Event 1: Eco-Centric Art & Science: Prophesies and Predictions Symposium

I attended the Eco-Centric Art & Science: Prophesies and Predictions Symposium at the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA. The symposium consisted of a series of speakers over a few hours. I was able to attend three talks: (1) the end of Charles Taylor - an evolutionary biologist, (2) Sophie Lampater, a curator at Swissnex, and (3) Olivia Osborne, a nano-toxicologist at UCLA.

I found Olivia Osborne’s talk to be the most engaging of the three so I will focus on hers for the majority of my blog post. I think Olivia’s talk was extremely relevant and tied to many of the themes and topics we have discussed in our course so far.

In her introduction for Olivia, Professor Vesna touched on her impression and connection to the bridging of the two fields of art and science. Olivia expanded on this throughout her talk in a few ways. I particularly liked her line when introducing herself: “You can’t just be one thing these days”. She started off by listing her science based achievements (PhD, etc.) but moved on to say that since moving to LA she has realized she is much more than just a scientist and push further to say that we all are much more than just one title. Much of her talk tied back to this multidisciplinary idea. I completely agree with her theory that the blending of fields and multidisciplinary projects are where the future of new and exciting knowledge lies.

I thought it was funny but also very useful when she described herself and her outlook as the phrase on the back of a Prius “Hybrid Synergy Drive” - saying that we need to be a hybrid among fields, we must have synergy at the same time, and we must always have drive to move forward.

One of her slides stood out to me in particular. I took a picture (attached) and as I looked around the auditorium, I saw a lot of other people taking pictures of it too so it must have struck a chord with many. It was the slide in which she highlighted the extreme importance and place for artistic engagement within science. In her talk she mentioned that starting with Research & Development and moving toward Dissemination of Knowledge - essentially the loop could just stop there and not continue. However this is the point when the implementation of Artistic Engagement & Knowledge progresses towards Planting the Seed & Sparking an Interesting in the people that in turn grows into Action and Makes the Mark which in turn funds more Research and Development - and so on the loop continues.

As a designer this really helped me visually the impact that I see everyday through Artistic Engagement. I have always wanted to make an impact with my art and designs and this is precisely the impact that can so easily change the world. Following this model and ideology can bring immense benefits to our society, environment and world.

I also liked that she sort of re-defined environment for us by bringing us back to core definition “the medium that surrounds us”. She went on to talk about some of her projects that follow a similar artistic engagement process including her series Cry Me a River California which highlighted the California drought through unconventional means.

I will also note that Sophie Lamparter talked about a project at the end of her talk that was very interesting to me. It was a project that they have just begun and does not even have a name yet. She mentioned the working title to be “Climate Garden”. It will consist of two green houses side by side - one will represent the environment today and one will represent the environment in 2058. I found this project extremely intriguing because it deals with experience which is often extremely powerful in impacting our minds and understanding of topics. She mentioned the project aims to “change how we think about climate” by making it something we experience rather than just hear or read about. The project will be available in Summer 2017 and I am excited to see how it will progress.

Overall, I really enjoyed the Eco-Centric Art & Science: Prophesies and Predictions Symposium and wished I could have attended more of the talks. Below is a photo of me at the Symposium (please excuse my appearance).