[Leonardo/ISAST Network] LASER 05.12.08 with Ken Goldberg, Carlo Sequin, Rick Rinehart, Kris Paulsen and Trevor Paglen

[Leonardo/ISAST]

Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous (LASER)
Monday, May 12, 2008

6:00-10:00pm
SFSU downtown campus
San Francisco, CA

*Space is limited*. Please RSVP to Piero Scaruffi: p [at] scaruffi.com

Leonardo/ISAST and Piero Scaruffi present the third in the Leonardo Art 
Science Evening Rendezvous (LASER) series, featuring presentations by 
Ken Goldberg, Carlo Sequin, Richard Rinehart, Kris Paulsen and Trevor 
Paglen.

*6:00-6:30pm: Socializing/networking*

*6:30-6:45pm: Welcome by Jeff Babcock* (Executive Director of the 
International Center for the Arts, SFSU, and Leonardo/ISAST board 
member) and Piero Scaruffi

*6:45-7:15pm: Ken Goldberg*, Director of the Berkeley Center for New 
Media on "Robots as Naturalists"

Ken will present experiments and questions raised by robots and social 
networks, ranging from ouija boards to human "tele-actors," and tell a 
true story about how invasions of privacy led him and his students to 
investigate how robots can assist in monitoring the natural environment. 
he'll describe a robotic system they've deployed to assist the search 
for the ivory billed woodpecker, a bird of extreme interest to 
birdwatchers, ornithologists, and conservationists whose last confirmed 
sighting was in 1944. ken will also present the manifesto of the 
berkeley center for new media and propose a hopefully controversial 
definition of "media."

*7:15-7:45pm: Carlo Sequin, professor of computer science at UC 
Berkeley* on "Knotty Sculptures"

This presentation explores the use of simple knots as constructivist 
building blocks for abstract geometrical sculptures. One approach places 
simple n-foil knots on the n-sided faces of a Platonic or Archimedean 
polyhedron. Another investigation explores various generating principles 
for the construction of recursive knots. For instance, a simple crossing 
of two strands is replaced with a more complicated tangled version of 
two strands, and the process is then repeated recursively. A few of 
these designs conceived on a computer are then developed further to make 
actual 3D models on various rapid prototyping machines.

*7:45-8:00pm: Richard Rinehart*, Curator of the Berkeley Art Museum, on 
the forthcoming UC Berkeley "Big Bang" conference

Berkeley's New Media Center and Leonardo ISAST are organizing a two-day 
academic conference to be held in June 2008 at the Berkeley Museum. 
Richard Rinehart, Curator of the Berkeley Museum, will present the 
Berkeley day of the conference (first day of the conference).

*8:00-8:20pm: Kris Paulsen*, grad student at Berkeley Center for New 
Media on "Participation TV"

Kris will examine a sequence of projects from the 1960s to the present 
in which artists have worked to reverse the unidirectional structure of 
broadcast television. These artists feed back into the networks by 
disrupting broadcasts, "hijacking" programs through pseudo-events and 
hostile takeovers, and by developing their own multi-directional systems 
that challenge the television viewer's traditionally passive role. By 
exploiting the potential for liveness on television news, CCTV, and 
public access, the artists addressed in this talk attempt to put viewers 
into direct contact with the event and with the others who are watching 
- the network becomes a crowd.

*8:20-8:40pm: Trevor Paglen* of the Department of Geography University 
of California at Berkeley on "The Other Night Sky"

Artist/geographer Trevor Paglen will talk about his recent project to 
track and photograph 189 classified "moons" (reconnaissance satellites) 
in Earth orbit. Along the way, he introduces us to an international 
network of satellite observers, tracks the history of two "stealth" 
satellites, and contemplates the relationship between classical 
empiricism and democracy.

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

*Space is limited*. Please RSVP to Piero Scaruffi: p [at] scaruffi.com

/LASER is organized by Piero Scaruffi on behalf of Leonardo/The 
International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology 
(Leonardo/ISAST)//
/
http://www.scaruffi.com/leonardo/may2008.html

For more information about Leonardo programs and publications, visit: 
http://www.leonardo.info
 

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