of food preservation such as refrigeration and pasteurization. It functioned simultaneously as a slow-cooking class, a community-building ritual and a conceptual art experiment in which both wild bacteria and food democracy are the core concepts. The tangible outcome for participants was jars of fermented veggies, which the artists envision as an unfinished and interactive artwork.
Leila Nadir and Cary Peppermint (collectively called EcoArtTech) are a hybrid artist-scholar team whose environmental art projects take the form of architectural interventions and urban wilderness tours, net art and public performances, scholarly articles and poetic essays. This workshop focused on positioning art as an urgent and critical social intervention operating between utility and imagination.
In Jason Fahrion's workshop on bee biology and the production of mead, participants sampled about six different excellent honey varieties, which were compared to a honey flavor wheel he helped develop at UC Davis. Fahrion also described his experience as a beekeeper and explained how the Varroa Destructor mite has been invading most honey bee colonies, contributing largely to Colony Collapse Disorder. Participants also considered the history of mead, humankind's earliest fermented beverage, which involves a collaboration with both bees and microbes in its production.
Artist Kathy High presents the exhibition Waste Matters: You Are My Future, whichexplores immune systems as autopoiesis, capable of maintaining themselves, looking at research in fecal microbial transplants and gut biomes to better understand the important function of bacteria in our bodies. This project looks at the metaphor of interspecies love, immunology and bacteria as players.
KATHY HIGH (USA) 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.
Bio-Artist KATHY HIGH will give a public presentation on her creative work in the emerging field of biological art, a field referred to as "bioart". She will introduce her influences and her interests and amazement with bio-art history.
Kathy High is an internationally recognized, award winning interdisciplinary artist from New York currently working with living systems, animals, and biology and art. She produces videos, sculptures and installations around issues of gender and technology, pursues queer and feminist inquiries into areas of bio-science, science fiction, and animal studies.
Her works have been shown in festivals, galleries and museums nationally and abroad, including the Guggenheim Museum, Museum of Modern Art, Lincoln Center and Exit Art (NYC), the Science Gallery, (Dublin), NGBK, (Berlin), MASS MoCA (North Adams), Videotage Art Space and Para-Site Gallery (Hong Kong), Festival Transitio_MX (Mexico), among others. She has received awards for her works including grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2010), the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council for the Arts.
She has had artist residencies with SymbioticA, art and science residency at the University of Western Australia (2009-20), the Bioart Society of Finland, Helsinki and Kilpisjarvi, Finland (2013) and in Hong Kong with the Asian Arts Council (2005).
Her UCLA exhibition opening April 16 is Waste Matters: You Are My Future and explores immune systems as autopoiesis, capable of maintaining themselves, looking at research in fecal microbial transplants and gut biomes to better understand the important function of bacteria in our bodies. This project looks at the metaphor of interspecies love, immunology and bacteria as players.
Iain Kerr presents EATING PLACE, an Urban Foraging Workshop
5 -7 pm | Thursday, March 12th
7-9 pm | LASER
UCLA Art|Sci Gallery
5th Floor, California nanoSystems Institute
A workshop led by visiting artist Iain Kerr, of SPURSE Design Consultancy, EATING PLACE is an initiative to foster large scale social and ecological transformation by developing alternative practices of place, the commons, multi-species actions, and urbanism. EATING PLACE begins by understanding place as a mode of being-of-a-world and not simply a geographic location. This being-of-a-world necessarily extends beyond us to include the very active participation of plants, animals, histories, technologies, ideas, other worlds and practices in a collective act of cosmological place co-making.
Iain Kerr is a socio-ecological systems designer, and founding member of the transdisciplinary research and design collaborative SPURSE. Their work has been at the forefront of experimental ecological research and design for over the last decade. While developing ground breaking practices, projects and events at the intersections of art, design, ecology and urbanism they have collaborated with communities from the high arctic to the inner cities in Bolivia (via projects ranging from restaurants, to wetlands to micro-biology laboratories) to effect real change. In addition to working with SPURSE and co-directing SPURSE’s Emergent Futures Lab, Iain holds faculty appointments at the University of Maine (Associate Professor of Critical Engagements), and Montclair State University (Director of Creative Practices, Feliciano Center). He teaches, lectures and gives workshops widely (including Harvard University, Columbia University, Parsons, University of Maine, CCA, and RISDI). His work, and that of SPURSE, has been exhibited internationally (Whitney Museum of Art, The Guggenheim. Grand Arts, CAFK+A, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Mass MoCA) and published in a number of books and journals including: The Interventionists, The Object of Labor, Experimental Geography, The International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, Surface, ID, NY Times, Elle, Teme Celeste, Art Papers, Monitor, Interior Design, and Art Journal.
SPURSE is a creative design consultancy that focuses on social, ecological and ethical transformation. It works to empower communities, institutions, infrastructures, and ecologies with tools and adaptive solutions for system-wide change. Drawing upon the diverse backgrounds of its members that spans the fields of science, art, and design, they utilize unique immersive methods to co-produce new ecologies, urban environments, public art, experimental visioning, strategic development, alternative educational models, and expanded configurations of the commons.
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