- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The next LASER-UC Davis event, or Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous, is set for Thursday night, Aug. 7 in Room 3001 of the Plant and Environmental Sciences building, UC Davis campus. Sponsored by the UC Davis Art Science Fusion Program, it will begin with socializing and networking from 6:30 to 7 p.m., and then followed by four presentations, announced coordinator/moderator Anna Davidson, an instructor for the UC Davis Art Science Fusion Program. The event is free and open to the public.
The program:
7 to 7:25:
Eve Warnock and Kate Harrington, “We Are HERD: Exploring Animal and Human Herding Behavior Through Research, Scenario and Performance”
7:25-7:50:
Frank Pietronigro, “The Expansion of the Arts, Humanities and Culture in Space Exploration
7:50-8:10
Break. (During the break anyone in the audience currently working within the intersections of art and science will have 30 seconds to share their work).
8:10-8:35
Robert Buelteman, “Energetic Photogrammetry: A History of Photographic Technology”
8:35-9 p.m.
Robert Edgar. “Animating the Memory Theatre”
9 to 9:30: Discussion
About the presentations:
Eve Warnock and Kate Harrington
Eve Warnock is a multimedia artist who melds ancient techniques of art-making with modern technologies. She is a costume and set designer as well as a director for live performances and films. She received her bachelor of arts degree in arts and humanities from The Ohio State University, and a master of fine arts from UC Santa Cruz's Digital Arts and New Media program. Her work explores the boundaries of human and animal relationships, dissecting primal instincts as a way to reconnect humans with each other and to the animal kingdom. Her work has been shown all over the United States in diverse venues, from the street to the museum, from the gallery to the guerrilla.
Frank Pietronigro
Frank Pietronigro, an interdisciplinary artist, will provide a general overview of some of the groups, individuals and institutions involved in expanding the presence of the arts, humanities, and culture within the context of human space exploration while emphasizing the change of acronym from STEM education to STEAM education (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Music and Mathemetics). He will discuss his role as director of the Zero Gravity Arts Consortium and his current project: Space Wishes.
Pietronigro has flown twice under reduced gravity conditions, in 1998 and 2006, when he created multiple works using the media of painting, drawing, dance including microgravity drawings while blind folded, microgravity mobiles, kinetic text and graffitti based zero-gravity video works, drift paintings and dances in reduced gravity conditions.
Robert Buelteman
Robert Buelteman says that “As the medium evolves so must the artist." He creates unique energetic photograms inspired by Japanese ink-brush paintings and improvisational jazz. This includes high-voltage electricity and hand-delivered fiber optic light.
His journey as a photographic artist began in 1973 and has continued through multiple residencies including the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, the Santa Fe Institute, and Stanford University. During that time he worked in black and white landscape photography, ran a successful commercial studio in San Francisco's south-of-Market area, and now, using high-energy electrical discharges and fiber-optically delivered light, makes what he calls “Energetic Photograms.”
His art has received accolades from institutions as diverse as the U.S. Congress, the Commonwealth Club of California, Committee for Green Foothills, and the Natural Resources Defense Council. In recent years this art has been the subject of essays in 23 languages on six continents around the globe, and can be found in public and private collections worldwide, including the Yale University Art Museum, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Kleiner, Perkins, Caulfield & Byers, Bank of America, Adobe Systems, Stanford University, Xerox, and Nikon.
Robert Edgar
In his abstract, Robert Edgar, a senior instructional designer at Stanford University, says: "I introduce early memory theatre strategies, my own work with computers and memory theaters, and then my current work with my Simultaneous Opposites engine. The history of memory theaters provides analogs for the process of art itself. I'll show how I've worked through them to create a personal aesthetic.”
Edgar creates and employs software engines to examine mediated artifacts forged at his zone of proximal development. Robert's computer-based art engines include MERGEEMERGE (2013), Simultaneous Opposites (2008 – present), The Duchamp Examinations (2006), Memory Theatre Two (2003), Sand, or How Computers Imagine Truth in Cinema (1994), Living Cinema (1988), Memory Theatre One (1985), and Intersticies (1972). Robert holds an MFA from Syracuse University's College of Visual and Performing Arts. He grew up in Cocoa Beach, Fla., during the birth of the NASA Space Program (1958-1970).
The UC Davis Art/Science Fusion Program was founded by entomologist/artist Diane Ullman of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology and self-described "rock artist" Donna Billick.
The Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous (LASER) is a series of lectures and presentations on art, science and technology. Founded in 2008 by LASER Chair Piero Scaruffi on behalf of Leonardo/ISAST, LASERs are now presented at a number of venues: University of San Francisco, Stanford University, UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC Davis, UC Santa Cruz and a New York Studio.