CHAIRS: Ellen Levy and Patricia Olynyk
NY LASER is a series of lectures and presentations on art and science projects, in support of Leonardo/ISAST’s LEAF initiative (Leonardo Education and Art Forum). Former LEAF Chairs, Ellen K. Levy, former IDSVA Special Advisor in the Arts and Sciences and Patricia Olynyk, Director, Graduate School of Art, Washington University co-direct these presentations to promote dialogue at the highest level among artists, scientists, scholars, and historians. Space is limited, so please rsvp by sending an email to levy@nyc.rr.com or olynyk@wustl.edu. There will be feature presentations by Ricci Albenda, Melissa Messina and David Rothenberg.
Ricci Albenda is a visual artist based in New York whose work has been exhibited at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, SITE Santa Fe, the Museum of Modern Art, and The New Museum. He is primarily a perceptualist, known for creating distorted representations of architectural spaces that illuminate perspectival remappings of space itself, and for fashioning highly formalized materializations of the written word which investigate the mechanisms of creating meaning both through, and in spite of, the optical experience. His perspectival illusions enlist the viewers to recreate the fluidity of the visual experience of space via their own physical sense of being (ie., proprioception, equilibrioception, etc.). Albenda will present his work and elaborate on how he and others experience perception, itself.
Melissa Messina is an independent curator and curator of the Mildred Thompson Estate. Her exhibitions, site-responsive projects and public programs have been presented throughout the United States and in France and Hong Kong. In 2017, Messina co-curated “Magnetic Fields, Expanding American Abstraction, 1960s to Today,” an intergenerational exhibition that celebrated abstraction by black women artists, which opened at Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City and traveled to St. Petersburg Museum of Fine Art, Florida. Messina will discuss the ways in which Mildred Thompson’s works exemplify her life-long commitment to a universally resonant abstract visual language with imagery that expressively interprets the workings of the cosmos and other natural phenomena.
David Rothenberg is a composer and jazz clarinetist, who writes and performs on the relationship between humanity and nature. He is Distinguished Professor of philosophy and music at NJIT and author of Why Birds Sing, Bug Music, Survival of the Beautiful and many other books. Rothenberg has performed with whales, cicadas, nightingales and lyrebirds, in addition to other creatives, including Pauline Oliveros, Ray Phiri, Suzanne Vega, and Iva Bittová. In order to develop new ways to visualize the music of the animal world, he has also collaborated with neuroscientists. Bird song, whale song, bug song? Are these sounds really music? In his presentation, David Rothenberg will discuss his next book, CD, and film Nightingales in Berlin and fuel further thinking about noise, communication, and song in nature.
SPONSORS:
NY LASER is a series of lectures and presentations on art and science projects, in support of Leonardo/ISAST’s LEAF initiative (Leonardo Education and Art Forum). Former LEAF Chairs Ellen K. Levy and Patricia Olynyk co-organize these presentations on behalf of the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts and Washington University in St. Louis, respectively.
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.