Event 2: LASER (Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous) [April 21st]

I attended LASER April  21st as my second event because I thought it would be cool to get a variety of perspectives on the combination of science and art. I do have to say it was quite an enlightening experience. There were 8 speakers and all of them were amazing, but I want to highlight my favorites.

Marco Pinter's Lecture on Appropriation of Choreographic Strategies

Marco Pinter talked about his integration of robotics and dance and it was quite fascinating. A lot of his videos consisted of using robotics in unique ways to show different types of movement. The specific one I enjoyed was Object Permanence in which he used  robotic like sculptures with digital movement to capture a new type of Rube Goldberg machine, if you will, with digital movement being used as the forces that drive the sculptures to move. Together, it brought a new way of seeing digital and physical interact.

Shannon Willis Lecture about her separation from her daughter.

Shannon Willis gave a great speech about her pursuing her career and  how she is separated from her daughter because of it. It gave her inspiration to create a piece of her recording herself while watching videos of her daughter. There is deep connection between her and her daughter that is apparent in the video and I thought it was of great social commentary to show how technology has allowed us to see the world in a virtual way and still allows us to explore emotions that we feel even though they are not face to face interactions.

Toni Dove talking about Lucid Possession 

Finally, Toni Dove talked about her work of Lucid Possession which is a live cinema performance that follows a programmer who becomes famous on the internet but is bogged down by voices in her head. The artistic aspect of this comes from the characters dress which is part robotic and visuals are projected onto the dress.

Professor Vesna and I at the LASER event

This was a very interesting event being able to see all different types of integration of art and science and it gave me a better perspective on how the two combined can create entertainment for others.