YLEM blog

LASER is a bimonthly series of lectures and presentations in the San Francisco Bay Area organized by Piero Scaruffi on behalf of Leonardo/ISAST. Space is limited. To RSVP email p (at) scaruffi (dot) com

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

6:45-7:15pm: Thomas Zimmerman IBM Almaden Research Center, on “Music as the Mother of Invention”

Many of my inventions started as input devices for musical instruments. The DataGlove was a means to play air guitar. The Personal Area Network was a means to play air drums. I shall discuss the development of input devices for electronic musical instruments and how they contributed to inventions.

7:15-7:45pm: William Hsu and Matt Heckert of the Multimedia & Visualization Lab at SFSU on “Sound Machines and Computer Control”

An overview of several mechanical sound installations and performances they have collaborated on over a 5 year period: the Rotifiers/Centripetal Sound, the Fencers, and the Chainboxes.

7:45-8:00pm: Break

8:00-8:20pm: Sharon Siskin, of WEAD

Over the past 20 years my studio art has had clear and sometimes subtle overlaps with science. Some recent projects make visual the detritus our family produces in the process of raising twin daughters. I will be showing documentation of a variety of recent and past gallery projects; from work that resulted in the creation of a garden at an AIDS hospice, to installations that combined reused, altered X-rays and scientific paraphernalia to address issues related to food and my ethnic identity, loss, memory and healing.

8:20-8:40pm: Deborah Munk, of the San Francisco Dump

An overview of the Artist in Residence Program at SF Recycling & Disposal and will focus on a few of the 70 artists who have had residencies. I will also discuss recycling, the Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch and sustainability.

8:40pm: Piero Scaruffi on the next Leonardo Art/Science evening

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

For more information, visit: www.leonardo.info/isast/laser.html

Torrey views Michael Wright's art in Second Life

Michael Wright is featured in a one person exhibition on the LearningTimes Squirrel Island in the virtual world Second Life opening Aug 1 2008. The exhibit which will remain up for several months consists of real life works that have been upload to the virtual environment and displayed in two different galleries on the island. Dome West 15,166,22 and Tail Gallery 169,213,28. If you use Second Life, click here to visit his work.

LearningTimes, LLC is a privately held organization that is actively engaged in designing and building learning programs, communities and events, as well as the platforms, environments, applications and marketing strategies that make them successful.

One of their core competencies is the designing and producing of learning environments, programs and communities that connect people with other people, online. They believe in utilizing the Web to enable rich collaboration, vibrant community activity, and meaningful interaction between humans, especially across distances.

Michael Wright is a painter who began to explore Digital Media in the mid 1980s on an Amiga computer. He exhibited his first Digital Prints in 1989. He has exhibited digital and traditional works on a national & international level over the past 38 years. He is currently exploring art and art education in virtual worlds.

Wright’s digital work is represented in “The Art of the Digital Age” my Bruce Wands, “Going Digital”  by Joseph Nalven and JD Jarvis, “Computer Graphics World” ‘25 year Retrospective of Digital Art” in its January 2002 issue and in  the magazine’s “Portfolio” section of the November, 2001, issue. The article was called “Pixel Perfect: Michael Wright”. Wright is profiled in “Computer Graphics Companion” edited by Jeffrey McConnell Anthony Ralston and Edwin Reilly. His work also appears  in  “The Computer in the Visual Arts” by Anne Morgan Spalter of Brown University, published by Addison Wesley and is also published in Linda Jacob’s seminal book, “CyberArts: Exploring Art & Technology”. He and his work have been featured in Wired, Micro Publishing News, Computer Graphics & Applications and Agent X, Television Tokyo. Wright’s digital prints are in the collection of the State Museum in Novorsibirsk, Russia and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London UK, the repository for British art book & print collections.

Wright is a professor in the Digital Media and Liberal Studies Programs at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles. He is  a member of SIGGRAPH, YLEM,  ASCI,  ACM and the Los Angeles Printmaking Society.   He is the recipient of the Otis Award of Excellence in Arts Education and served as Art Gallery Chair for ACM SIGGRAPH 2003 in San Diego California. He was a guest artist at the SIGGRAPH 2004 & 2005 conferences in Los Angeles where he created the “Portrait Virus” at the SIGGRAPH Guerilla Studio. Wright was one of six resident artists invited to SIGGRAPH’S first Artists in Residence Program at SIGGRAPH 2007, in San Diego.  Wright as also curated into the SIGGRAPH international exhibition “Global Eyes.”

MORE INFO

Is there decision-making strength in numbers? Professor Ken Goldberg, of UC Berkeley, and his students are looking into questions raised by robots and social networks - and working on a new class of interfaces and games based on networked robots and cameras that quantify a measure of ‘leadership’ to bring about group discovery and decision-making based on the power of crowds.

Ken will report on 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 study how robots can assist in monitoring the natural environment. Ken will 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 describe the Berkeley Center for New Media, a highly cross-disciplinary center with over 110 affiliated faculty from 30 Cal Departments.

Date & Time: Monday, August 18, 7:00pm-9:00pm

Location: Atlas Cafe
3049 20th St, San Francisco, CA 94110

Cost: Free.

About Down to a Science: Down to a Science is a casual forum where leading scientists discuss their research with the public at a local cafe. After a short presentation from a scientist, we have Q&A leading to a dialogue. Speakers come prepared to get you involved in the discussion. DtaS features a blog with information about each topic. All this in an fun and easy atmosphere. You have never experienced Science like this!

Expressions Gallery presents a personal appearance by distinguished video artist and electronic musician Sylvia Pengilly showing and talking about her abstract animations.

When: 7-9 pm, Saturday, August 16, 2008; Admission: Free
Where: Expressions Gallery
2035 Ashby Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94703 (near the Ashby BART Station)
Public Info: 510-644-4930, expressionsgallery@msn.com
www.expressionsgallery.org
Contact: Loren Means, lorenmea@pacbell.net

Sylvia Pengilly has always been fascinated by the correlation between what the ear hears and what the eye sees. Because of this, many of her works integrate both musical and visual elements. Mathematics and physics, including Chaos Theory, Quantum Mechanics, and Superstrings, are of particular interest, and frequently provide the basis for her works, which have been presented at several festivals, including many SEAMUS National Conferences, the “Not Still Art” Festival in New York, and ICMC. She is professor emeritus of the College of Music at Loyola University, New Orleans, where she taught theory and composition for many years, also founded and directed the electronic music composition studio.

Program:

1. Elemental Chaos (6:10, 1992) an experimental video inspired by the mathematics of Chaos theory.
2. DarkPlaces (7:00,1995) a video of a performance work in which the image of the performer/protagonist appears as a silhouette, sometimes stenciled from graphics, and at other times from videotape images.
3. Patterns of Organic Energy (5:46, 2004) a music/video work in which the sounds used for the music were derived directly from keyframes of the video, thus creating an intimate link between video and audio.
4. The Outer Edge of Possibility (11:10, 2005) a collaboration between Sylvia (video) and Michael Rhoades (music).
5. Unperceived Dimensions (6:55, 2006). Just beyond our perception lie unperceived realms of both sight and sound.
6. Release! (11:13, 2007). created by extracting visual segments of the waveforms, processing and animating them, then synchronizing them with the music they represent.

Robot Art: A New Kind of Art Leonel Moura
Chance in Robotic Painting: Max Chandler

Link past issues and pdf downloads

The YLEM Journal was reviewed in Leonardo’s on-line journal.
link to the review

EvoMUSART 2009 is the seventh workshop of the EvoNet working group on Evolutionary Music and Art. Following the success of previous events and the growth of interest in the field, the main goal of EvoMUSART 2009 is to bring together researchers who are using biologically inspired techniques for artistic tasks, providing the opportunity to promote, present and discuss ongoing work in this area.

The workshop will be held from 15-17 April, 2009 in Tubingen, Germany as part of the EvoStar event.

Accepted papers will be presented orally at the workshop and included in the EvoWorkshops proceedings, published by Springer Verlag in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science series.

Details at http://evostar.na.icar.cnr.it/EvoWorkshops/EvoMUSART/EvoMUSART.html

Frank Garvey opens up the OmniCircus to the public for an YLEM forum.

September 3rd, 7pm.

The OmniCircus is located at 550 Natoma Street, between Mission and Howard and 6th and 7th Streets, in San Francisco’s South of Market (SoMa) district.

The door is on Russ Street.

OmniCircus presents our NEXT EVENT-

Join Frank Garvey plus other OmniCircus collaborators

Friday August 15 @ 7pm @ OmniCircus

Over 20 years in the making, Frank Garvey and OmniCircus present the WALL of ASHES installation: open for public viewing!

Garvey will discuss his surreal anthem to the urban night- a multimedia installation with paintings, sculptures, robots, music, photography, and video.

This installation will be open to the public most Saturday afternoons 12noon - 4pm, with special evening events TBA. OmniCircus DVDs, CDs and publications will be available for sale.

$5 suggested donation
Call 415-701-0686 for more information.

The OmniCircus is located at 550 Natoma Street, between Mission and Howard and 6th and 7th Streets, in San Francisco’s South of Market (SoMa) district.

The door is on Russ Street.

Cochlea Surrounded by Waves, mixed media, 30?x 36" By Julie Newdoll

Journey into the Senses
An exhibition of prints and paintings by
Julie Newdoll

In the grand showrooms of
creativeliving@Petra Hellas
Opening reception Saturday, August 16, 2008 4:00 p.m.
The artist is flying in from California for this special event
Unit 7, Park Road Business Centre, Bacup, Lancashire, England
Tel. (+44) 01706 876102