A bio-micrometeorologist, an artist, and a visual artist/filmmaker will speak on topics ranging from “Geophysical Dance” and “The Tethered Image” to “Tuba Thieves” at the next UC Davis Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous (LASER) event, set Wednesday night, May 24 in the Music Building, UC Davis campus.

They are 

• Bio-micrometeorologist Ian Faloona, associate professor in the Department of Land, Water and Air Resources, who will speak on “The Universality of Our Fluid Motions: An Experiment in Geophysical Dance”
• Artist Chris Fraser of San Francisco, whose topic is “The Tethered Image”and
• Visual artist/filmmaker Alison O'Daniel of Los Angeles, who will discuss “Quasi-Closed Captions: The Tuba Thieves.”

The event, free and open to the public, takes place from 5:30 to 7 p.m. in Room 115 of the Music Building. A reception begins at 5:30, with the speaker presentations booked at 6 p.m., followed by conversations and rapid fire sharing at 6:45. Reservations are recommended; see ucdlaser03.eventbrite.com. 

The LASER events engage the public as participants in conversations with artists, designers, scientists and technologies making significant contributions to their fields, according to coordinators Jiayi Young, assistant professor, Department of Design; and Diane Ullman, professor of entomology, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.

Faloona, who holds a doctorate in meteorology from Pennsylvania State University, studied physical chemistry at UC Santa Cruz and conducted research in computational chemistry at Los Alamos National Lab before earning his doctorate. He served as a postdoctoral researcher in the Advanced Study Program at the National Center for Atmospheric Research before joining the UC Davis faculty.

Over the past two years, Faloona has begun teaching a course that explores the relationship between human movement and the fluid motions on the rotating Earth. “The ostensible goal of the course, aside from fostering novel modes of creativity, is to build a physical and visceral relationship between each individual and the greater Earth system, deepening comprehension of our relationship to the environment as manifest in the great fluid motions of sea and sky,” Faloona  says. He will discuss some of the preliminary findings of these experiments and search for improved questions to ask for the future experiments.

Alison O'Daniel works across film, sculpture, performance and music, inviting audiences and collaborators "to navigate, de-construct and re-imagine sound."  Her current film, “The Tuba Thieves,” is comprised of narrative film, performance and sculptures based on commissioned musical scores made in response to an epidemic of tuba thefts occurring in Los Angeles high schools. Her solo exhibitions have included Art In General, New York, and Samuel Freeman Gallery, Los Angeles. Among publications showcasing her work: The New York Times, Artforum, Los Angeles Times, and ArtReview. O'Daniel received her bachelor's degree in fibers and material studies from the Cleveland Institute of Art; a post-graduate diploma, fine arts, from Goldsmiths College, University of London; and her master's degree in studio art from UC Irvine.

Chris Fraser, who teaches photography at Mills College, Oakland, is an artist who makes perceptual apparatuses and environments modeled on historic image-making technologies. To Fraser, photographs are unbound by the time and place of their origin and able to meet anyone, anywhere at anytime. “Although much is gained through this freedom, distance is placed between the objects of the world and the images we make of them,” Fraser says. Through his work with apparatuses such as the camera obscura, Fraser says he puts “objects and their images back in dialogue with each other, sacrificing broad distribution for an experience of image that is local and ephemeral.” He will focus his talk on the relationship between objects and images, and how images are regarded when they are physically tethered in space and time to their object and the shifts that occur when the two drift apart. His talk will be accompanied by a live demo in a dark theatre.

The LASER events at UC Davis were launched by the UC Davis Art/Science Fusion Program, co-founded and co-directed by entomologist/artist Diane Ullman of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, and self-described "rock artist" Donna Billick of UC Davis. Artist/plant scientist Anna Davidson of the UC Davis Art/Science Fusion Program recently moderated and coordinated the LASER events.