You can find out more about Toronto’s Art/Sci Salon’s Who Cares? speaker series in my February 9, 2022 posting. For this posting, I’m focusing on the upcoming March 2022 events, which are being offered online. From a March 7, 2022 Art/Sci Salon announcement (received via email),
We’re pleased to announce our next two events from our “Who Cares?” Speaker Series
Nous sommes heureux d’annoncer notre deuxième événement de notre “Who Cares?” Série de conferences
March 10 [2022], 2:00-3:00 pm [ET]
Data Meditation: Salvatore Iaconesi and Oriana Persico
HER – She Loves Data
Nuovo Abitare
Join us for a discussion about questions like:
Why does data have to be an extractive process?
What can we learn about ourselves through the data we generate everyday?
How can we use them as an expressive form to represent ourselves?
Data Meditations is the first ritual designed with the new approach of HER: She Loves Data, which addresses data as existential and cultural phenomena, and the need of creating experience (contemporary rituals) that allow societies and individuals to come together around data generating meaning, new forms of solidarity, empathy, interconnection and knowledge.
Rejoignez-nous pour une discussion basée sur des questions telles que :
Pourquoi les données doivent-elles être un processus d’extraction ?
Que pouvons-nous apprendre par rapport à nous, grâce aux données que nous générons chaque jour ?
Comment pouvons-nous les utiliser comme une forme expressive pour nous représenter ?
Data Méditations est le premier rituel conçu avec la nouvelle approche de HER [elle] : She loves Data , qui parle des données en tant que phénomènes existentiels et culturels , mais également , la nécessité de créer des expériences [ rituels contemporains ] qui permettent aux sociétés et aux individus de se réunir autour de données générant du sens , de nouvelles formes de solidarité , empathie , d’interconnexion et de connaissance.
Maria Antonia Gonzalez-Valerio, Professor of Philosophy and Literature, UNAM, Mexico City. Sharmistha Mishra, Infectious Disease Physician and Mathematical Modeller, St Michael’s Hospital Madhur Anand, Ecologist, School of Environmental Sciences, University of Guelph Salvatore Iaconesi and Oriana Persico, Independent Artists, HER, She Loves Data
One lesson we have learnt in the past two years is that the pandemic has not single-handedly created a global health crisis, but has exacerbated and made visible one that was already in progress. The roots of this crisis are as cultural as they are economic and environmental. Among the factors contributing to the crisis is a dominant orientation towards healthcare that privileges a narrow focus on data-centered technological fixes and praises the potentials of technological delegation. An unsustainable system has culminated in the passive acceptance and even the cold justification of triage as an inevitable evil in a time of crisis and scarcity.
What transdisciplinary practices can help ameliorate the atomizing pitfalls of turning the patient into data? How can discriminatory practices such as triage, exclusion based on race, gender, and class, vaccine hoarding etc.. be addressed and reversed? What strategies can we devise to foster genuine transdisciplinary approaches and move beyond the silo effects of specialization, address current uncritical trends towards technological delegation, and restore the centrality of human relations in healthcare delivery?
L’une des leçons que nous avons apprises au cours des deux dernières années est que la pandémie n’a pas créé à elle seule une crise sanitaire mondiale, mais qu’elle en a exacerbé et rendu visible une qui était déjà en cours. Les racines de cette crise sont aussi bien culturelles qu’économiques et environnementales. Parmi les facteurs qui contribuent à la crise figure une orientation dominante en matière de soins de santé, qui privilégie une vision étroite des solutions technologiques centrées sur les données et fait l’éloge du potentiel de la délégation technologique. Un système non durable a abouti à l’acceptation passive et même à la justification froide du triage comme un mal inévitable en temps de crise et de pénurie.
Quelles pratiques transdisciplinaires peuvent contribuer à améliorer les pièges de l’atomisation qui consiste à transformer le patient en données ? Comment les pratiques discriminatoires telles que le triage, l’exclusion fondée sur la race, le sexe et la classe sociale, la thésaurisation des vaccins, etc. peuvent-elles être abordées et inversées ? Quelles stratégies pouvons-nous concevoir pour favoriser de véritables approches transdisciplinaires et dépasser les effets de silo de la spécialisation, pour faire face aux tendances actuelles non critiques à la délégation technologique, et pour restaurer la centralité des relations humaines dans la prestation des soins de santé ?
We wish to thank/ nous [sic] the generous support of the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, New College at the University of Toronto and The Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies at York University; the Centre for Feminist Research, Sensorium Centre for Digital Arts and Technology, The Canadian Language Museum, the Departments of English and the School of Gender and Women’s Studies at York University; the D.G. Ivey Library and the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at the University of Toronto; We also wish to thank the support of The Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences
2. Friday, March 18 – 6:00 to 8:00 pm [ET] Critical care and sustainable care Suvendrini Lena, MD, Playwright and Neurologist at CAMH and Centre for Headache, Women’s College Hospital, Toronto Adriana Ieraci, Roboticist and PhD candidate in Computer Science, Ryerson University Lucia Gagliese – Pain Aging Lab, York University
COVID-19 has put health care workers in a more than usually interesting position and the Art/Sci Salon in Toronto, Canada is ‘creatively’ addressing the old, new, and emerging stresses. From the Who Cares? events webpage (also in a February 8, 2022 notice received via email),
“Who Cares?” is a Speaker Series dedicated to fostering transdisciplinary conversations between doctors, writers, artists, and researchers on contemporary biopolitics of care and the urgent need to move towards more respectful, creative, and inclusive social practices of care in the wake of the systemic cracks made obvious by the pandemic.
About the Series
Critiques of the health care sector are certainly not new and have been put forward by workers and researchers in the medical sector and in the humanities alike. However, critique alone fails to consider the systemic issues that prevent well-meaning practitioners to make a difference. The goal of this series is to activate practical conversations between people who are already engaged in transforming the infrastructures and cultures of care but have few opportunities to speak to each other. These interdisciplinary dialogues will enable the sharing of emerging epistemologies, new material approaches and pedagogies that could take us beyond the current crisis. By engaging with the arts as research, our guests use the generative insights of poetic and artistic practices to zoom in on the crucial issues undermining holistic, dynamic and socially responsible forms of care. Furthermore, they champion transdisciplinary dialogues and multipronged approaches directed at changing the material and discursive practices of care.
Who cares? asks the following important questions:
How do we lay the groundwork for sustainable practices of care, that is, care beyond ‘just-in-time’ interventions?
What strategies can we devise to foster genuine transdisciplinary approaches that move beyond the silo effects of specialization, address current uncritical trends towards technological delegation, and restore the centrality responsive/responsible human relations in healthcare delivery?
What practices can help ameliorate the atomizing pitfalls of turning the patient into data?
What pathways can we design to re-direct attention to long lasting care focused on a deeper understanding of the manifold relationalities between doctors, patients, communities, and the socio-environmental context?
How can the critically creative explorations of artists and writers contribute to building resilient communities of care that cultivate reciprocity, respect for the unpredictable temporalities of healing, and active listening?
How to build a capacious infrastructure of care able to address and mend the damages caused by ideologies of ultimate cure that pervade corporate approaches to healthcare funding and delivery?
This event will be online, please register HEREto participate. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
A Conversation with Bahar Orang, author of Where Things Touch, on staying attuned to the fragile intimacies of care beyond the stifling demands of institutional environments.
This short presentation will ask questions about care that move it beyond the carceral logics of hospital settings, particularly in psychiatry. Drawing from questions raised in my first book Where Things Touch, and my work with Doctors for Defunding Police (DFDP), I hope to pose the question of how to do the work of health care differently. As the pandemic has laid bare so much violence, it becomes imperative to engage in forms of political imaginativeness that proactively ask what are the forms that care can take, and does already take, in places other than the clinic or the hospital?
Bahar Orang is a writer and clinician scholar in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto. Her creative and clinical work seeks to engage with ways of imagining care beyond the carcerality that medical institutions routinely reproduce
Roundtables 1. Friday, March 11 – 5:00 to 7:00 pm [ET] Beyond triage and data culture Maria Antonia Gonzalez-Valerio, Professor of Philosophy and Literature, UNAM, Mexico City. Sharmistha Mishra, Infectious Disease Physician and Mathematical Modeller, St Michael’s Hospital Madhur Anand, Ecologist, School of Environmental Sciences, University of Guelph Salvatore Iaconesi and Oriana Persico, independent artists, HER, She Loves Data
(Online)
2. Friday, March 18 – 6:00 to 8:00 pm [ET] Critical care and sustainable care Suvendrini Lena, MD, Playwright and Neurologist at CAMH and Centre for Headache, Women’s College Hospital, Toronto Adriana Ieraci, Roboticist and PhD candidate in Computer Science, Ryerson University Lucia Gagliese – Pain Aging Lab, York University
Keynote Conversation Friday, April 1, 5:00-7:00 pm [ET] Seema Yasmin, Director of Research and Education, Stanford Health Communication Initiative [Stanford University] Bayo Akomolafe, Chief Curator of The Emergence Network
(hybrid) William Doo Auditorium, 45 Willcox Street, Toronto
* The format of this program and access might change with the medical situation
We wish to thank the generous support of the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, New College, the D.G. Ivey Library, and the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at the University of Toronto; the Centre for Feminist Research, Sensorium Centre for Digital Arts and Technology, The Canadian Language Museum, the Departments of English and the School of Gender and Women’s Studies at York University. We also wish to thank the support of The Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences
This series is co-produced in collaboration with the ArtSci Salon
First off, there’s Canada’s annual Science Odyssey (see my April 26, 2021 posting for more about the government initiative or you can go directly to the Science Odyssey website for a listing of the events).
Since posting about Science Odyssey, I have received a number of emails announcing event and not all of them are part of the Odyssey experience.
From the looks of things, May 2021 is going to be a very busy month. Given how early it is in the month I expect to receive another batch of notices and most likely will post another May 2021 events roundup.
At this point, there’s a heavy emphasis on architecture (human and other) and design.
Proximal Spaces on May 3, 2021
This is one of those event within an event notices. There’s a festival: FACTT 20/21 – Improbable Times. Trans-disciplinary & Trans-national Festival of Art & Science in Portugal and within the festival there is Proximal Spaces in Toronto, Canada. Here’s more from the ArtScience Salon (ArtSci Salon) May 1, 2021 announcement (received via email),
Proximal Spaces
May 3, 2021 – 3.00 PM (EST) [12 pm PST]
Join us at this poetry reading by six Canadian artists responding to the work of eight bioartists. Event with be streamed on Facebook Live.
Please note that you don’t need to sign up in order to access the streaming as it is public.
Proximal Spaces’ is a multi-modal exhibition that explores the environment at multiple scales in concentric circles of proximity to the body. Inspired by Edward Hall’s [Edward Twitchell Hall or E. T. Hall] 1961 notation of intimate (1.5ft), personal (4ft), social (12ft) and public (25ft) spaces in his “Proxemics” diagrams, the installation portion presents similar diagrams of his concentric circles affixed to the wall of the gallery space, as well as developed in Augmented Reality around the venue. Each of these diagrams is a montage of microscopic and sub-microscopic images of the everyday environment as experienced by a collaborative team of international bioartists, and arrayed in a fractal form. In addition, an AR-enabled application explores the invisible environments of computer generated bioaerosols suspended in the air of virtual space.
This work visualizes the variegated response of the biological environment to unprecedented levels of physical distancing and self-isolation and recent developments in vaccine design that impact our understanding of interpersonal and interspecies ‘messaging’. What continues to thrive in the 6ft ‘dead spaces’ between us? What invisible particles linger on and create a biological archive through our movements through space? The artwork presents an interesting mode of interspecies engagement through hybrid virtual and physical interaction.
In the spring of 2021, six Canadian poets – Kelley Aitken, nancy viva davis halifax, Maureen Hynes, Anita Lahey, Dilys Leman, & Sheila Stewart – came together to pursue a lyric response to Proximal Spaces. They were challenged and inspired by the virtual exhibition with its combination of art, science, and proxemics. The focus of the artworks – what inhabits and thrives in the spaces and environments where we live, work, and breathe—generated six distinctive poems.
Poets: Kelley Aitken, nancy viva davis halifax, Maureen Hynes, Anita Lahey, Dilys Leman, & Sheila Stewart
Bioartists: Roberta Buiani, Nathalie Dubois Calero, Sarah Choukah, Nicole Clouston, Jess Holtz, Mick Lorusso, Maro Pebo, Felipe Shibuya
This project is part of FACTT-Improbable Times (http://factt.arteinstitute.org/), a project spearheaded and promoted by the Arte Institute we are in or production and conception partners with Cultivamos Cultura and Ectopia (Portugal), InArts Lab@Ionian University (Greece), ArtSci Salon@The Fields Institute and Sensorium@York University (Canada), School of Visual Arts (USA), UNAM [National Autonomous University of Mexico], Arte+Ciência and Bioscénica (Mexico), and Central Academy of Fine Arts (China). Together we will work and bring into being our ideas and actions for this during the year of 2021!
Morphogenesis: Geometry, Physics, and Biology on May 5, 2021
i love this image, he seems so delighted to show off the bug (?),
Harvard professor L. Mahadevan
Here’s more from the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (PI) April 30, 2021 announcement (received via email),
Earth is home to millions of different species – from simple plants and unicellular organisms to trees and whales and humans. The incredible diversity of life on Earth led Charles Darwin to lament that it is “enough to drive the sanest man mad.”
How can we make sense of this diversity of form, which arises from the process of morphogenesis that links molecular- and cellular-level processes to conspire and lead to the emergence of “endless forms most beautiful,” as Darwin said?
In his May 5 [2021] lecture webcast, Harvard professor L. Mahadevan [Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan] will take viewers on a journey into the mathematical, physical, and biological workings of morphogenesis to demonstrate how scientists are beginning to unlock many of the secrets that have vexed scientists since Darwin.
Possible Worlds: “How Will We Live Together?” on May 6, 2021
For those who are interested in human architecture, there’s this from a May 3, 3021 Berggruen institute announcement (received via email) about a talk by Chilean architect and 2016 Pritzker Prize winner, Alejandro Gastón Aravena Mori (Alejandro Aravena),
Possible Worlds: How Will We Live Together
May 6, 2021
11am — Virtual
Possible Worlds: The UCLA [University of California at Los Angeles] – Berggruen Institute Speaker Series is a new partnership between the UCLA Division of Humanities and the Berggruen Institute.
Please click here to submit a question to Alejandro Aravena
About Alejandro Aravena Alejandro Aravena is an architect, founder and executive director of the firm Elemental. His works include the “Siamese Towers” at the Catholic University of Chile and the Novartis office campus in Shanghai. In 2016, the New York Times named Aravena one of the world’s “creative geniuses” who had helped define culture. He and Elemental have received numerous honors, including the 2016 Pritzker Architecture Prize, the 2015 London Design Museum’s Design of the Year award and the 2011 Index Award. Aravena currently serves as the president of the Pritzker Prize jury. Aravena’s lecture title, “How Will We Live Together?” echoes the theme of the upcoming international architecture exhibition, Biennale Architettura, in which Elemental will be participating.
Featuring a discussion with moderator Dana Cuff
Dana Cuff is Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at UCLA, where she is also Director of cityLAB, an award-winning think tank that advances goals of spatial justice through experimental urbanism and architecture (www.cityLAB.aud.ucla.edu). Since receiving her Ph.D. in Architecture from Berkeley, Cuff has published and lectured widely about affordable housing, the architectural profession, and Los Angeles’ urban history. She is author of several books, including The Provisional City about postwar housing in L.A., and a co-authored book called Urban Humanities: New Practices for Reimagining the City, documenting her collaborative, crossdisciplinary research and teaching at UCLA funded by the Mellon Foundation. Based on cityLAB’s design research, Cuff co-authored landmark legislation that permits “backyard homes” on some 8.1 million single-family properties, doubling the density of suburbs across California (AB 2299, Bloom-2016). In 2019, cityLAB opened a satellite center in the MacArthur Park/Westlake neighborhood where a deep, multi-year exchange with community organizations is already demonstrating ways that humanistic design of the public realm can create more compassionate cities. Cuff recently received three awards that describe her career: Women in Architecture Activist of the Year (2019, Architectural Record); Distinguished Leadership in Architectural Research (2020, ARCC); and Educator of the Year (2021, American Institute of Architects Los Angeles).
About the Series Possible Worlds: The UCLA – Berggruen Institute Speaker Series is a new partnership between the UCLA Division of Humanities and the Berggruen Institute. This semiannual series will bring some of today’s most imaginative intellectual leaders and creators to deliver public talks on the future of humanity. Through the lens of their singular achievements and experiences, these trailblazers in creativity, innovation, philosophy and politics will lecture on provocative topics that explore current challenges and transformations in human progress.
UCLA faculty and students have long been at the forefront of interpreting the world’s legacy of language, literature, art and science. UCLA Humanities serves a vital role in readying future leaders to articulate their thoughts with clarity and imagination, to interpret the world of ideas, and to live as informed citizens in an increasingly complex world. We are proud to be partnering in this lecture series with the Berggruen Institute, whose work addresses the “Great Transformations” taking place in technology and culture, politics and economics, global power arrangements, and even how we perceive ourselves as humans. The Institute seeks to connect deep thought in the human sciences — philosophy and culture — to the pursuit of practical improvements in governance.
A selection committee comprising representatives of UCLA and the Berggruen Institute has been formed to make recommendations for lecturers. The committee includes:
• Ursula Heise, Professor and Chair, Department of English; Professor, UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability; Marcia H. Howard Term Chair in Literary Studies • Pamela Hieronymi, Professor of Philosophy • Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, Professor of Urban Planning; Associate Provost for Academic Planning • Todd Presner, Associate Dean, Digital Initiatives; Chair of the Digital Humanities Program; Michael and Irene Ross Endowed Chair of Yiddish Studies; Professor of Germanic Languages and Comparative Literature • Lynn Vavreck, Professor, Department of Political Science; Marvin Hoffenberg Professor of American Politics and Public Policy • David Schaberg, Senior Dean of the UCLA College; Dean of Humanities; Professor, Asian Languages & Cultures • Nils Gilman, Vice President of Programs, the Berggruen Institute
Generative Art and Computational Creativity starts May 7, 2021
A Spring 2021 MetaCreation Lab (Simon Fraser University; SFU) newsletter (received via email on April 23, 2021) highlights a number of festival submissions and papers along with some news about a free introductory course. First, the video introduction to the course,
This first course in the two-part program, Generative Art and Computational Creativity [there’s a fee for part two], proposes an introduction and overview of the history and practice of generative arts and computational creativity with an emphasis on the formal paradigms and algorithms used for generation. The full program will be taught by Associate Professor from the School of Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University and multi-disciplinary researcher, Philippe Pasquier.
On the technical side, we will study core techniques from mathematics, artificial intelligence, and artificial life that are used by artists, designers and musicians across the creative industry. We will start with processes involving chance operations, chaos theory and fractals and move on to see how stochastic processes, and rule-based approaches can be used to explore creative spaces. We will study agents and multi-agent systems and delve into cellular automata, and virtual ecosystems to explore their potential to create novel and valuable artifacts and aesthetic experiences.
The presentation is illustrated by numerous examples from past and current productions across creative practices such as visual art, new media, music, poetry, literature, performing arts, design, architecture, games, robot-art, bio-art and net-art. Students get to practice these algorithms first hand and develop new generative pieces through assignments and projects in MAX. Finally, the course addresses relevant philosophical, and societal debates associated with the automation of creative tasks.
Music for this course was composed with the StyleMachineLite Max for Live engine of Metacreative Inc.
Artistic direction: Philippe Pasquier, Programmation: Arne Eigenfeldt, Sound Production: Philippe Bertrand
Schedule
This course is in adaptive mode and is open for enrollment. Learn more about adaptive courses here.
Session 1: Introduction and Typology of Generative Art (May 7, 2021) To start off this course, we define generative art and computational creativity and discuss how these relate through the study of prominent examples. We establish a typology of generative systems based on levels of autonomy and agency.
Session 2: History Of Generative Art, Chance Operations, and Chaos Theory (May 14, 2021) Generative art is nothing new, and this session goes through the history of the field from pre-history to the popularization of computers. We study chance, noise, fractals, chaos theory, and their applications in visual art and music.
Session 3: Rule-Based Systems, Grammars and Markov Chains (May 21, 2021) This session introduces and illustrate the generative potential of rule-based and expert systems. We study generative grammars through the Chomsky hierarchy, and introduce L-systems, shape grammars, and Markov chains. We discuss how these have been applied in visual art, music, design, architecture, and electronic literature.
Session 4: Cognitive Agents And Multiagent Systems (May 28, 2021) This session introduces the concepts underlying the notion of artificial agents. We study the belief, desire, and intention (BDI) cognitive architecture, and message based agent communication resting on the speech act theory. We discuss musical agents, conversational agents, chat bots and twitter bots and their artistic potential.
Session 5: Reactive Agents And Multiagent Systems (June 4, 2021) In this session, we introduce reactive agents and the subsumption architecture. We study boids, and detail how complex behaviors can emerge from a distributed population of simple artificial agents. We look at a myriad of applications from ant painting to swarm music and we discuss artistic approaches to virtual ecosystems.
Session 6: A-Life And Cellular Automaton (June 11, 2021) In this concluding session, we introduce artificial life (A-life). We study cellular automaton, multi-agent ecosystems for music, visual art, non-photorealistic rendering, and gaming. The session also concludes the class by reflecting on the state of the art in the field and its consequences on creative practices.
If you’re interested in the lab and its other projects, go to metacreationlab.net.
Architectural Portraits on May 13, 2021
From the May 2021 Dante Alighieri Society of British Columbia’s newsletter,
ARCHITECTURAL PORTRAITS: EXPLORING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BODY, DESIGN & THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT A talk by architect & photographer Oliviero Godi (Politecnico di Milano)
Photo by Oliviero Godi – Frantoio Ipogeo nel Salento
THURSDAY, May 13, 2021 IN ENGLISH – ON ZOOM at 5:00 pm (PST)
Admission:
FREE for the Dante Society’s members
$5 MINIMUM DONATION for non-members
Become a member! Annual membership $30.00 – See membership benefits here
The human being – so fragile, so ethereal, speaking a sweet language. A piece of architecture – so physically imminent, so solid, speaking a language of hardness.
Photo by Oliviero Godi – Frantoio Ipogeo nel Salento
Join photographer & architect Oliviero Godi as he explores the relationship between the body & the material, the transient & the permanent, in search of the correct balance where neither element prevails.
To make your donation, please send an e-transfer to info@dantesocietybc.ca. Thank you!
Learn More [about this other upcoming Cultural Events]
Respiration and the Brain on May 25, 2021
Before getting to the April 29, 2021 BrainTalks announcement, here’s a little bit about BrainTalks from their webspace on the University of British Columbia (UBC) website,
BrainTalks is a series of talks inviting you to contemplate emerging research about the brain. Researchers studying the brain, from various disciplines including psychiatry, neuroscience, neuroimaging, and neurology, gather to discuss current leading edge topics on the mind.
As an audience member, you join the discussion at the end of the talk, both in the presence of the entire audience, and with an opportunity afterwards to talk with the speaker more informally in a catered networking session. The talks also serve as a connecting place for those interested in similar topics, potentially launching new endeavours or simply connecting people in discussions on how to approach their research, their knowledge, or their clinical practice.
For the general public, these talks serve as a channel where by knowledge usually sequestered in inaccessible journals or university classrooms, is now available, potentially allowing people to better understand their brains and minds, how they work, and how to optimize brain health.
[UBC School of Medicine Department of Psychiatry]
Onto the April 29, 2021 BrainTalks announcement (received via email),
BrainTalks: Respiration and the Brain
Tuesday, May 25th, 2021 from 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM [PT]
Join us for a series of online talks exploring questions of respiration and the brain. Emerging empirical research will be presented on ventilation-associated brain injury and breathing-based interventions for the treatment of stress and anxiety disorders. We presenters will include Dr. Thiago Bassi, Dr. Lloyd Lalande and Taylor Willi, MSc.
Dr. Thiago Bassi will address the biological connection between the brain and lungs, exploring the potential adverse effects of mechanical ventilation on the brain. Dr. Bassi is a neurosurgeon and neuroscientist, who worked clinically for more than ten years in Brazil. He joined the Lungpacer Medical team and C2B2 lab in 2017, and is currently completing his doctorate in Biomedicine Physiology at Simon Fraser University.
Dr. Lloyd Lalande will describe Guided Respiration Mindfulness Therapy (GRMT), as an emerging clinical breathwork intervention for its effectiveness in reducing depression, anxiety and stress, and in increasing mindfulness and sense of wellbeing. Dr. Lalonde is an Assistant Professor teaching psychology at the Buddhist TzuChi University of Science and Technology, and the developer of GRMT. His current research is based out of the TzuChi Buddhist General Hospital, investigating GRMT as an evidence-based treatment for a variety of outcomes.
Mr. Taylor Willi will present the findings of his dissertation research comparing the effect of performing daily brief relaxation techniques on measures of stress and anxiety. Mr. Willi completed a Masters Degree of Neuroscience at the University of British Columbia, and is currently completing his doctorate in Clinical Psychology at Simon Fraser University.
Each of the speakers will present an overview of their research findings investigating respiration in three unique ways. Following their presentations, the speakers will be available for an audience-drive panel discussion.
They don’t mention COVID-19 but given that seriously ill patients with the disease are routinely placed on ventilators, it is almost certainly going to be mentioned in the presentations.
Plans for last year’s FACTT (Festival of Art and Science) 2020 had to be revised at the last minute due to COVID-19. This year, organizers were prepared so no in person sessions have to be cancelled or turned into virtual events. Here’s more from the Jan. 25, 2021 announcement I received (via email) from one of the festival partners, the ArtSci Salon at the University of Toronto,
Join us! Opening of FACTT 20-21 Improbable Times!
Thursday, January 28, 2021 at 3:30 PM EST – 5:30 PM EST Public · Anyone on or off Facebook – link will be disseminated closer to the event.
The Arte Institute and the RHI Initiative, in partnership with Cultivamos Cultura, have the pleasure to present the FACTT 2021 – Festival Art & Science. The festival opens on January 28, at 8.30 PM (GMT), and will be exhibited online on RHI Stage.
This year we are reshaping FACTT! Come join us for the kick-off of this amazing project!
A project spearheaded and promoted by the Arte Institute we are in or production and conception partners with Cultivamos Cultura and Ectopia (Portugal), InArts Lab@Ionian University (Greece), ArtSci Salon@The Fields Institute and Sensorium@York University (Canada), School of Visual Arts (USA), UNAM, Arte+Ciência and Bioscenica (Mexico), and Central Academy of Fine Arts (China).
Together we will work and bring into being our ideas and actions for this during the year of 2021!
FACTT 20/21 – Improbable Times presents a series of exceptional artworks jointly curated by Cultivamos Cultura and our partners. The challenge of a translation from the physical space that artworks occupy typically, into an exhibition that lives as a hybrid experience, involves rethinking the materiality of the work itself. It also questions whether we can live and interact with each other remotely and in person producing creative effective collaborative outcomes to immerse ourselves in. Improbable Times brings together a collection of works that reflect the times we live in, the constraints we are faced with, the drive to rethink what tomorrow may bring us, navigate it and build a better future, beyond borders.
January 28, 2021 | 8:30 PM (GMT)Program: – Introduction – Performance Toronto: void * ambience : Latency, with Joel Ong, Michael Palumbo and Kavi – Performance Mexico “El Tercero Cuerpo Sonoro” (Third Sonorous Body), by Arte+Ciência. – Q&A
The performance series void * ambience experiments with sound and video content that is developed through a focus on the topographies and networks through which these flow. Initiated during the time of COVID and social distancing, this project explores processes of information sharing, real-time performance and network communication protocols that contribute to the sustenance of our digital communities, shared experiences and telematic intimacies.
“El Tercero Cuerpo Sonoro” project is a digital drift that explores different relationships with the environment, nature, humans and non-humans from the formulation of an intersubjective body. Its main search is to generate resonances with and among the others.
In these complicated times in which it seems that our existence unfolds in front of the screen, confined to the space of the black mirror, it becomes urgent to challenge the limits and scopes of digital life. We need to rethink the way in which we inhabit the others as well as our own subjectivity.
Program: – Introduction – Performance Toronto: Proximal Spaces Artistic Directors: Joel Ong, Elaine Whittaker Graphic Designer: Natalie Plociennik Bhavesh Kakwani AR [augmented reality] development : Sachin Khargie, Ryan Martin Bioartists: Roberta Buiani, Nathalie Dubois Calero, Sarah Choukah, Nicole Clouston, Jess Holtz, Mick Lorusso, Maro Pebo, Felipe Shibuya – Performance Mexico Tercero Cuerpo Sonoro (Third Sonorous Body) by Arte+Ciência
FACTT team: Marta de Menezes, Suzanne Anker, Maria Antonia Gonzalez Valerio, Roberta Buiani, Jo Wei, Dalila Honorato, Joel Ong, Lena Lee and Minerva Ortiz.
For FACTT20/21 we propose to put together an exhibition where the virtual and the physical share space, a space that is hybrid from its conception, a space that desires to break the limits of access to culture, to collaboration, to the experience of art. A place where we can think deeply and creatively together about the adaptive moves we had and have to develop to the rapid and sudden changes our lives and environment are going through.
The ArtSci Salon is getting quite active these days. Here’s the latest from an Oct. 22, 2020 ArtSci Salon announcement (received via email), which can also be viewed on their Kaleidoscope event page,
Kaleidoscopic Imaginations
Performing togetherness in empty spaces
An experimental collaboration between the ArtSci Salon, the Digital Dramaturgy Lab_squared/ DDL2 and Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts and Technology, York University (Toronto, Ontario, Canada)
Tuesday, October 27, 2020
7:30 pm [EDT]
Join our evening of live-streamed, multi-media performances, following a kaleidoscopic dramaturgy of complexity discourses as inspired by computational complexity theory gatherings.
We are presenting installations, site-specific artistic interventions and media experiments, featuring networked audio and video, dance and performances as we repopulate spaces – The Fields Institute and surroundings – forced to lie empty due to the pandemic. Respecting physical distance and new sanitation and safety rules can be challenging, but it can also open up new ideas and opportunities.
NOTE: DDL2 contributions to this event are sourced or inspired by their recent kaleidoscopic performance “Rattling the the Curve – Paradoxical ECODATA performances of A/I (artistic intelligence), and facial recognition of humans and trees
Virtual space/live streaming concept and design: DDL2 Antje Budde, Karyn McCallum and Don Sinclair
Virtual space and streaming pilot: Don Sinclair
Here are specific programme details (from the announcement),
Signing the Virus – Video (2 min.) Collaborators: DDL2 Antje Budde, Felipe Cervera, Grace Whiskin
Niimi II – – Performance and outdoor video projection (15 min.) (Nimii means in Anishinaabemowin: s/he dances) Collaborators: DDL2 Candy Blair, Antje Budde, Jill Carter, Lars Crosby, Nina Czegledy, Dave Kemp
Oracle Jane (Scene 2) – A partial playreading on the politics of AI (30 min.) Playwright: DDL2 Oracle Collaborators: DDL2 Antje Budde, Frans Robinow, George Bwannika Seremba, Amy Wong and AI ethics consultant Vicki Zhang
Vriksha/Tree – Dance video and outdoor projection (8 min.) Collaborators: DDL2 Antje Budde, Lars Crosby, Astad Deboo, Dave Kemp, Amit Kumar
Facial Recognition – Performing a Plate Camera from a Distance (3 min.) Collaborators: DDL2 Antje Budde, Jill Carter, Felipe Cervera, Nina Czegledy, Karyn McCallum, Lars Crosby, Martin Kulinna, Montgomery C. Martin, George Bwanika Seremba, Don Sinclair, Heike Sommer
Cutting Edge – Growing Data (6 min.) DDL2 A performance by Antje Budde
“void * ambience” – Architectural and instrumental acoustics, projection mapping Concept: Sensorium: The Centre for Digital Art and Technology, York University Collaborators: Michael Palumbo, Ilze Briede [Kavi], Debashis Sinha, Joel Ong
This performance is part of a series (from the announcement),
These three performances are part of Boundary-Crossings: Multiscalar Entanglements in Art, Science and Society, a public Outreach program supported by the Fiends [sic] Institute for Research in Mathematical Science. Boundary Crossings is a series exploring how the notion of boundaries can be transcended and dissolved in the arts and the humanities, the biological and the mathematical sciences, as well as human geography and political economy. Boundaries are used to establish delimitations among disciplines; to discriminate between the human and the non-human (body and technologies, body and bacteria); and to indicate physical and/or artificial boundaries, separating geographical areas and nation states. Our goal is to cross these boundaries by proposing new narratives to show how the distinctions, and the barriers that science, technology, society and the state have created can in fact be re-interpreted as porous and woven together.
This event is curated and produced by ArtSci Salon; Digital Dramaturgy Lab_squared/ DDL2; Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts and Technology, York University; and Ryerson University; it is supported by The Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences
Finally, the announcement includes biographical information about all of the ‘boundary-crossers’,
Candy Blair (Tkaron:to/Toronto) Candy Blair/Otsίkh:èta (they/them) is a mixed First Nations/European, 2-spirit interdisciplinary visual and performing artist from Tio’tía:ke – where the group split (“Montreal”) in Québec.
While continuing their work as an artist they also finished their Creative Arts, Literature, and Languages program at Marianopolis College (cégep), their 1st year in the Theatre program at York University, and their 3rd year Acting Conservatory Program at the Centre For Indigenous Theatre in Tsí Tkaròn:to – Where the trees stand in water (Toronto”).
Some of Candy’s noteable performances are Jill Carter’s Encounters at the Edge of the Woods, exploring a range of issues with colonization; Ange Loft’s project Talking Treaties, discussing the treaties of the “Toronto” purchase; Cheri Maracle’s The Story of Six Nations, exploring Six Nation’s origin story through dance/combat choreography, and several other performances, exploring various topics around Indigenous language, land, and cultural restoration through various mediums such as dance, modelling, painting, theatre, directing, song, etc. As an activist and soon to be entrepreneur, Candy also enjoys teaching workshops around promoting Indigenous resurgence such as Indigenous hand drumming, food sovereignty, beading, medicine knowledge, etc..
Working with their collectives like Weave and Mend, they were responsible for the design, land purification, and installation process of the four medicine plots and a community space with their 3 other members. Candy aspires to continue exploring ways of decolonization through healthy traditional practices from their mixed background and the arts in the hopes of eventually supporting Indigenous relations worldwide.
Antje Budde Antje Budde is a conceptual, queer-feminist, interdisciplinary experimental scholar-artist and an Associate Professor of Theatre Studies, Cultural Communication and Modern Chinese Studies at the Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies, University of Toronto. Antje has created multi-disciplinary artistic works in Germany, China and Canada and works tri-lingually in German, English and Mandarin. She is the founder of a number of queerly feminist performing art projects including most recently the (DDL)2 or (Digital Dramaturgy Lab)Squared – a platform for experimental explorations of digital culture, creative labor, integration of arts and science, and technology in performance. She is interested in the intersections of natural sciences, the arts, engineering and computer science.
Roberta Buiani Roberta Buiani (MA; PhD York University) is the Artistic Director of the ArtSci Salon at the Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences (Toronto). Her artistic work has travelled to art festivals (Transmediale; Hemispheric Institute Encuentro; Brazil), community centres and galleries (the Free Gallery Toronto; Immigrant Movement International, Queens, Myseum of Toronto), and science institutions (RPI; the Fields Institute). Her writing has appeared on Space and Culture, Cultural Studies and The Canadian Journal of Communication_among others. With the ArtSci Salon she has launched a series of experiments in “squatting academia”, by re-populating abandoned spaces and cabinets across university campuses with SciArt installations.
Currently, she is a research associate at the Centre for Feminist Research and a Scholar in Residence at Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts and Technology at York University [Toronto, Ontario, Canada].
Jill Carter (Tkaron:to/ Toronto) Jill (Anishinaabe/Ashkenazi) is a theatre practitioner and researcher, currently cross appointed to the Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies; the Transitional Year Programme; and Indigenous Studies at the University of Toronto. She works with many members of Tkaron:to’s Indigenous theatre community to support the development of new works and to disseminate artistic objectives, process, and outcomes through community- driven research projects. Her scholarly research, creative projects, and activism are built upon ongoing relationships with Indigenous Elders, Artists and Activists, positioning her as witness to, participant in, and disseminator of oral histories that speak to the application of Indigenous aesthetic principles and traditional knowledge systems to contemporary performance.The research questions she pursues revolve around the mechanics of story creation, the processes of delivery and the manufacture of affect.
More recently, she has concentrated upon Indigenous pedagogical models for the rehearsal studio and the lecture hall; the application of Indigenous [insurgent] research methods within performance studies; the politics of land acknowledgements; and land – based dramaturgies/activations/interventions.
Jill also works as a researcher and tour guide with First Story Toronto; facilitates Land Acknowledgement, Devising, and Land-based Dramaturgy Workshops for theatre makers in this city; and performs with the Talking Treaties Collective (Jumblies Theatre, Toronto).
In September 2019, Jill directed Encounters at the Edge of the Woods. This was a devised show, featuring Indigenous and Settler voices, and it opened Hart House Theatre’s 100th season; it is the first instance of Indigenous presence on Hart House Theatre’s stage in its 100 years of existence as the cradle for Canadian theatre.
Nina Czegledy (Toronto) artist, curator, educator, works internationally on collaborative art, science & technology projects. The changing perception of the human body and its environment as well as paradigm shifts in the arts inform her projects. She has exhibited and published widely, won awards for her artwork and has initiated, lead and participated in workshops, forums and festivals worldwide at international events.
Astad Deboo (Mumbai, India) Astad Deboo is a contemporary dancer and choreographer who employs his training in Indian classical dance forms of Kathak as well as Kathakali to create a dance form that is unique to him. He has become a pioneer of modern dance in India. Astad describes his style as “contemporary in vocabulary and traditional in restraints.” Throughout his long and illustrious career, he has worked with various prominent performers such as Pina Bausch, Alis on Becker Chase and Pink Floyd and performed in many parts of the world. He has been awarded the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award (1996) and Padma Shri (2007), awarded by the Government of India. In January 2005 along with 12 young women with hearing impairment supported by the Astad Deboo Dance Foundation, he performed at the 20th Annual Deaf Olympics at Melbourne, Australia. Astad has a long record of working with disadvantaged youth.
Ilze Briede [Kavi] Ilze Briede [artist name: Kavi] is a Latvian/Canadian artist and researcher with broad and diverse interests. Her artistic practice, a hybrid of video, image and object making, investigates the phenomenon of perception and the constraints and boundaries between the senses and knowing. Kavi is currently pursuing a PhD degree in Digital Media at York University with a research focus on computational creativity and generative art. She sees computer-generated systems and algorithms as a potentiality for co-creation and collaboration between human and machine. Kavi has previously worked and exhibited with Fashion Art Toronto, Kensington Market Art Fair, Toronto Burlesque Festival, Nuit Blanche, Sidewalk Toronto and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.
Dave Kemp Dave Kemp is a visual artist whose practice looks at the intersections and interactions between art, science and technology: particularly at how these fields shape our perception and understanding of the world. His artworks have been exhibited widely at venues such as at the McIntosh Gallery, The Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Art Gallery of Mississauga, The Ontario Science Centre, York Quay Gallery, Interaccess, Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre, and as part of the Switch video festival in Nenagh, Ireland. His works are also included in the permanent collections of the Agnes Etherington Art Centre and the Canada Council Art Bank.
Stephen Morris Stephen Morris is Professor of experimental non-linear Physics in the faculty of Physics at the University of Toronto. He is the scientific Director of the ArtSci salon at the Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences. He often collaborates with artists and has himself performed and produced art involving his own scientific instruments and experiments in non-linear physics and pattern formation
Michael Palumbo Michael Palumbo (MA, BFA) is an electroacoustic music improviser, coder, and researcher. His PhD research spans distributed creativity and version control systems, and is expressed through “git show”, a distributed electroacoustic music composition and design experiment, and “Mischmasch”, a collaborative modular synthesizer in virtual reality. He studies with Dr. Doug Van Nort as a researcher in the Distributed Performance and Sensorial Immersion Lab, and Dr. Graham Wakefield at the Alice Lab for Computational Worldmaking. His works have been presented internationally, including at ISEA, AES, NIME, Expo ’74, TIES, and the Network Music Festival. He performs regularly with a modular synthesizer, runs the Exit Points electroacoustic improvisation series, and is an enthusiastic gardener and yoga practitioner.
Joel Ong (PhD. Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS, University of Washington) Joel Ong is a media artist whose works connect scientific and artistic approaches to the environment, particularly with respect to sound and physical space. Professor Ong’s work explores the way objects and spaces can function as repositories of ‘frozen sound’, and in elucidating these, he is interested in creating what systems theorist Jack Burnham (1968) refers to as “art (that) does not reside in material entities, but in relations between people and between people and the components of their environment”.
A serial collaborator, Professor Ong is invested in the broader scope of Art-Science collaborations and is engaged constantly in the discourses and processes that facilitate viewing these two polemical disciplines on similar ground. His graduate interdisciplinary work in nanotechnology and sound was conducted at SymbioticA, the Center of Excellence for Biological Arts at the University of Western Australia and supervised by BioArt pioneers and TCA (The Tissue Culture and Art Project) artists Dr Ionat Zurr and Oron Catts.
George Bwanika Seremba George Bwanika Seremba,is an actor, playwright and scholar. He was born in Uganda. George holds an M. Phil, and a Ph.D. in Theatre Studies, from Trinity College Dublin. In 1980, having barely survived a botched execution by the Military Intelligence, he fled into exile, resettling in Canada (1983). He has performed in numerous plays including in his own, “Come Good Rain”, which was awarded a Dora award (1993). In addition, he published a number of edited play collections including “Beyond the pale: dramatic writing from First Nations writers & writers of colour” co-edited by Yvette Nolan, Betty Quan, George Bwanika Seremba. (1996).
George was nominated for the Irish Times’ Best Actor award in Dublin’s Calypso Theatre’s for his role in Athol Fugard’s “Master Harold and the boys”. In addition to theatre he performed in several movies and on television. His doctoral thesis (2008) entitled “Robert Serumaga and the Golden Age of Uganda’s Theatre (1968-1978): (Solipsism, Activism, Innovation)” will be published as a monograph by CSP (U.K) in 2021.
Don Sinclair (Toronto) Don is Associate Professor in the Department of Computational Arts at York University. His creative research areas include interactive performance, projections for dance, sound art, web and data art, cycling art, sustainability, and choral singing most often using code and programming. Don is particularly interested in processes of artistic creation that integrate digital creative coding-based practices with performance in dance and theatre. As well, he is an enthusiastic cyclist.
Debashis Sinha Driven by a deep commitment to the primacy of sound in creative expression, Debashis Sinha has realized projects in radiophonic art, music, sound art, audiovisual performance, theatre, dance, and music across Canada and internationally. Sound design and composition credits include numerous works for Peggy Baker Dance Projects and productions with Canada’s premiere theatre companies including The Stratford Festival, Soulpepper, Volcano Theatre, Young People’s Theatre, Project Humanity, The Theatre Centre, Nightwood Theatre, Why Not Theatre, MTC Warehouse and Necessary Angel. His live sound practice on the concert stage has led to appearances at MUTEK Montreal, MUTEK Japan, the Guelph Jazz Festival, the Banff Centre, The Music Gallery, and other venues. Sinha teaches sound design at York University and the National Theatre School, and is currently working on a multi-part audio/performance work incorporating machine learning and AI funded by the Canada Council for the Arts.
Vicki (Jingjing) Zhang (Toronto) Vicki Zhang is a faculty member at University of Toronto’s statistics department. She is the author of Uncalculated Risks (Canadian Scholar’s Press, 2014). She is also a playwright, whose plays have been produced or stage read in various festivals and venues in Canada including Toronto’s New Ideas Festival, Winnipeg’s FemFest, Hamilton Fringe Festival, Ergo Pink Fest, InspiraTO festival, Toronto’s Festival of Original Theatre (FOOT), Asper Center for Theatre and Film, Canadian Museum for Human Rights, Cultural Pluralism in the Arts Movement Ontario (CPAMO), and the Canadian Play Thing. She has also written essays and short fiction for Rookie Magazine and Thread.
If you can’t attend this Oct. 27, 2020 event, there’s still the Oct. 29, 2020 Boundary-Crossings event: Beauty Kit (see my Oct. 12, 2020 posting for more).
As for Kaleidoscopic Imaginations, you can access the Streaming Link On Oct. 27, 2020 at 7:30 pm EDT (4 pm PDT).
Depending on how you feel about bodily fluids, sex, orgasms, and beauty care products being discussed as part of an event that is both workshop and performance, you may feel you’ve read enough now.
What follows is not especially graphic but it’s not for everybody. First, here’s more about the Oct. 29, 2020 event followed by a call for participants (it’s open until Oct. 15, 2020).
ArtSci Salon’s Beauty Kit – eco-erogenous para-pharmaceutics; a workshop/performance
Beauty Kit is part of Boundary-Crossings: Multiscalar Entanglements in Art, Science and Society, a public Outreach [sic] program supported by the Fiends [sic;] Institute for Research in Mathematical Science.
In this workshop /performance, Isabel Burr Raty explores the energetic potentials of bodily fluids. Modern culture tends to consider bodily fluids as superfluous and wasteful, as unholy and unspeakable taboos, as something that should be discarded because it has no apparent use except in the personal sphere of intimacy.
By revealing the chemical, biological and nutritional potentials of a variety of bodily fluids and by encouraging the participants to explore and harvest their own, Burr Raty engages in a fierce critique of consumption and industrial mass production, and in a clever journey to cross many boundaries: she breaks the taboo that prevents us from speaking about bodily fluids; she shows how bodily fluids are profoundly entangled with the body and its surrounding environment; she demonstrates how far from waste they are, and how they participate in a never-ending cycle of growth, decay and renewal. By crossing the boundaries of art, biology, technology and agriculture, Burr Raty offers spaces of liberation that incite new living habits by means of alternative cultural arrangements, which propose circular economy models such as the one based on fluid bio-transaction and pleasure. Speaking of and practicing boundary crossing, especially the idea of bodily fluids’ ecological entanglements, is crucial in today’s increased fear of touching and physical isolation due to COVID19’s hygiene theatre.
During this workshop-performance, registered participants will join the online audience from various remote locations. They will be asked to answer a number of questions reflecting their relation with bodily fluids from a variety of perspectives – personal, scientific or philosophical – and will be invited to test and give feedback on a series of special Beauty Kit (BK) transpersonal and gender neutral skin and care lines that will be delivered via mail to their homes. Finally, they will be encouraged to inquire on the product’s formulas and agro-cultural technology employed in this project.
The workshop-performance will take place on October 29 [2020] 3:00-5:00 pm [presumably this is on Eastern Daylight Time]
I believe “Fiends Institute for Research in Mathematical Science” should be “Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Science.”
Isabel Burr Raty currently runs a mobile Farm that harvests human female erotic juices to manufacture Para-pharmaceutical bio-products with them, that will evolve into an Eco-erogenous Village of entanglements, where every-BODY will harvest each other.
We are looking for participants to take part in this unique online/distributed workshop-performance
Beauty Kit – eco-erogenous para-pharmaceutics
On Oct 29, 2020,
3:00-5:00 pm EDT
…
How many types of female ejaculations do you know about? Can a brain orgasm be transformed into a source of renewable energy? Can the orgasmic body be a territory for sustainable agricultural development? Could engaging in and speaking of bodily fluids and intimate relations help us overcome current fears of the unknown and the microscopic and open up a new culture of care and sharing, mutual aid and solidarity?
These are some (but not all!) of the questions that this workshop/performance seeks to explore.
The joint participation of the online public is very important. Pointing out gaps in scientific perspectives about the body’s orgasmic agency, she exposes allopathic and ancestral perspectives on the faculty of sexual fluids to replace the components of beauty and wellbeing products that we find in the market. An invited audience of participants is warmly welcome to test the BK transpersonal and gender neutral skin and care lines that they will receive via the post to their homes, as well as to inquire on the product’s formulas and agro-cultural technology employed in this project.
To run this workshop, we are looking for volunteers to:
1. Participate in the workshop/performance remotely online
2. Try some Beauty Kit (BK) products
3. Engage in a public discussion with Burr Raty and the general audience
4. Agree to make themselves visible, as avatars, as themselves, as masked characters or by wearing a color that gives them pleasure
This is an inclusive workshop which seeks to address intimate, scientific and political topics with respect and care.
If you wish to be part of this experience, please, send us your intent to participate: RSVP to the workshop by Oct 15, 2020 by sending an email to artscisalon@gmail.com with a couple of sentences explaining why you are interested in being part of it.
We will ask you to provide a home address where we can send you the material.
We care about your privacy and we will do anything we can to respect your preferences. If you live in Toronto, arrangements can be made for physically distanced pickup.
This workshop is performative and participants are encouraged to impersonate their alter-ego, to play their avatar, to wear a costume etc…
…
ABOUT ISABEL BURR RATY
Isabel Burr Raty is an independent filmmaker, artist, teacher and sexual Kunfu coach exploring the interstices between the organic and the artificial, between the unlicensed knowledge of minority groups and the official facts. In so doing, she aims to dig up chapters left out of history books, blur the limits between fiction/reality and re-think the memory of the future.
In her artistic work she interweaves performance and new media installation proposing hybrid narratives and bio-autonomy practices that invite the public to queer production understandings and embody SF in real time, such as the Beauty Kit Farm.
Isabel teaches Media art history in École de Recherche Graphique and is researcher in WAB IV nadine Brussels. In 2018 she was granted a bio-art & design deal by the AFK (Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst), which partnered her to: The Waag, Mediamatic and Prof. Toby Kiers (VU Amsterdam).
Burr Raty has shown her works and collaborations internationally, in venues such as: KVS (Royal Flemish Theater), Beursschouwburg, Constant_V, ZSeene Art Lab, Limal (Brussels); Palais de Tokyo Paris, ISEA Hong Kong and Cultivamos Cultura Portugal; presented her work in festivals and conferences such as: Enter Through The Void, Exit Through The Giftshop, Campo Victoria, Ghent (BE), Ecofutures at Queen Mary’s University London (GB), FEMeeting (PT), Taboo Transgression Transcendence in Art and Science (GR/AU), Human Enhancement Clinic at Border Sessions (NL), Science Friction at the Aki Institute in Enchede University (NL) and FACTT at Humbolt University Berlin (DE); and given workshops at the University of the Arts Berlin (DE) and Rampa Lab Ljubljana (SI).
Beauty Kit is part of Boundary-Crossings: Multiscalar Entanglements in Art, Science and Society, a public Outreach program supported by the Fiends [sic; Fields] Institute for Research in Mathematical Science
Boundary Crossings is a series exploring how the notion of boundaries can be transcended and dissolved in the arts and the humanities, the biological and the mathematical sciences, as well as human geography and political economy. Boundaries are used to establish delimitations among disciplines; to discriminate between the human and the non-human (body and technologies, body and bacteria); and to indicate physical and/or artificial boundaries, separating geographical areas and nation states.
This event is curated by ArtSci Salon with support from Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts and Technology, York University
I believe this or something like it is what you’ll be receiving,
I’m not sure how mathematics relates to Beauty Kit but it is definitely boundary-crossing.
Here’s more from the March 3, 2020 ArtSci Salon announcements (received via email),
Sensorium Centre for Digital Arts and Technologies, ArtSci Salon, Cultivamos Cultura and Arte Institute present:
FACTT 2020: FESTIVAL ART AND SCIENCE Exhibition Monday, March 9th – Thursday, March 12th, 2020 11:00am-4:00pm Gales Gallery (Accolade West Room 105) York University
Exhibition Opening: March 9th from 6:00-7:30pm
Subway Stop, York University. Exit on the left – Accolade West is the building on the left
Don’t miss the 2020 Festival of Art and Science Exhibition – (Be)-Coming An Exhibition of Experimental Contemporary Art, co-sponsored by Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts and Technology, ArtSci Salon, Arte Institute and Cultivamos Cultura. The exhibition features the work of invited artists from Portugal and North America, and AMPD students [I believe they are referring to students at York University’s School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design]. The exhibition is curated by Marta DeMenezes [sic], Roberta Buiani and Joel Ong.
All are welcome to attend the exhibition opening which will take place on March 9th from 6:00-7:30pm in the Gales Gallery at York University.
FACTT 2020 – (BE) COMING An Exhibition of Experimental Contemporary Art is about the impermanence of becoming permanent. A transformation is an extreme, radical change. The unavoidability of changes is a constant process we have throughout our lives. We may not always be aware of it, and often just spend so much energy avoiding this “law of nature” that we forget it exists and thrives for stability. (BE) COMING is an exhibition about change, the impossibility of not changing, the perpetual impermanence and the process of becoming. As we become aware of the need to change in our world, in our planet and our lives, it feels necessary to remember that life is a dynamic process. Life is a consistent process of transformation and adaptation. Art, more than any other human endeavour, is a reflection of this aspect of life and therefore the best way to remember the process of being something different, something else, something more, or something less, while becoming ourselves.
****ETA March 11, 2020: CANCELLED. The Marta De Menezes talk has been cancelled****
According to the March 3, 2020 announcement, there’s another event associated with FACTT 2020; artist Marta De Menezes is being featured in a talk,
Sensorium Winter Lunchtime Seminar Series featuring: Marta De Menezes [sic]
Wednesday, March 11th, 2020 11:30am-12:30pm The Sensorium Research Loft [York University} 4th Floor GCFA, Room M333 RSVP to sensinfo@yorku.ca
Our second Sensorium Winter Lunchtime Seminar Series event of March will feature pioneering bio-artist Marta De Menezes [sic] who explores the use of biology and biotechnology as new art media and in conducting her practice in research laboratories that are her art studio.
The 26th annual International Symposium on Electronic Arts (ISEA): Why Sentience? is being held from May 19 – 24, 2020 in Montreal, Canada and organizers have sen,t via email, a March 3, 2020 announcement,
DISCOVER THE PRELIMINARY PROGRAMMING!
Below is the list of accepted authors* from the call for submissions to ISEA2020. *Speakers are confirmed upon registration
ISEA2020, from May 19 to 24, 2020, will bring together in Montreal the scientific, academic and artistic work based on research and creative practices that explore new technologies. Don’t miss it!
Keynote speakers, workshops, special sessions, performances, and screenings are still to come.
I hope this Covid 19 situation is resolved soon. In the last paragraph of my March 2, 2020 posting I offered some information about articles along with links for more information about the virus.
*****ETA March 5, 2020: The ISEA 2020 keynote speakers were announced on March 5, 2020. Here they are (from the ISEA 2020 Keynote Speakers page):
THIERRY BARDINI
Professor in the Communication department at Université de Montréal Agronomist (ENSA Montpellier, 1986) and sociologist (Ph.D. Paris X Nanterre, 1991), Thierry Bardini is full professor in the department of communication at the Université de Montréal, where he has been teaching since 1993. From 1990 to 1993, he was a visiting scholar and adjunct professor at the Annenberg School for communication at the University of Southern California, under the supervision of Everett M. Rogers. His research interests concern the contemporary cyberculture, from the production and uses of information and communication technologies to molecular biology. He is the author of Bootstrapping: Douglas Engelbart, Coevolution and the Genesis of Personal Computing (Stanford University Press, 2000), Junkware (University of Minnesota Press, 2011) and Journey to the End of the Species (in collaboration with Dominique Lestel, Éditions Dis Voir, Paris, 2011). Thierry Bardini is currently working on his first research-creation project, Toward the Fourth Nature, with Beatriz Herrera and François-Joseph Lapointe.
Jolene Rickard, Ph.D. is a visual historian, artist and curator interested in the intersection of Indigenous knowledge and contemporary art, materiality, and ecocriticism with an emphasis on Hodinöhsö:ni aesthetics. A selection of publications includes: Diversifying Sovereignty and the Reception of Indigenous Art, Art Journal 76, no. 2 (2017), Aesthetics, Violence and Indigeneity, Public 27, no. 54 (Winter 2016), The Emergence of Global Indigenous Art, Sakahán, National Gallery of Canada (2013), and Visualizing Sovereignty in the Time of Biometric Sensors, The South Atlantic Quarterly: (2011). Recent exhibitions include the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists, 2019-2021, Crystal Bridges Museum of Art, Art For a New Understanding: Native Voices, 1950’s to Now, 2018-2020. Jolene is a 2020 Fulbright Research Scholar at McMaster University, ON, an Associate Professor in the departments of History of Art and Art, and the former Director of the American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program 2008-2020 (AIISP) at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. Jolene is from the Tuscarora Nation (Turtle Clan), Hodinöhsö:ni Confederacy.
Lecturer in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Dr. Ramon Amaro, Ph.D. is a Lecturer in the Department of
Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. Previously he was
Research Fellow in Digital Culture at Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam
and visiting tutor in Media Theory at the Royal Academy of Art, The
Hague, NL (KABK). Ramon completed his PhD in Philosophy at Goldsmiths,
while holding a Masters degree in Sociological Research from the
University of Essex and a BSe in Mechanical Engineering from the
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He has worked as Assistant Editor for
the SAGE open access journal Big Data & Society; quality design
engineer for General Motors; and programmes manager for the American
Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). His research interests include
machine learning, the philosophies of mathematics and engineering,
critical Black thought, and philosophies of being.
There are movies, plays, a multimedia installation experience all in Vancouver, and the ‘CHAOSMOSIS mAchInesexhibition/performance/discussion/panel/in-situ experiments/art/ science/ techne/ philosophy’ event in Toronto. But first, there’s a a Vancouver talk about engaging scientists in the upcoming federal election. .
Science in the Age of Misinformation (and the upcoming federal election) in Vancouver
Dr. Katie Gibbs, co-founder and executive director of Evidence for Democracy, will be giving a talk today (Sept. 4, 2019) at the University of British Columbia (UBC; Vancouver). From the Eventbrite webpage for Science in the Age of Misinformation,
Science in the Age of Misinformation, with Katie Gibbs, Evidence for Democracy In the lead up to the federal election, it is more important than ever to understand the role that researchers play in shaping policy. Join us in this special Policy in Practice event with Dr. Katie Gibbs, Executive Director of Evidence for Democracy, Canada’s leading, national, non-partisan, and not-for-profit organization promoting science and the transparent use of evidence in government decision making. A Musqueam land acknowledgement, welcome remarks and moderation of this event will be provided by MPPGA students Joshua Tafel, and Chengkun Lv.
Wednesday, September 4, 2019 12:30 pm – 1:50 pm (Doors will open at noon) Liu Institute for Global Issues – xʷθəθiqətəm (Place of Many Trees), 1st floor Pizza will be provided starting at noon on first come, first serve basis. Please RSVP.
What role do researchers play in a political environment that is increasingly polarized and influenced by misinformation? Dr. Katie Gibbs, Executive Director of Evidence for Democracy, will give an overview of the current state of science integrity and science policy in Canada highlighting progress made over the past four years and what this means in a context of growing anti-expert movements in Canada and around the world. Dr. Gibbs will share concrete ways for researchers to engage heading into a critical federal election [emphasis mine], and how they can have lasting policy impact.
Bio: Katie Gibbs is a scientist, organizer and advocate for science and evidence-based policies. While completing her Ph.D. at the University of Ottawa in Biology, she was one of the lead organizers of the ‘Death of Evidence’—one of the largest science rallies in Canadian history. Katie co-founded Evidence for Democracy, Canada’s leading, national, non-partisan, and not-for-profit organization promoting science and the transparent use of evidence in government decision making. Her ongoing success in advocating for the restoration of public science in Canada has made Katie a go-to resource for national and international media outlets including Science, The Guardian and the Globe and Mail.
Katie has also been involved in international efforts to increase evidence-based decision-making and advises science integrity movements in other countries and is a member of the Open Government Partnership Multi-stakeholder Forum.
Disclaimer: Please note that by registering via Eventbrite, your information will be stored on the Eventbrite server, which is located outside Canada. If you do not wish to use this service, please email Joelle.Lee@ubc.ca directly to register. Thank you.
Location Liu Institute for Global Issues – Place of Many Trees 6476 NW Marine Drive Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z2
Sadly I was not able to post the information about Dr. Gibbs’s more informal talk last night (Sept. 3, 2019) which was a special event with Café Scientifique but I do have a link to a website encouraging anyone who wants to help get science on the 2019 federal election agenda, Vote Science. P.S. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to post this in a more timely fashion.
Transmissions; a multimedia installation in Vancouver, September 6 -28, 2019
Lisa Jackson is a filmmaker, but she’s never allowed that job description to limit what she creates or where and how she screens her works.
The Anishinaabe artist’s breakout piece was last year’s haunting virtual-reality animation Biidaaban: First Light. In its eerie world, one that won a Canadian Screen Award, nature has overtaken a near-empty, future Toronto, with trees growing through cracks in the sidewalks, vines enveloping skyscrapers, and people commuting by canoe.
…
All that and more has brought her here, to Transmissions, a 6,000-square-foot, immersive film installation that invites visitors to wander through windy coastal forests, by hauntingly empty glass towers, into soundscapes of ancient languages, and more.
Through the labyrinthine multimedia work at SFU [Simon Fraser University] Woodward’s, Jackson asks big questions—about Earth’s future, about humanity’s relationship to it, and about time and Indigeneity.
Simultaneously, she mashes up not just disciplines like film and sculpture, but concepts of science, storytelling, and linguistics [emphasis mine].
…
“The tag lines I’m working with now are ‘the roots of meaning’ and ‘knitting the world together’,” she explains. “In western society, we tend to hive things off into ‘That’s culture. That’s science.’ But from an Indigenous point of view, it’s all connected.”
Transmissions is split into three parts, with what Jackson describes as a beginning, a middle, and an end. Like Biidaaban, it’s also visually stunning: the artist admits she’s playing with Hollywood spectacle.
Without giving too much away—a big part of the appeal of Jackson’s work is the sense of surprise—Vancouver audiences will first enter a 48-foot-long, six-foot-wide tunnel, surrounded by projections that morph from empty urban streets to a forest and a river. Further engulfing them is a soundscape that features strong winds, while black mirrors along the floor skew perspective and play with what’s above and below ground.
“You feel out of time and space,” says Jackson, who wants to challenge western society’s linear notions of minutes and hours. “I want the audience to have a physical response and an emotional response. To me, that gets closer to the Indigenous understanding. Because the Eurocentric way is more rational, where the intellectual is put ahead of everything else.”
Viewers then enter a room, where the highly collaborative Jackson has worked with artist Alan Storey, who’s helped create Plexiglas towers that look like the ghost high-rises of an abandoned city. (Storey has also designed other components of the installation.) As audience members wander through them on foot, projections make their shadows dance on the structures. Like Biidaaban, the section hints at a postapocalyptic or posthuman world. Jackson operates in an emerging realm of Indigenous futurism.
…
The words “science, storytelling, and linguistics” were emphasized due to a minor problem I have with terminology. Linguistics is defined as the scientific study of language combining elements from the natural sciences, social sciences, and the humanities. I wish either Jackson or Smith had discussed the scientific element of Transmissions at more length and perhaps reconnected linguistics to science along with the physics of time and space, as well as, storytelling, film, and sculpture. It would have been helpful since it’s my understanding, Transmissions is designed to showcase all of those connections and more in ways that may not be obvious to everyone. On the plus side, perhaps the tour, which is part of this installation experience includes that information.
The Roots of Meaning World Premiere September 6 – 28, 2019
Fei & Milton Wong Experimental Theatre SFU Woodward’s, 149 West Hastings Tuesday to Friday, 1pm to 7pm Saturday and Sunday, 1pm to 5pm FREE
In partnership with SFU Woodward’s Cultural Programs and produced by Electric Company Theatre and Violator Films.
TRANSMISSIONS is a three-part, 6000 square foot multimedia installation by award-winning Anishinaabe filmmaker and artist Lisa Jackson. It extends her investigation into the connections between land, language, and people, most recently with her virtual reality work Biidaaban: First Light.
Projections, sculpture, and film combine to create urban and natural landscapes that are eerie and beautiful, familiar and foreign, concrete and magical. Past and future collide in a visceral and thought-provoking journey that questions our current moment and opens up the complexity of thought systems embedded in Indigenous languages. Radically different from European languages, they embody sets of relationships to the land, to each other, and to time itself.
Transmissions invites us to untether from our day-to-day world and imagine a possible future. It provides a platform to activate and cross-pollinate knowledge systems, from science to storytelling, ecology to linguistics, art to commerce. To begin conversations, to listen deeply, to engage varied perspectives and expertise, to knit the world together and find our place within the circle of all our relations.
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Produced in association with McMaster University Socrates Project, Moving Images Distribution and Cobalt Connects Creativity.
….
Admission: Free Public Tours Tuesday through Sunday Reservations accepted from 1pm to 3pm. Reservations are booked in 15 minute increments. Individuals and groups up to 10 welcome. Please email: sfuw@sfu.ca for more information or to book groups of 10 or more.
Her Story: Canadian Women Scientists (short film subjects); Sept. 13 – 14, 2019
Curiosity Collider, producer of art/science events in Vancouver, is presenting a film series featuring Canadian women scientists, according to an August 27 ,2019 press release (received via email),
“Her Story: Canadian Women Scientists,” a film series dedicated to sharing the stories of Canadian women scientists, will premiere on September 13th and 14th at the Annex theatre. Four pairs of local filmmakers and Canadian women scientists collaborated to create 5-6 minute videos; for each film in the series, a scientist tells her own story, interwoven with the story of an inspiring Canadian women scientist who came before her in her field of study.
Produced by Vancouver-based non-profit organization Curiosity Collider, this project was developed to address the lack of storytelling videos showcasing remarkable women scientists and their work available via popular online platforms. “Her Story reveals the lives of women working in science,” said Larissa Blokhuis, curator for Her Story. “This project acts as a beacon to girls and women who want to see themselves in the scientific community. The intergenerational nature of the project highlights the fact that women have always worked in and contributed to science.
This sentiment was reflected by Samantha Baglot as well, a PhD student in neuroscience who collaborated with filmmaker/science cartoonist Armin Mortazavi in Her Story. “It is empowering to share stories of previous Canadian female scientists… it is empowering for myself as a current female scientist to learn about other stories of success, and gain perspective of how these women fought through various hardships and inequality.”
When asked why seeing better representation of women in scientific work is important, artist/filmmaker Michael Markowsky shared his thoughts. “It’s important for women — and their male allies — to question and push back against these perceived social norms, and to occupy space which rightfully belongs to them.” In fact, his wife just gave birth to their first child, a daughter; “It’s personally very important to me that she has strong female role models to look up to.” His film will feature collaborating scientist Jade Shiller, and Kathleen Conlan – who was named one of Canada’s greatest explorers by Canadian Geographic in 2015.
Other participating filmmakers and collaborating scientists include: Leslie Kennah (Filmmaker), Kimberly Girling (scientist, Research and Policy Director at Evidence for Democracy), Lucas Kavanagh and Jesse Lupini (Filmmakers, Avocado Video), and Jessica Pilarczyk (SFU Assistant Professor, Department of Earth Sciences).
This film series is supported by Westcoast Women in Engineering, Science and Technology (WWEST) and Eng.Cite. The venue for the events is provided by Vancouver Civic Theatres.
Event Information
Screening events will be hosted at Annex (823 Seymour St, Vancouver) on September 13th and 14th [2019]. Events will also include a talkback with filmmakers and collab scientists on the 13th, and a panel discussion on representations of women in science and culture on the 14th. Visit http://bit.ly/HerStoryTickets2019 for tickets ($14.99-19.99) and http://bit.ly/HerStoryWomenScientists for project information.
I have a film collage,
Courtesy: Curiosity Collider
I looks like they’re presenting films with a diversity of styles. You can find out more about Curiosity Collider and its various programmes and events here.
Vancouver Fringe Festival September 5 – 16, 2019
I found two plays in this year’s fringe festival programme that feature science in one way or another. Not having seen either play I make no guarantees as to content. First up is,
AI Love You Exit Productions London, UK Playwright: Melanie Anne Ball exitproductionsltd.com
Adam and April are a regular 20-something couple, very nearly blissfully generic, aside from one important detail: one of the pair is an “artificially intelligent companion.” Their joyful veneer has begun to crack and they need YOU to decide the future of their relationship. Is the freedom of a robot or the will of a human more important? For AI Love You:
***** “Magnificent, complex and beautifully addictive.” —Spy in the Stalls **** “Emotionally charged, deeply moving piece … I was left with goosebumps.” —West End Wilma **** —London City Nights Past shows: ***** “The perfect show.” —Theatre Box
The first show is on Friday, September 6, 2019 at 5 pm. There are another five showings being presented. You can get tickets and more information here.
The second play is this,
Red Glimmer Dusty Foot Productions Vancouver, Canada Written & Directed by Patricia Trinh
Abstract Sci-Fi dramedy. An interdimensional science experiment! Woman involuntarily takes an all inclusive internal trip after falling into a deep depression. A scientist is hired to navigate her neurological pathways from inside her mind – tackling the fact that humans cannot physically re-experience somatosensory sensation, like pain. What if that were the case for traumatic emotional pain? A creepy little girl is heard running by. What happens next?
This show is created by an underrepresented Artist. Written, directed, and produced by local theatre Artist Patricia Trinh, a Queer, Asian-Canadian female.
The first showing is tonight, September 5, 2019 at 8:30 pm. There are another six showings being presented. You can get tickets and more information here.
CHAOSMOSIS mAchInes exhibition/performance/discussion/panel/in-situ experiments/art/ science/ techne/ philosophy, 28 September, 2019 in Toronto
An Art/Sci Salon September 2, 2019 announcement (received via email), Note: I have made some formatting changes,
CHAOSMOSIS mAchInes
28 September, 2019 7pm-11pm. Helen-Gardiner-Phelan Theatre, 2nd floor University of Toronto. 79 St. George St.
A playful co-presentation by the Topological Media Lab (Concordia U-Montreal) and The Digital Dramaturgy Labsquared (U of T-Toronto). This event is part of our collaboration with DDLsquared lab, the Topological Lab and the Leonardo LASER network
7pm-9.30pm, Installation-performances, 9.30pm-11pm, Reception and cash bar, Front and Long Room, Ground floor
Description: From responsive sculptures to atmosphere-creating machines; from sensorial machines to affective autonomous robots, Chaosmosis mAchInes is an eclectic series of installations and performances reflecting on today’s complex symbiotic relations between humans, machines and the environment.
This will be the first encounter between Montreal-based Topological Media Lab (Concordia University) and the Toronto-based Digital Dramaturgy Labsquared (U of T) to co-present current process-based and experimental works. Both labs have a history of notorious playfulness, conceptual abysmal depth, human-machine interplays, Art&Science speculations (what if?), collaborative messes, and a knack for A/I as in Artistic Intelligence.
Thanks to Nina Czegledy (Laser series, Leonardo network) for inspiring the event and for initiating the collaboration
Project presentations will include: Topological Media Lab tangibleFlux φ plenumorphic ∴ chaosmosis SPIEL On Air The Sound That Severs Now from Now Cloud Chamber (2018) | Caustic Scenography, Responsive Cloud Formation Liquid Light Robots: Machine Menagerie Phaze Phase Passing Light Info projects Digital Dramaturgy Labsquared Btw Lf & Dth – interFACING disappearance Info project
Earlier last month [August 2019?], surgeons at St Paul’s Hospital performed an ankle replacement for a Cloverdale resident using a 3D printed bone. The first procedure of its kind in Western Canada, it saved the patient all of his ten toes — something doctors had originally decided to amputate due to the severity of the motorcycle accident.
Maker Faire Vancouver Co-producer, John Biehler, may not be using his 3D printer for medical breakthroughs, but he does see a subtle connection between his home 3D printer and the Health Canada-approved bone.
“I got into 3D printing to make fun stuff and gadgets,” John says of the box-sized machine that started as a hobby and turned into a side business. “But the fact that the very same technology can have life-changing and life-saving applications is amazing.”
When John showed up to Maker Faire Vancouver seven years ago, opportunities to access this hobby were limited. Armed with a 3D printer he had just finished assembling the night before, John was hoping to meet others in the community with similar interests to build, experiment and create. Much like the increase in accessibility to these portable machines has changed over the years—with universities, libraries and makerspaces making them readily available alongside CNC Machines, laser cutters and more — John says the excitement around crafting and tinkering has skyrocketed as well.
“The kind of technology that inspires people to print a bone or spinal insert all starts at ground zero in places like a Maker Faire where people get exposed to STEAM,” John says …
…
… From 3D printing enthusiasts like John to knitters, metal artists and roboticists, this full one-day event [Maker Faire Vancouver on Saturday, September 14, 2019] will facilitate cross-pollination between hobbyists, small businesses, artists and tinkerers. Described as part science fair, part county fair and part something entirely new, Maker Faire Vancouver hopes to facilitate discovery and what John calls “pure joy moments.”
I have two art/sci (or sciart) announcements, one concerns an event and the other is a news update.
Toronto’s ArtSci Salon and the Society of Literature, Science & the Arts (SLSA) 2018 Meeting
How could I not have stumbled across SLSA until now? Better late than never but the 2018 meeting/conference in Toronto, Canada is the 32nd of this annual event. (sigh)
Getting on to the important points, the ArtSci Salon is hosting a special roundtable as part of the conference (from a November 14, 2018 announcement received via email),
ArtSci Salon has organized a special roundtable at the annual SLSA
(Society for Science Literature and the Arts) which will take place in
Toronto this week.
The roundtable is public and will be held at OCADU [Ontario College of Art and Design University] in the gallery on 49 McCaul Street.
Re-locating the rational: on the re-making of categories through art and science (or: the artist is out of mind!)
A roundtable and a mobile/pop-up exhibition organized by ArtSci Salon
The world always exceeds our conception of it (Shotwell, 2016)
Coinciding with this year’s SLSA “Out of Mind” conference in Toronto, ArtSci Salon is proposing a panel/roundtable on “out-of-mindedness” as a way to re-think categories, and to disrupt the disciplinary and methodological status quo through which we normally see science and the humanities unfolding in academic contexts. We plan to do it through a pop-up exhibition featuring the works of local artists and members of SLSA.
What to do when the sciences and the humanities loose [sic] their ability to fully grasp, and sometimes even speak of, phenomena that have inevitably become too complex, too diffuse to be simplified through a model or a formula, or to be seized and summarized by one discipline?
This initiative is not designed to propose a set of new categories, but to pose a series of open questions, highlighting the necessity to conduct collaborative research between artistic practices and scientific research. We interpret the idea of “out of mind” as a strategy. In fact, using the arts as our preferred mode of expression, we believe that we ought to step out of the traditional mind configurations and fixed wiring in order to seize new ways to come to term with the multiplicities characterizing current environmental transformations. These occurrences have proved to be connected with nature, culture, and society in too many intricate ways, to the extent that neither science, nor technological methods are able to fully comprehend them.
Roundtable Participants:
Roberta Buiani (Chair)
Erika Biddles
Jenifer Wightman
Stephanie Rothenberg
Adam Zaretsky
Kathy High
Dolores Steinman
Here’s the poster:
One more logistical detail,
[T]he roundtable will be at 10:30-12:00 noon [Friday, November 16, 2018] followed by a small tour of the mobile pop-up exhibition[.]
For the curious, here’s the SLSA website and the SLSA 2018 [Meeting]—Out of Your Mind website. Unexpectedly, the University of Toronto is not one of the conference hosts, instead we have the University of Waterloo [Waterloo, Ontario] and York University [Toronto, Ontario] as joint hosts with OCAD University—Canada’s oldest art and design institution—partnering with the Rochester Institute of Technology (New York state, US).
Vancouver’s Curiosity Collider
Coincidentally on the same day I received the ArtSci Salon event information, I received a November 14, 2018 update for Vancouver’s art/sci (or sciart) organization, Curiosity Collider. From the update received via email,
Collider Update
Next events (save-the-date), call for submissions, and other art+science in town
Collisions Festival:
Meet Up & Hang Out
Are you an artist working in the sci/art genre? A scientist interested in collaborating with artists? Or one who wears both hats?
In the fall of 2019, the Curiosity Collider will be hosting our inaugural Sci-Art festival The Collisions Festival; the first theme will be Invasive Systems. The call for submission will be open in spring, 2019. The theme is meant to be broad in scope and not limited to any specific scientific subject/discipline; participants are encouraged to suggest various interpretation of the theme.
We would like to invite all artists and scientists who are interested in participating or potentially submitting a proposal to join us at this meet up event, chat about possible collaborations, and learn more about projects and details on “collaborative work” proposals we are looking for.
In the old days a ‘development director’ was a ‘fundraiser’. That RSVP? Likely, they’re trying to establish the size of their potential audience so they can get government grants. Audience size is important to corporate or ‘other’ funders but if you want a government grant you need numbers.
Getting back to the update, this is a grouping of Curiosity Collider’s latest hits,
#ColliderCafe: Art. Science. Cadence.
Did you miss our most recent Collider Cafe event? You can now chek out the talks by Singer-songwriter Devon More, Biologists Wayne Maddison and David Maddison, as well as Integrated Media Artist Victoria Gibson on our YouTube Channel.
Et al 3: Collaboration Process for Quantum Futures
Nerd Nite, Science Slam, and Curiosity Collider joined forces for the 3rd edition of Et al: the ultimate bar science night event. During the event, Quantum Physicist James Day and our Creative Managing Director Char Hoyt gave attendees an overview of the collaboration process that made Night shift: Quantum Futures, an event curated by CC and hosted at the Museum of Anthropology, possible.
While they don’t seem to have any details, there is a date for the next Collider Cafe,
Save the Date:
Next Collider Cafe
Our next Collider Cafe will be on Wednesday, January 23 at Cafe Deux Soleils. #ColliderCafe is a space for artists, scientists, makers, and anyone interested in art+science. Meet. Discover. Connect. Create.
Are you curious? Join us to explore how art and science intersect in the exploration of curiosity.
Finally, a miscellaneous listing of related events being held in Vancouver, mostly, this November,
Looking for more art+science in town?
November 17 (Victoria)Science Writers and Communicators of Canada is hosting a workshop on science writing in an age of reconciliation: What science writers can learn from indigenous community members about better representation and relationships. Only a few spots left! Register now.
November 15-18 CC friend Dzee Louise will open her studio during the East Side Cultural Crawl! Drop by at studio #5 just at the top of the stairs of the William Clark Building at 1310 William Street (on the corner of Clark).
Until December 15 Vancouver Biennale’s CURIOUS IMAGININGS continues…check out the exhibition that will “challenge us to explore the social impacts of emerging biotechnology and our ethical limits in an age where genetic engineering and digital technologies are already pushing the boundaries of humanity.”
I did write a preview (June 18, 2018) for the last event on the list, Curious Imaginings, which included some of the latest science on xenotransplantation and chimeras (i.e., examples of emerging biotechnology). That’s all folks!
While my main interest is the group’s temporary art gallery, I am providing a brief explanatory introduction and a couple of previews for SIGGRAPH 2018.
Introduction
For anyone unfamiliar with the Special Interest Group on Computer GRAPHics and Interactive Techniques (SIGGRAPH) and its conferences, from the SIGGRAPH Wikipedia entry Note: Links have been removed),
Some highlights of the conference are its Animation Theater and Electronic Theater presentations, where recently created CG films are played. There is a large exhibition floor, where several hundred companies set up elaborate booths and compete for attention and recruits. Most of the companies are in the engineering, graphics, motion picture, or video game industries. There are also many booths for schools which specialize in computer graphics or interactivity.
Dozens of research papers are presented each year, and SIGGRAPH is widely considered the most prestigious forum for the publication of computer graphics research.[1] The recent paper acceptance rate for SIGGRAPH has been less than 26%.[2] The submitted papers are peer-reviewed in a single-blind process.[3] There has been some criticism about the preference of SIGGRAPH paper reviewers for novel results rather than useful incremental progress.[4][5] …
This is the third SIGGRAPH Vancouver has hosted; the others were in 2011 and 2014. The theme for the 2018 iteration is ‘Generations’; here’s more about it from an Aug. 2, 2018 article by Terry Flores for Variety,
While its focus is firmly forward thinking, SIGGRAPH 2018, the computer graphics, animation, virtual reality, games, digital art, mixed reality, and emerging technologies conference, is also tipping its hat to the past thanks to its theme this year: Generations. The conference runs Aug. 12-16 in Vancouver, B.C.
“In the literal people sense, pioneers in the computer graphics industry are standing shoulder to shoulder with researchers, practitioners and the future of the industry — young people — mentoring them, dabbling across multiple disciplines to innovate, relate, and grow,” says SIGGRAPH 2018 conference chair Roy C. Anthony, VP of creative development and operations at software and technology firm Ventuz. “This is really what SIGGRAPH has always been about. Generations really seemed like a very appropriate way of looking back and remembering where we all came from and how far we’ve come.”
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SIGGRAPH 2018 has a number of treats in store for attendees, including the debut of Disney’s first VR film, the short “Cycles”; production sessions on the making of “Blade Runner 2049,” “Game of Thrones,” “Incredibles 2” and “Avengers: Infinity War”; as well as sneak peeks of Disney’s upcoming “Ralph Breaks the Internet: Wreck-It Ralph 2” and Laika’s “Missing Link.”
That list of ‘treats’ in the last paragraph makes the conference seem more like an iteration of a ‘comic-con’ than a technology conference.
CHICAGO–In the burgeoning world of virtual reality (VR) technology, it remains a challenge to provide users with a realistic perception of infinite space and natural walking capabilities in the virtual environment. A team of computer scientists has introduced a new approach to address this problem by leveraging a natural human phenomenon: eye blinks.
All humans are functionally blind for about 10 percent of the time under normal circumstances due to eye blinks and saccades, a rapid movement of the eye between two points or objects. Eye blinks are a common and natural cause of so-called “change blindness,” which indicates the inability for humans to notice changes to visual scenes. Zeroing in on eye blinks and change blindness, the team has devised a novel computational system that effectively redirects the user in the virtual environment during these natural instances, all with undetectable camera movements to deliver orientation redirection.
“Previous RDW [redirected walking] techniques apply rotations continuously while the user is walking. But the amount of unnoticeable rotations is limited,” notes Eike Langbehn, lead author of the research and doctoral candidate at the University of Hamburg. “That’s why an orthogonal approach is needed–we add some additional rotations when the user is not focused on the visuals. When we learned that humans are functionally blind for some time due to blinks, we thought, ‘Why don’t we do the redirection during eye blinks?'”
Human eye blinks occur approximately 10 to 20 times per minute, about every 4 to 19 seconds. Leveraging this window of opportunity–where humans are unable to detect major motion changes while in a virtual environment–the researchers devised an approach to synchronize a computer graphics rendering system with this visual process, and introduce any useful motion changes in virtual scenes to enhance users’ overall VR experience.
The researchers’ experiments revealed that imperceptible camera rotations of 2 to 5 degrees and translations of 4 to 9 cm of the user’s viewpoint are possible during a blink without users even noticing. They tracked test participants’ eye blinks by an eye tracker in a VR head-mounted display. In a confirmatory study, the team validated that participants could not reliably detect in which of two eye blinks their viewpoint was manipulated while walking a VR curved path. The tests relied on unconscious natural eye blinking, but the researchers say redirection during blinking could be carried out consciously. Since users can consciously blink multiple times a day without much effort, eye blinks provide great potential to be used as an intentional trigger in their approach.
The team will present their work at SIGGRAPH 2018, held 12-16 August in Vancouver, British Columbia. The annual conference and exhibition showcases the world’s leading professionals, academics, and creative minds at the forefront of computer graphics and interactive techniques.
“RDW is a big challenge since current techniques still need too much space to enable unlimited walking in VR,” notes Langbehn. “Our work might contribute to a reduction of space since we found out that unnoticeable rotations of up to five degrees are possible during blinks. This means we can improve the performance of RDW by approximately 50 percent.”
The team’s results could be used in combination with other VR research, such as novel steering algorithms, improved path prediction, and rotations during saccades, to name a few. Down the road, such techniques could some day enable consumer VR users to virtually walk beyond their living room.
Langbehn collaborated on the work with Frank Steinicke of University of Hamburg, Markus Lappe of University of Muenster, Gregory F. Welch of University of Central Florida, and Gerd Bruder, also of University of Central Florida. For the full paper and video, visit the team’s project page.
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About ACM, ACM SIGGRAPH, and SIGGRAPH 2018
ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, is the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society, uniting educators, researchers, and professionals to inspire dialogue, share resources, and address the field’s challenges. ACM SIGGRAPH is a special interest group within ACM that serves as an interdisciplinary community for members in research, technology, and applications in computer graphics and interactive techniques. SIGGRAPH is the world’s leading annual interdisciplinary educational experience showcasing the latest in computer graphics and interactive techniques. SIGGRAPH 2018, marking the 45th annual conference hosted by ACM SIGGRAPH, will take place from 12-16 August at the Vancouver Convention Centre in Vancouver, B.C.
They have provided an image illustrating what they mean (I don’t find it especially informative),
Caption: The viewing behavior of a virtual reality user, including fixations (in green) and saccades (in red). A blink fully suppresses visual perception. Credit: Eike Langbehn
Walt Disney Animation Studios will debut its first ever virtual reality short film at SIGGRAPH 2018, and the hope is viewers will walk away feeling connected to the characters as equally as they will with the VR technology involved in making the film.
Cycles, an experimental film directed by Jeff Gipson, centers around the true meaning of creating a home and the life it holds inside its walls. The idea for the film is personal, inspired by Gipson’s childhood spending time with his grandparents and creating memories in their home, and later, having to move them to an assisted living residence.
“Every house has a story unique to the people, the characters who live there,” says Gipson. “We wanted to create a story in this single place and be able to have the viewer witness life happening around them. It is an emotionally driven film, expressing the real ups and downs, the happy and sad moments in life.”
For Cycles, Gipson also drew from his past life as an architect, having spent several years designing skate parks, and from his passion for action sports, including freestyle BMX. In Los Angeles, where Gipson lives, it is not unusual to find homes with an empty swimming pool reserved for skating or freestyle biking. Part of the pitch for Cycles came out of Gipson’s experience riding in these empty pools and being curious about the homes attached to them, the families who lived there, and the memories they made.
SIGGRAPH attendees will have the opportunity to experience Cycles at the Immersive Pavilion, a new space for this year’s conference. The Pavilion is devoted exclusively to virtual, augmented, and mixed reality and will contain: the VR Theater, a storytelling extravaganza that is part of the Computer Animation Festival; the Vrcade, a space for VR, AR, and MR games or experiences; and the well-known Village, for showcasing large-scale projects. SIGGRAPH 2018, held 12-16 August in Vancouver, British Columbia, is an annual gathering that showcases the world’s leading professionals, academics, and creative minds at the forefront of computer graphics and interactive techniques.
The production team completed Cycles in four months with about 50 collaborators as part of a professional development program at the studio. A key difference in VR filmmaking includes getting creative with how to translate a story to the VR “screen.” Pre-visualizing the narrative, for one, was a challenge. Rather than traditional storyboarding, Gipson and his team instead used a mix of Quill VR painting techniques and motion capture to “storyboard” Cycles, incorporating painters and artists to generate sculptures or 3D models of characters early on and draw scenes for the VR space. The creators also got innovative with the use of light and color saturation in scenes to help guide the user’s eyes during the film.
“What’s cool for VR is that we are really on the edge of trying to figure out what it is and how to tell stories in this new medium,” says Gipson. “In VR, you can look anywhere and really be transported to a different world, experience it from different angles, and see every detail. We want people watching to feel alive and feel emotion, and give them a true cinematic experience.”
This is Gipson’s VR directorial debut. He joined Walt Disney Animation Studios in 2013, serving as a lighting artist on Disney favorites like Frozen, Zootopia, and Moana. Of getting to direct the studio’s first VR short, he says, “VR is an amazing technology and a lot of times the technology is what is really celebrated. We hope more and more people begin to see the emotional weight of VR films, and with Cycles in particular, we hope they will feel the emotions we aimed to convey with our story.”
Apparently this is a still from the ‘short’,
Caption: Disney Animation Studios will present ‘Cycles’ , its first virtual reality (VR) short, at ACM SIGGRAPH 2018. Credit: Disney Animation Studios
Google has unveiled a new virtual reality (VR) immersive experience based on a novel system that captures and renders high-quality, realistic images from the real world using light fields. Created by a team of leading researchers at Google, Welcome to Light Fields is the tech giant’s splash into the nascent arena of light fields VR experiences, an exciting corner of VR video technology gaining traction for its promise to deliver extremely high-quality imagery and experiences in the virtual world.
Google released Welcome to Light Fields earlier this year as a free app on Steam VR for HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and Windows Mixed Reality headsets. The creators will demonstrate the VR experience at SIGGRAPH 2018, in the Immersive Pavilion, a new space for this year’s conference. The Pavilion is devoted exclusively to virtual, augmented, and mixed reality and will contain: the Vrcade, a space for VR, AR, and MR games or experiences; the VR Theater, a storytelling extravaganza that is part of the Computer Animation Festival; and the well-known Village, for showcasing large-scale projects. SIGGRAPH 2018, held 12-16 August in Vancouver, British Columbia, is an annual gathering that showcases the world’s leading professionals, academics, and creative minds at the forefront of computer graphics and interactive techniques.
Destinations in Welcome to Light Fields include NASA’s Space Shuttle Discovery, delivering to viewers an astronaut’s view inside the flight deck, which has never been open to the public; the pristine teak and mahogany interiors of the Gamble House, an architectural treasure in Pasadena, CA; and the glorious St. Stephen’s Church in Granada Hills, CA, home to a stunning wall of more than 14,000 pieces of glimmering stained glass.
“I love that light fields in VR can teleport you to exotic places in the real world, and truly make you believe you are there,” says Ryan Overbeck, software engineer at Google who co-led the project. “To me, this is magic.”
To bring this experience to life, Overbeck worked with a team that included Paul Debevec, senior staff engineer at Google, who managed the project and led the hardware piece with engineers Xueming Yu, Jay Busch, and Graham Fyffe. With Overbeck, Daniel Erickson and Daniel Evangelakos focused on the software end. The researchers designed a comprehensive system for capturing and rendering high-quality, spherical light field still images from footage captured in the real world. They developed two easy-to-use light field camera rigs, based on the GoPro Hero4action sports camera, that efficiently capture thousands of images on the surface of a sphere. Those images were then passed through a cloud-based light-field-processing pipeline.
Among other things, explains Overbeck, “The processing pipeline uses computer vision to place the images in 3D and generate depth maps, and we use a modified version of our vp9 video codec
to compress the light field data down to a manageable size.” To render a light field dataset, he notes, the team used a rendering algorithm that blends between the thousands of light field images in real-time.
The team relied on Google’s talented pool of engineers in computer vision, graphics, video compression, and machine learning to overcome the unique challenges posed in light fields technology. They also collaborated closely with the WebM team (who make the vp9 video codec) to develop the high-quality light field compression format incorporated into their system, and leaned heavily on the expertise of the Jump VR team to help pose the images and generate depth maps. (Jump is Google’s professional VR system for achieving 3D-360 video production at scale.)
Indeed, with Welcome to Light Fields, the Google team is demonstrating the potential and promise of light field VR technology, showcasing the technology’s ability to provide a truly immersive experience with a level of unmatched realism. Though light fields technology has been researched and explored in computer graphics for more than 30 years, practical systems for actually delivering high-quality light field experiences has not yet been possible.
Part of the team’s motivation behind creating this VR light field experience is to invigorate the nascent field.
“Welcome to Light Fields proves that it is now possible to make a compelling light field VR viewer that runs on consumer-grade hardware, and we hope that this knowledge will encourage others to get involved with building light field technology and media,” says Overbeck. “We understand that in order to eventually make compelling consumer products based on light fields, we need a thriving light field ecosystem. We need open light field codecs, we need artists creating beautiful light field imagery, and we need people using VR in order to engage with light fields.”
I don’t really understand why this image, which looks like something belongs on advertising material, would be chosen to accompany a news release on a science-based distribution outlet,
Caption: A team of leading researchers at Google, will unveil the new immersive virtual reality (VR) experience “Welcome to Lightfields” at ACM SIGGRAPH 2018. Credit: Image courtesy of Google/Overbeck
Advances in computer-generated imagery have brought vivid, realistic animations to life, but the sounds associated with what we see simulated on screen, such as two objects colliding, are often recordings. Now researchers at Stanford University have developed a system that automatically renders accurate sounds for a wide variety of animated phenomena.
“There’s been a Holy Grail in computing of being able to simulate reality for humans. We can animate scenes and render them visually with physics and computer graphics, but, as for sounds, they are usually made up,” said Doug James, professor of computer science at Stanford University. “Currently there exists no way to generate realistic synchronized sounds for complex animated content, such as splashing water or colliding objects, automatically. This fills that void.”
The researchers will present their work on this sound synthesis system as part of ACM SIGGRAPH 2018, the leading conference on computer graphics and interactive techniques. In addition to enlivening movies and virtual reality worlds, this system could also help engineering companies prototype how products would sound before being physically produced, and hopefully encourage designs that are quieter and less irritating, the researchers said.
“I’ve spent years trying to solve partial differential equations – which govern how sound propagates – by hand,” said Jui-Hsien Wang, a graduate student in James’ lab and in the Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering (ICME), and lead author of the paper. “This is actually a place where you don’t just solve the equation but you can actually hear it once you’ve done it. That’s really exciting to me and it’s fun.”
Predicting sound
Informed by geometry and physical motion, the system figures out the vibrations of each object and how, like a loudspeaker, those vibrations excite sound waves. It computes the pressure waves cast off by rapidly moving and vibrating surfaces but does not replicate room acoustics. So, although it does not recreate the echoes in a grand cathedral, it can resolve detailed sounds from scenarios like a crashing cymbal, an upside-down bowl spinning to a stop, a glass filling up with water or a virtual character talking into a megaphone.
Most sounds associated with animations rely on pre-recorded clips, which require vast manual effort to synchronize with the action on-screen. These clips are also restricted to noises that exist – they can’t predict anything new. Other systems that produce and predict sounds as accurate as those of James and his team work only in special cases, or assume the geometry doesn’t deform very much. They also require a long pre-computation phase for each separate object.
“Ours is essentially just a render button with minimal pre-processing that treats all objects together in one acoustic wave simulation,” said Ante Qu, a graduate student in James’ lab and co-author of the paper.
The simulated sound that results from this method is highly detailed. It takes into account the sound waves produced by each object in an animation but also predicts how those waves bend, bounce or deaden based on their interactions with other objects and sound waves in the scene.
Challenges ahead
In its current form, the group’s process takes a while to create the finished product. But, now that they have proven this technique’s potential, they can focus on performance optimizations, such as implementing their method on parallel GPU hardware, that should make it drastically faster.
And, even in its current state, the results are worth the wait.
“The first water sounds we generated with the system were among the best ones we had simulated – and water is a huge challenge in computer-generated sound,” said James. “We thought we might get a little improvement, but it is dramatically better than previous approaches even right out of the box. It was really striking.”
Although the group’s work has faithfully rendered sounds of various objects spinning, falling and banging into each other, more complex objects and interactions – like the reverberating tones of a Stradivarius violin – remain difficult to model realistically. That, the group said, will have to wait for a future solution.
Timothy Langlois of Adobe Research is a co-author of this paper. This research was funded by the National Science Foundation and Adobe Research. James is also a professor, by courtesy, of music and a member of Stanford Bio-X.
Researchers Timothy Langlois, Doug L. James, Ante Qu and Jui-Hsien Wang have created a video featuring highlights of animations with sounds synthesized using the Stanford researchers’ new system.,
The researchers have also provided this image,
By computing pressure waves cast off by rapidly moving and vibrating surfaces – such as a cymbal – a new sound synthesis system developed by Stanford researchers can automatically render realistic sound for computer animations. (Image credit: Timothy Langlois, Doug L. James, Ante Qu and Jui-Hsien Wang)
It does seem like we’re synthesizing the world around us, eh?
SIGGRAPH 2018, the world’s leading showcase of digital art created using computer graphics and interactive techniques, will present a special Art Gallery, entitled “Origins,” and historic Art Papers in Vancouver, B.C. The 45th SIGGRAPH conference will take place 12–16 August at the Vancouver Convention Centre. The programs will also honor the generations of creators that have come before through a special, 50th anniversary edition of the Leonard journal. To register for the conference, visit S2018.SIGGRAPH.ORG.
The SIGGRAPH 2018 ART GALLERY is a curated exhibition, conceived as a dialogical space that enables the viewer to reflect on man’s diverse cultural values and rituals through contemporary creative practices. Building upon an exciting and eclectic selection of creative practices mediated through technologies that represent the sophistication of our times, the SIGGRAPH 2018 Art Gallery will embrace the narratives of the indigenous communities based near Vancouver and throughout Canada as a source of inspiration. The exhibition will feature contemporary media artworks, art pieces by indigenous communities, and other traces of technologically mediated Ludic practices.
Andrés Burbano, SIGGRAPH 2018 Art Gallery chair and professor at Universidad de los Andes, said, “The Art Gallery aims to articulate myth and technology, science and art, the deep past and the computational present, and will coalesce around a theme of ‘Origins.’ Media and technological creative expressions will explore principles such as the origins of the cosmos, the origins of life, the origins of human presence, the origins of the occupation of territories in the Americas, and the origins of people living in the vast territories of the Arctic.”
He continued, “The venue [in Vancouver] hopes to rekindle the original spark that ignited the collaborative spirit of the SIGGRAPH community of engineers, scientists, and artists, who came together to create the very first conference in the early 1970s.”
Highlights from the 2018 Art Gallery include:
Transformation Mask (Canada) [Technology Based]
Shawn Hunt, independent; and Microsoft Garage: Andy Klein, Robert Butterworth, Jonathan Cobb, Jeremy Kersey, Stacey Mulcahy, Brendan O’Rourke, Brent Silk, and Julia Taylor-Hell, Microsoft Vancouver
TRANSFORMATION MASK is an interactive installation that features the Microsoft HoloLens. It utilizes electronics and mechanical engineering to express a physical and digital transformation. Participants are immersed in spatial sounds and holographic visuals.
Somnium (U.S.) [Science Based]
Marko Peljhan, Danny Bazo, and Karl Yerkes, University of California, Santa Barbara
Somnium is a cybernetic installation that provides visitors with the ability to sensorily, cognitively, and emotionally contemplate and experience exoplanetary discoveries, their macro and micro dimensions, and the potential for life in our Galaxy. Some might call it “space telescope.”
Ernest Edmonds Retrospective – Art Systems 1968-2018 (United Kingdom) [History Based]
Ernest Edmonds, De Montfort University
Celebrating one of the pioneers of computer graphics-based art since the early 1970s, this Ernest Edmonds career retrospective will showcase snapshots of Edmonds’ work as it developed over the years. With one piece from each decade, the retrospective will also demonstrate how vital the Leonardo journal has been throughout the 50-year journey.
In addition to the works above, the Art Gallery will feature pieces from notable female artists Ozge Samanci, Ruth West, and Nicole L’Hullier. For more information about the Edmonds retrospective, read THIS POST ON THE ACM SIGGRAPH BLOG.
The SIGGRAPH 2018 ART PAPERS program is designed to feature research from artists, scientists, theorists, technologists, historians, and more in one of four categories: project description, theory/criticism, methods, or history. The chosen work was selected by an international jury of scholars, artists, and immersive technology developers.
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of LEONARDO (MIT Press), and 10 years of its annual SIGGRAPH issue, SIGGRAPH 2018 is pleased to announce a special anniversary edition of the journal, which will feature the 2018 art papers. For 50 years, Leonardo has been the definitive publication for artist-academics. To learn more about the relationship between SIGGRAPH and the journal, listen to THIS EPISODE OF THE SIGGRAPH SPOTLIGHT PODCAST.
“In order to encourage a wider range of topics, we introduced a new submission type, short papers. This enabled us to accept more content than in previous years. Additionally, for the first time, we will introduce sessions that integrate the Art Gallery artist talks with Art Papers talks, promoting richer connections between these two creative communities,” said Angus Forbes, SIGGRAPH 2018 Art Papers chair and professor at University of California, Santa Cruz.
Art Papers highlights include:
Alienating the Familiar with CGI: A Recipe for Making a Full CGI Art House Animated Feature [Long]
Alex Counsell and Paul Charisse, University of Portsmouth
This paper explores the process of making and funding an art house feature film using full CGI in a marketplace where this has never been attempted. It explores cutting-edge technology and production approaches, as well as routes to successful fundraising.
Augmented Fauna and Glass Mutations: A Dialogue Between Material and Technique in Glassblowing and 3D Printing [Long]
Tobias Klein, City University of Hong Kong
The two presented artworks, “Augmented Fauna” and “Glass Mutations,” were created during an artist residence at the PILCHUCK GLASS SCHOOL. They are examples of the qualities and methods established through a synthesis between digital workflows and traditional craft processes and thus formulate the notion of digital craftsmanship.
Inhabitat: An Imaginary Ecosystem in a Children’s Science Museum [Short]
Graham Wakefield, York University, and Haru Hyunkyung Ji, OCAD University
“Inhabitat” is a mixed reality artwork in which participants become part of an imaginary ecology through three simultaneous perspectives of scale and agency; three distinct ways to see with other eyes. This imaginary world was exhibited at a children’s science museum for five months, using an interactive projection-augmented sculpture, a large screen and speaker array, and a virtual reality head-mounted display.
What’s the what?
My father used to say that and I always assumed it meant summarize the high points, if you need to, and get to the point—fast. In that spirit, I am both fascinated and mildly appalled. The virtual, mixed, and augmented reality technologies, as well as, the others being featured at SIGGRAPH 2018 are wondrous in many ways but it seems we are coming ever closer to a world where we no longer interact with nature or other humans directly. (see my August 10, 2018 posting about the ‘extinction of experience’ for research that encourages more direct interaction with nature) I realize that SIGGRAPH is intended as a primarily technical experience but I think a little more content questioning these technologies and their applications (social implications) might be in order. That’s often the artist’s role but I can’t see anything in the art gallery descriptions that hint at any sort of fundamental critique.
