AMISHA GADANI / ANNA DUMITRIU / ALEX MAY / PRATIK SHAH / KATHY HIGH
Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous
February 4, 2016 7-9pm
Presentation Space, CNSI 5th floor
Live Stream:
Confirmed Speakers:
ANNA DUMITRIU (artwork pictured above) is a British artist whose work fuses craft, technology and bioscience to explore our relationship to the microbial world. She is artist-in-residence on the Modernising Medical Microbiology Project at the University of Oxford and exhibited at venues such as the V&A Museum, London and The Picasso Museum, Barcelona. She has recently undertaken a residency in the Liu Lab for Synthetic Evolution at University of California Irvine. www.normalflora.co.uk
ALEX MAY is a British artist exploring a wide range of digital technologies, most notably video projection onto physical objects (building on the technique known as video mapping or projection mapping by using his own bespoke software), also interactive installations, generative works, full-size humanoid robots, performance, and video art. www.alexmayarts.co.uk
PRATIK SHAH earned his Ph.D. at the Center for Synthetic Biology of the University of Copenhagen, where he developed and applied a number of impressive technologies for detecting microRNAs. Pratik currently researches the biochemistry of orthogonal replication and explores its use for replicating XNA in the Liu Lab for Synthetic Evolution at University of California Irvine.
KATHY HIGH is an interdisciplinary artist working in the areas of technology, science, speculative fiction and art. She produces videos and installations posing queer and feminist inquiries into areas of medicine/bio-science, and animal/interspecies collaborations. She hosts bio/ecology+art workshops and is creating an urban nature center in North Troy (NATURE Lab) with media organization The Sanctuary for Independent Media. High is Professor of Video and New Media in the Department of Arts, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY. She teaches documentary and experimental digital video production, history and theory, as well as biological arts. www.kathyhigh.com
AMISHA GADANI is an artist, educator and illustrator based in Los Angeles. She is interested in unique animal morphologies and adaptations; from swarming behaviors and elegant defense mechanisms, to superorganisms and animals of the deep sea. Her work ranges from unsettling beak-less bird paintings and underwater videos to her on-going series of interactive animal-inspired defensive dresses that can, for example, inflate like a blowfish when the wearer is intimidated. She has spent over four years working at the art and science focused Exploratorium Museum in San Francisco in education, exhibits and illustration; and two years working at UCLA in two biology labs as an illustrator producing over fifty scientific illustrations featured in journals and research papers and as an outreach educator using drawing and sculpture focused workshops to explain scientific concepts to local elementary school students. Her work has shown in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Pittsburgh, New York City, and Tokyo; has been featured in The New York Times, Fast Company, and Scientific American; and has been published in LIMN magazine, the journal Method Quarterly and the book "Future Fashion: Innovative Materials and Technology" by Barcelona-based maomao publications. Amisha earned a B.F.A in Fine Arts from Carnegie Mellon University in 2007. www.amishagadani.com
VICTORIA VESNA (artist and Director of the Art|Sci Center) presents her recent collaborative work on Birdsong Diamond Japan, created with Dr. Charles Taylor (evolutionary biologist, UCLA), Dr. Takashi Ikegami (physicist, Univ. of Tokyo), Dr. Hiroo Iwata (engineer, EMP), and EMP PhD students. Bird Song Diamond is an interactive installation based on long-term research (2011-present) allowing multifaceted, interdisciplinary perspectives — uniquely connecting the nodes of evolutionary biology, artificial intelligence, spatial sound, mechatronic art and interactive technologies.
Jason Fahrion, Fasih Ahsan with UCLA IGEM, and Mick Lorusso
October 22, 2015
Workshop | 5-7pm
UCLA Art|Sci Gallery
5th Floor, California Nanosystems Institute
Through the projects of artist Jason Fahrion, who raises silkworms in his garage on local mulberry leaves, and the experiments of UCLA iGEM to genetically engineer unique types of silk for medicine and design, Seres Makers of Silk introduces participants to the processes involved in the production and transformation of silk. We will physically examine and compare silk samples from the lab and studio, while also watching live silk worms and learning how IGEM spins synthetic silk. And by listening to data sonification of DNA sequences from different organisms including spiders and silkworms, we will consider the possibilities and difficulties in genetically engineering silk for future applications.
Bio-Artist KATHY HIGH will give a public presentation on her creative work in the emerging field of biological art, a field referred to as "bioart". She will introduce her influences and her interests and amazement with bio-art history.
Kathy High is an internationally recognized, award winning interdisciplinary artist from New York currently working with living systems, animals, and biology and art. She produces videos, sculptures and installations around issues of gender and technology, pursues queer and feminist inquiries into areas of bio-science, science fiction, and animal studies.
Her works have been shown in festivals, galleries and museums nationally and abroad, including the Guggenheim Museum, Museum of Modern Art, Lincoln Center and Exit Art (NYC), the Science Gallery, (Dublin), NGBK, (Berlin), MASS MoCA (North Adams), Videotage Art Space and Para-Site Gallery (Hong Kong), Festival Transitio_MX (Mexico), among others. She has received awards for her works including grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2010), the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council for the Arts.
She has had artist residencies with SymbioticA, art and science residency at the University of Western Australia (2009-20), the Bioart Society of Finland, Helsinki and Kilpisjarvi, Finland (2013) and in Hong Kong with the Asian Arts Council (2005).
Her UCLA exhibition opening April 16 is Waste Matters: You Are My Future and explores immune systems as autopoiesis, capable of maintaining themselves, looking at research in fecal microbial transplants and gut biomes to better understand the important function of bacteria in our bodies. This project looks at the metaphor of interspecies love, immunology and bacteria as players.
HOX ZODIAC DINNER (BETA) Victoria Vesna and Siddarth Ramakrishnan
04 DECEMBER 2014
CNSI ART|SCI GALLERY
Hox Zodiac Dinner is an on-going collaboration between Art|Sci director Victoria Vesna and neuroscientist Siddharth Ramakrishnan. Inspired by the Hox genes which codify body plans across the animal kingdoms, Hox Zodiac offered the audience a seat at the dinner table, enabling conversations on mutations, morphology, and metamorphosis, on humans in relation to animals and the food we eat, on animals feral and laboratory raised. This first-ever iteration of the participatory project aimed to heighten consciousness about our animal bodies, mutations, art, and science.
LASER:
October 2, 2014 7pm
Art|Sci Gallery
CNSI 5th floor
From the work of artist Jason Fahrion, who raises silkworms in his garage on local mulberry leaves, to UCLA iGEM's quest for genetically modifying bacteria to produce fluorescent silk, a cabinet of curiosities at the Art|Sci Gallery weaves a story of silk, and of the biological factories that humans have carefully cultivated to manufacture it.
EVENTS ARE FREE and light refreshments are on the house. Parking is in lot 9, by the hour $12 all day. Drive up to the top of the parking structure to reach the entrance of the building.
Suzanne Anker is a visual artist and theorist working at the intersection of art and the biological sciences. Her works include digital sculpture, installations and large-scale photography. Her project, Genetic Seed Bank, demonstrates the recuperative and adaptive power of nature and the potential for organic materials as a medium for artistic expression.
“The Wandering Gene and the Indian Princess: Race, Religion, and DNA”
Thursday, February 16th
3:30 – 5:00 pm
IPAM Lecture Hall, Portola Plaza Building
Book Summary
The wandering gene is a breast cancer mutation, BRCA1.185delAG, which is characteristic of Jews. The book is a historical and scientific investigation that ranges from ancient Palestine and the Spanish Inquisition to the modern DNA lab and the Kingdom Hall of the Jehovah's Witnesses. At the heart of the narrative is a young Hispano woman who struggles with breast cancer until her proud and untimely death.
Copies of Jeff Wheelwright’s book will be available for purchase and the author will be present for signing
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