There will be feature presentations by Mary Miss, John F. Simon, Jr. and Anna Frants.
Mary Miss has reshaped the boundaries between sculpture, architecture, landscape design, and installation art by articulating a vision of the public sphere where it is possible for an artist to address the issues of our time. She has developed "City as Living Lab", a framework for making issues of sustainability tangible through the arts. Mary’s collaborations with architects, planners, engineers, ecologists, and public administrators include: a temporary memorial around the perimeter of Ground Zero; marking a predicted flood level in Boulder, Colorado; revealing the history of the Union Square Subway station in New York City; and turning a sewage treatment plant into a public space. She is currently working on an urban scale project, WaterMarks, an atlas of water for the city of Milwaukee. Mary will discuss City As Living Laboratory (CALL), her ongoing initiative to engage artists, scientists and community stakeholders in promoting the creation of sustainable communities. She will also discuss her project Broadway: 1000 Steps, which proposes turning Broadway into the “green” corridor of NYC.
John F. Simon, Jr. is a visual artist who currently lives and works in Sugar Loaf, New York. He is author of “Drawing Your Own Path” (Parallax Press, 2016) that offers meditators an alternative path to ‘just sitting’ and offers artists a way to mindfully examine and deepen the source of their creative ideas. As one of the pioneers in the development of Software Art, his seminal work "Every Icon" was included in the 2000 Whitney Biennial and his ‘art appliances’ can be found in the permanent collections of The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and The Museum of Modern Art in New York, among others. Born in Louisiana, he holds a Master’s in Earth and Planetary Science from Washington University and an MFA in Computer Art from the School of Visual Arts. Since 2008 Simon has posted a daily drawing online as part of his drawing meditation and creative practice. He will talk about the book and about his wall sculptures and works on paper, which were recently exhibited at Sandra Gering, Inc (NYC) and Racine Berkow Associates (LIC).
Anna Frants is a New Media artist and curator who co-founded both CYLAND Media Art Lab and the St. Petersburg Art Project. CYLAND is one of the most active New Media art nonprofit organizations, and houses the largest archive of Eastern European video art online. As Co-Founder of Cyland, Frants organizes exhibitions at top art and technology institutions around the world; as a curator and artist, Frants is an important voice in the cultural dialogue surrounding experimental and new media art. Frants has contributed to symposiums and panels for universities, festivals, and exhibitions worldwide. Her interactive art installations have been exhibited at venues around the world, including the Venice Biennale, the St. Petersburg Biennial, Moscow Biennial and Polish Biennial, The State Hermitage Museum (St. Petersburg, Russia), Pratt Institute (New York, USA), The Chelsea Art Museum (New York, USA), Convergence (London, UK), RSProjects (Berlin, Germany), VAP / Gogolfest (Kiev, Ukraine) and Transmediale (Berlin, Germany). Frants has also participated in an exclusive 17 day expedition to The Arctic Circle with The Farm Foundation of Arts and Sciences.
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 20 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.