 |
| Proof of Attendance |
This was a very fun event, and extremely useful for this
class. LASER stands for Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous, which as the
name suggests, is a evening get together of art and science professionals,
where they give a short presentation on their research. This event constituted
of professionals from different fields explaining how using both art and
science together has been crucial for their research. The cool thing about this
event was that all the presenters are connected to UCLA such as professors,
students or artists in residency here, so you get to exposure to the research
that is being done here.
 |
| Agent Unicorn |
The event began with a presentation from Dr. Claudia
Schnugg, a researcher who works in the intersecting space of science and art.
She is currently research the benefits of collaboration of artists and
scientists to each other as well as to the institutions that host these
collaborations. She if focusing on the exact mechanisms that will help these
benefits arise. One very important benefit that these collaborations seem to
have, is that it allows the scientist or the artist to gain a outside opinion
on their work. An example she delved into was Agent Unicorn, which is a unicorn
shaped headset tracking the user’s brain activity, and using that to record
events when the user is interested. This device can allow researchers to better
study the minds of children with ADHD.
 |
| Dr. Hans Barnard |
The following presentation was made by Dr. Hans Barnard, an
Archaeology professor at UCLA. He presented about his research on the painted
Pan-Grave bucranium from Mostagedda, Egypt. Egypt has had influence from many
culture, however this culture was previously not known about. Very little is
still known about them, and archaeologists are
still unsure as to why they moved to Egypt or why they left. They had a
distinctive and interesting burial practice, where next to each persons grave
was a grave containing cattle, whose skulls would be painted. This particular
artifact is a cow skull with some writing. This is the only piece of writing
obtained from this culture, and through scientific techniques they were able to
make the writing legible. Although they couldn’t interpret the meaning, they
were able to figure out that the people had moved from southern Sudan, as it
had a similar dialect to a language spoken there. This was a great example of
how science can be used to study art.
 |
| Pan-Grave bucranium |
 |
| Burial sites of the Pan-Grave |
 |
| Recovered writing from the skull |
My favorite presentation of the evening was by Behnaz
Farahi. She is an artist who works in the intersection of three fields:
architecture, fashion and technology. This mix seems crazy when you see it,
because fashion and technology are so far from each other. However, her work is
truly exemplary. She gave us two examples of her work, and what I draw from her
work is that she is trying to give life to things that we would usually think
to be stationary or static. One example of her work was an interactive ceiling,
which had sensors to sense people walking below, and come closer or go further
away from the ground accordingly. So the ceiling would constantly change shape,
and be almost lifelike. Another example, was of wearable technology, in which
the clothes we wear are installed with sensors tracking our facial expressions
and either changing shape accordingly. The vision behind this work is simply phenomenal.
 |
| Behnaz Farahi |
I would highly recommend attending this event. Not only do
you get exposure to the research that is happening in different fields right
now, but you also get to see some very cool creations. This is also extremely
useful in understanding this class as, because this event is completely focused
on the practical application of the collaboration between artists and
scientists.
Comments
Post a Comment