London LASER is hosted by University of the Arts London (Central Saint Martins MA Art and Science) and University of Westminster (CREAM), and has been running since February 2014.

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.

The event is free but please book to reserve a place.

London LASER presents an evening of talks on art and science interactions:with Astrid Alben on poetry and science; Annie Cattrell and Marius Kwint on transformation; and Mellissa Fisher and Mark Clements on negotiated practice.

Artist Annie Cattrell and art historian and curator Marius Kwint will discuss and reflect upon their current exhibition (until 20th May, symposium 12th) and Annie’s forthcoming public artwork, both entitled Transformation, for the new Science Centre at Anglia Ruskin University. As the title suggests, the subject is metamorphosis, from ancient bodies to modern materials. Annie Cattrell teaches at the Royal College of Art and was previously Reader in Fine Art at De Montfort University. She has completed several important public art commissions, including the award-winning New Biochemistry Building at the University of Oxford and at Oxford Brookes University, and is currently lead artist at the New Museums Site at the University of Cambridge. Marius Kwint is Reader in Visual Culture at the University of Portsmouth. His curatorial credits with Annie as a contributing artist include Einfach Komplex on branching forms in science and visual culture and the highly popular Brainsat Wellcome Collection and MSI Manchester. In 2015 he was co-curator of a critically acclaimed Venice Biennale event, Frontiers Reimagined.

Astrid Alben is a poet published by Arc Publications. Her poems and essays are widely published, including in the Times Literary Supplement, Best of British Poetry Anthology and Granta. Alben is also the Artistic Director of PARS, inviting artists and scientists to share their thoughts and research around particular topics in a publication series and at location specific events mixing art, theatre and scientific experiment. She is a Rijksakademie Fellow and a Wellcome Trust Fellow and recently appeared on BBC Radio 4 to talk about her fascination with scientific methodologies and how this impacts her poetry. Astrid Alben will read from her poems and explore how science has influenced their construction. @astridalben

Artist Mellissa Fisher has collaborated extensively with Mark Clements, an established microbiologist and Professor in Science Education at the University of Lincoln, for five years. Together they have created a series of 'living sculptures’, revealing the invisible microflora of the human skin. They have contributed to Invisible You, a Wellcome Trust funded human microbiome exhibition at the Eden Project in Cornwall and more recently they were commissioned by a production company to create a life size human bacterial sculpture for a BBC documentary on antimicrobial resistance to be broadcast in May 2017. Mellissa Fisher and Mark Clements will talk about 'negotiated practice', exploring the relationships between artist, scientist, and the external agencies commissioning their work.