LASER Talks in Alberta: LAWRENCE WESCHLER Art and Science as Parallel and Divergent Ways of Knowing | Leonardo/ISASTwith Arizona State University

LASER Talks in Alberta: LAWRENCE WESCHLER Art and Science as Parallel and Divergent Ways of Knowing

 Registration is closed for this event
LASER (Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous) is Leonardo/ISAST's international program of evening gatherings that brings artists and scientists together for informal presentations and conversations.

CHAIR: Marilène Oliver

 

LAWRENCE WESCHLER

 

Art and Science as Parallel and Divergent Ways of Knowing

 

 

 

Nowadays, artists and scientists tend to think of their ways of probing the world as distinctly different.  But such was not always the case (in fact the divide is only a few centuries old; think of Leonardo, think of the wonder cabinets of the seventeenth century).  Nor may the differences be all that distinct or even real. In a lecture originally developed for a conference sponsored by the National Science Foundation, long time New Yorker writer Lawrence Weschler - director emeritus of the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU (where the sciences were emphatically included as part of and central to the humanities) and author, among others, of Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder; Everything that Rises: A Book of Convergences; and most recently, And How Are You, Doctor Sacks? a biographical memoir of the late neurologist Oliver Sacks --will extrapolate on such themes, with side-meanders into the thinking of artists Robert Irwin and David Hockney (subjects of two of his other books) and a whole new interpretation of Rembrandt's Anatomy Lesson.

 

Lawrence Weschler, a graduate of Cowell College at UC Santa Cruz (1974), was for twenty years a staff writer at The New Yorker (1981-2001), where his work shuttled between political tragedies and cultural comedies, and then for thirteen years (2001-2014) the director, now emeritus, of the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU, where he insisted on counting the sciences as one of the crowning jewels of "the humanities."  He has been a regular contributor, among others, to the New York Times magazine, Vanity FairHarper'sMcSweeney'sThe Believer--and is the author of coming on twenty books, including Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees  (a life of artist Robert Irwin); Mr Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder (on the Museum of Jurassic Technology); Vermeer in BosniaEverything That Rises: A Book of ConvergencesWaves Passing in the Night (on Walter Murch in the land of the astrophysicists), and now, And How Are You, Doctor Sacks? (a biographical memoir of his thirty-five-year friendship with the neurologist Oliver Sacks).  For more, visit www.lawrenceweschler.com

 

This event also celebrates the launch of the Mediating Science and Technology Signature Area.

 

SPONSORS:

University of Alberta

LASER (Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous) Talks is Leonardo's international program of evening gatherings that bring artists and scientists together for informal presentations and conversations. LASER Talks were founded in 2008 by Bay Area LASER Chair Piero Scaruffi and are in over 30 cities around the world. To learn more about how our LASER Hosts and to visit a LASER near you please visit our website

The mission of the LASERs is to provide the general public with a snapshot of the cultural environment of a region and to foster interdisciplinary networking.


 

When
October 29th, 2019 from  6:00 PM to  8:23 PM
Location
Room 150, TELUS International Centre
University of Alberta
11104 87 Ave NW
Edmonton, T6G 0X8
Canada
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