From: natashavita@earthlink.net
Date: Tue Apr 22 2003 - 14:25:47 MDT
Discussion on the local ExI-LA list between Nadia Reed, Patrick Wilken,
Christopher Camp and myself may be of interst for extropies on this list:
http://www.artcenter.edu/williamson/
Pasadena institutions meet at
the intersection of art, science, and engineering
A collaboration between two Pasadena institutions -- California Institute
of Technology and Art Center College of Design -- is investigating new
aesthetic possibilities at the intersection of art, science, and
engineering.
Organized by Caltech's National Science Foundation (NSF) Center for
Neuromorphic Systems Engineering (CNSE) and Art Center's Alyce de Roulet
Williamson Gallery, the project connects six contemporary artists with the
knowledge and technology resources of CNSE. The results of this year-long
collaboration will be documented in NEURO, an exhibition and publication
scheduled to commence on both campuses in April, 2003.
At CNSE, scientists and engineers are working to translate our
understanding of biologic systems into a new class of electronic devices
that imitate the ways humans and animals sense and make sense of the world.
The ultimate goal of CNSE researchers is to enable the machines of the
future to interact with, learn from, and adapt to their environment with a
flexibility equivalent to that of living creatures. The Center's work is
cross-fertilized by researchers in a wide variety of fields, including
systems neurophysiology, psychophysics, computational neurobiology,
microelectronics and micromachining, optoelectronics, learning theory and
pattern recognition, control, locomotion, sensory-driven autonomous
behavior and systems. The main testbeds of the center are human-machine
interfaces, autonomous vehicles and neuroprosthetics.
According to Center director and Caltech Professor Pietro Perona, "The
National Science Foundation encourages us to make our science and
technology accessible to everyone. Through the work of talented artists we
can reach people who may feel intimidated by our scientific lingo. We also
hope to be able to look at our work with new eyes: artists can provide us
with fresh insight into the meaning of what we do." Perona, whose
investigations are in human vision, has studied the way in which artists
organize visual material as part of his research.
At Art Center, Williamson Gallery director Stephen Nowlin has emphasized
the common borderlines of art and science through a decade-long series of
crossover exhibitions. Artists who use digital and interactive technology
in their work have been featured in such shows as "Digital Mediations"
(1995), "Telematic Connections" (2001), and "GHz: The Post-Analog Object in
L.A." (2002), while the subject of mathematics was surveyed in Charles and
Ray Eames' "Mathematica" (2000) and astronomical observations by
artist/astronomer Russell Crotty formed the gallery's contribution to the
2001 city-wide "Universe" festival.
Says Nowlin, "Science and technology are undermining many of our
established social and intellectual conventions, and as a result human
culture is moving toward new definitions and opportunities, as well as
dilemmas. Such a nexus of change always beckons artists, and the
collaborative nature of this project will combine contemporary science and
art into works that are uniquely about and of this new century."
The artists and scientists participating in NEURO include Pietro Perona,
Director of the Center for Neuromorphic Systems Engineering, Caltech; Ken
Goldberg, artist and professor of industrial engineering and computer
science, University of California, Berkeley; John Bender, a graduate
student in the bioengineering lab of Michael Dickinson, Caltech; Ilan Lobel
and Karl Chen, undergraduates in Industrial Engineering and Operations
Research and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science respectively,
University of California at Berkeley; Luis Goncalves, Research Scientist,
Idealab; Martin Kersels, artist and co-director of the art program at
California Institute of the Arts; Peter Schröder, professor of computer
science and applied and computational mathematics, Caltech; Jennifer
Steinkamp, media artist and University of California, Los Angeles faculty;
Al Seckel, researcher in illusions, perception, and cognitive science;
Simon Penny, professor of arts and engineering, and director of the Arts,
Computation and Engineering graduate program, University of California,
Irvine; computational neuroethologist Malcolm MacIver from Joel Burdick's
robotics and bioengineering lab, Caltech; Jeffrey Ridenour, Graduate
Student in Artificial Intelligence, School of Information and Computer
Science, UCI; Jessica Bronson, video artist and Calarts faculty; Bill Bell,
light artist; artist/architect Christian Möller, UCLA Department of
Design|Media Arts; Sean Crowe, software engineer; Pierre Moreels, Caltech
graduate student in electrical engineering; Javier Movellan and Marni
Bartlett, The Machine Perception Laboratory at the University of California
San Diego's Institute for Neural Computation; Shinsuke Shimojo, researcher
in the biology of perception and cognition, Caltech; and Stephen Nowlin,
Williamson Gallery director, Art Center. Caltech staff on the project
include Jill Andrews, Assistant to the Provost for Educational Outreach;
Peter Mendenhall, Outreach Coordinator, Division of Engineering & Applied
Science; and CNSE Education and Outreach Coordinator Rachel Zimmerman
Brachman.
A series of NEURO artists' presentations and discussions will take place at
the Beckman Institute Auditorium, Caltech, from 7:30 to 9:00 pm. On May 27,
artists Jennifer Steinkamp, Jessice Bronson, and Christian Möller will
present their work. On June 3 a panel discussion, "Issues at the
Intersection of Art and Science," will include Simon Penny, NEURO artist
and professor of arts and engineering, University of California, Irvine;
computational neuroethologist Malcolm MacIver, Caltech; Jill Andrews,
Assistant to the Provost for Educational Outreach, Caltech; Stephen Nowlin,
NEURO curator and Director, Williamson Gallery, Art Center; David Kremers,
conceptual artist in biology, Caltech; and others to be announced. For more
information on these presentations, call (626) 395-8522.
Worldwide, a number of institutions have begun to embrace the work of
artists whose departure from the tenets of 20th Century modernism is marked
by their employment of new computer-based technologies and, in particular,
by sensory modes that allow spectators and artworks to interact. Some of
this "media art" received its first level of support from computer
trade-shows, and was only slowly acknowledged in art museums and
educational institutions. Now, a number of museums and galleries are
recognizing that just as art changed drastically in response to the
Industrial Revolution and scientific discoveries at the end of the 19th
Century, so too is art changing as a function of the startling developments
leading from the late 20th century's digital revolution to 21st century
science. Beyond technology itself, artists are engaging with newly emerging
social and intellectual implications as science questions many of
humankind's fundamental perceptions and conventions of thought.
To accommodate this new art, hybrid institutions have begun to emerge such
as ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany, ARS Electronica Museum, in Linz, Austria, the
InterCommunication Center (ICC) in Tokyo, Eyebeam in New York, and
Hexagram, in Montreal, all institutions that merge the study of culture and
technology with new developments in art and science. And, as noted in the
March/April 2002 issue of "Museum News," the journal of the American
Association of Museums, Art Center's Williamson Gallery is among a handful
of "early adopter" institutions that have embraced the enterprise of
art/science/technology, including also New York's Guggenheim Museum, the
Whitney Museum of American Art, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
While largely the product of affordable computer-based technologies that
are also dramatically affecting worldwide change, the current art/science
interface is preceded by a longer history, one extending at least to the
late 1960s and the worldwide Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.)
movement originated by artist Robert Rauschenberg and engineer Billy
Kluver. Caltech had its own version of E.A.T. in the early 70s, and was
host to a number of artist/scientist pairings. In a sense, the NEURO
project is a return to that moment of inspiration from over thirty years
ago, when it was acknowledged that a spark of unexpected creativity can
result for both art and science if each discipline is encouraged to
stimulate the other.
NEURO is supported in part by the Engineering Research Centers Program of
the National Science Foundation under Award Number EEC-9402726, through the
Center for Neuromorphic Systems Engineering at the California Institute of
Technology.
Williamson Gallery exhibitions are funded in part by grants from the
Pasadena Art Alliance and The Virginia Steele Scott Foundation.
___________________________
Call 310 226-8487 if you want to join any of us this Friday!
Natasha
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