Berkeley Big Bang 2008

Berkeley Big Bang 2008 is a three-day symposium and festival of new media and art hosted by the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive and the Berkeley Center for New Media. Leonardo/ISAST will host a full day of panels and events on Tuesday, June 3rd, including an exhibition of student artwork, organized by Piero Scaruffi.

"Remix: From Science to Art and Back in the Digital Age"
co-hosted by Leonardo/ISAST and the Berkeley Art Museum

Schedule of events:

Introduction by Steve Wilson, Leonardo board member since 1983, celebrating forty years of Leonardo: The International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology.

"Osmosis": What Can the Arts Do for the Sciences?

Art-Science interaction is a two-way process. The impact of science and technology on the arts is much discussed and well-documented. This panel seeks to examine the influence of the arts on the sciences, and the benefits that science can derive from the arts.

"Osmosis" Panelists:

- Bronac Ferran, Writer, Researcher, Instructor at Royal College of Art in London, Past director of the Interdisciplinary Arts at Arts Council England
- Melinda Rackham, Executive Director of the Australian Network for Art and Technology
- Jim Crutchfield, Complexity and Chaos Researcher, Professor of Physics at UC Davis, Co-founder and Scientific Director Art and Science laboratory
- Chris Chafe, Composer, Duca Family Professor at Stanford University, Director Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics

Brilliant Noise: How Data Becomes Experience for Artists and for Scientists

Most information about the world we live in is now mediated by instruments. This data is often visualized and sonified, both to aid analysis and to communicate with other researchers, but artists, too, can make this data meaningful and "sensual." The same data sets can lead to very different kinds of work. One person's noise is another person's sound.

Brilliant Noise Panelists:

- Camille Utterback, Interactive Video Artist, Inventor, and Founder of Creative Nerve
- Michael Joaquin Grey, New Media Artist and Inventor
- Laura Peticolas, Geophysical Researcher at Space Sciences Lab, UC Berkeley
- Douglas Kahn, Auditory and Sound Culture Historian, Director of Technocultural Studies, UC Davis

Free-form meeting of interested audience members with Leonardo ISAST board members during the lunch break.

The New Sensuality: Epistemologies of the Very, Very Small

Human cognition is bounded by the inadequacy of human senses to allow us sensory contact with the world on scales larger or smaller than ourselves. To perceive the nano world one needs extended senses or new senses. The nano world requires a new ontology and a new epistemology.

The New Sensuality Panelists:

- Ruth West, New Media artist, Director Visual Analytics and Interactive Technologies National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research Center, University of California, San Diego
- Wayne Lanier, Microbiologist, San Francisco Exploratorium
- Jennifer Frazier, Project Director of the Visualization Laboratory, San Francisco Exploratorium

Closing event of the two-day conference for the audience to mingle with the speakers of the various panels and with Leonardo board members. Winners of the first Leonardo Art/Science Student Contest will also be presented.

Leonardo Art & Climate project:

The Leonardo Lovely Weather Art and Climate Project and Leonardo Publications are inviting papers, special issue proposals and book proposals that deal with artistic approaches to weather, climate and their modifications.

As a result of massive urbanization and the development of the modern lifestyle, it has been possible to observe a deterioration of sensitivity to meteorology and climate. The existence of weather and climate is similar to that of landscape which does not exist in nature without the mind to perceive it as such. The perception of weather and climate, as well as that of landscape is the perception of anarrangement, a configuration of the real. Weather and climate are thus multidimensional phenomenons that include the combined contributions of nature, culture, history and geography, but also the imaginary and the symbolic. Art could help us to question our perceptions and relationships to weather, climate and their changes.

Leonardo seeks to document the works of artists, researchers, and scholars involved in the exploration of weather and climate, and is soliciting texts for Leonardo, Leonardo Transactions, special issue proposals for the Leonardo Electronic Almanac and book proposals for the Leonardo Book Series.

Sub-themes:

The following sub-themes have been defined (not restrictive):

- Environments: weather and climate works enabling new
experiences of environments

- Meteorological and climate sciences: artworks
questioning and linking to these sciences

- Weather and climate technologies: artworks
questioning and linking to these technologies

- Social and political action: weather and climate
works which may spur new thinking for action on environments

- Sustainability: artworks engaged in alternative
energy resources or climate memories for example

- Weather and climate perceptions and/or narratives:
poetical and/or political perceptions; narratives of weather
and climate phenomena

The "Lovely Weather" Editorial group on Art & Climate is: John Cunningham, Annick Bureaud, Ramon Guardans, Drew Hemment, Julien Knebusch (coordinator), Roger Malina, Jacques Mandelbrojt, Andrea Polli and Janine Randerson.

A discussion on the topic, moderated by Janine Randerson is being held on the YASMIN network:
http://www.media.uoa.gr/yasmin

the opening of the Chinese language Leonardo Abstracts Service (LABS) database

The Chinese language LABS, organized by Ken Fields at the China Electronic Music Center at China's Central Conservatory of Music, is for abstracts of
art/science/technology MA or PHD theses written in Chinese and can be found at: http://china-labs.daohaus.org

The Chinese-language peer review panel for 2006/2007 includes:

Ma Gang, Central Academy of Fine Art, BeijingZhang Peili, China Academy of Fine Art, Hangzhou
Zhang Xiaofu, Central Conservatory of Music, Beijing
Zhu Qingsheng, Peking University, Beijing
Lothar Spree, Tongji University, Shanghai
Kenneth Fields, Central Conservatory of Music, Beijing

Thesis Abstract submittal forms for Chinese language abstracts can be found at:

http://china-labs.daohaus.org

Leonardo Abstracts Service (LABS) Bi-annual submission deadlines (on-going) are: 30 June and 31 December

Leonardo Abstracts Service (LABS), consisting of the English-language database, Spanish-language database and Chinese-language database, is a comprehensive collection of Ph.D., Masters and MFA thesis abstracts on topics in the emerging intersection between art, science and technology. Individuals receiving advanced degrees in the arts (visual, sound, performance, text), computer sciences, the sciences and/or technology that in some way investigate philosophical, historical or critical applications of science or technology to the arts are invited to submit abstracts of their theses for consideration.

Further information on LABS can be found at:
http://www.leonardo.info/isast/journal/calls/labsprojectcall.html