CHAIRED BY: Piero Scaruffi

Panel on "Opportunities for Online Art/Science Interaction" (Part 2)
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After the event, the video will be posted here.

We continue the discussion about Online Art by broadening it to scholars who spent their life bridging the world of art and science. Which opportunities arise online for interaction between art and science? Much collaboration is created when people are in physical proximity, in the same campus or in the same building. Does the online world foster or deter interdisciplinary collaboration? The online world tends to create echo chambers, where one looks for what one is already familiar with, not with the unfamiliar. How can we foster collaboration across disciplines in the online world?

• Bettina Forget is the director of SETI Institute's Artist-in-Residence program, where she was an artist in residence for three years. She is a visual artist, gallery owner, art educator, and researcher. Born in Germany, Bettina has studied at Central St-Martins School of Art in London, England and at Curtin University in Perth, Australia and Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in Singapore. She lived and worked for many years in Montreal, Canada, while pursuing a PhD in Art Education at Concordia University. Bettina's creative work a focuses on space sciences, inspired by her avid engagement with amateur astronomy. She has exhibited her artwork in the USA, Canada, Germany, Iceland, Singapore, and Nicaragua. In 2018 she joined the Convergence - Perceptions in Neuroscience Initiative as Vice President and Director of Fine Art.
• Curtis Frank is a Professor in Chemical Engineering at Stanford and the Senior Associate Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs in the School of Engineering. He was the founding Director of the Center on Polymer Interfaces and Macromolecular Assemblies, a Materials Research Science and Engineering Center sponsored by the National Science Foundation, from 1994 to 2010. He was also the Chairman of the Department of Chemical Engineering from 2001 to 2006. His research interests are in polymer materials science, and he has current collaborations with the School of Medicine directed at development of an artificial cornea and toward hydrogel-based arrays for study of primary hepatocytes, with Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Light Source on the development of proton and anion exchange membranes for fuel cells, and with the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering on developing bio-based composites and foams for applications in the construction industry. In collaboration with his wife Sara Loesch-Frank, a calligrapher, artist, and art teacher, Curt has taught an Introductory Sophomore Seminar on "Art, Chemistry, and Madness: the Science of Art Materials" for the past six years. Curt lectures on a series of historical palettes: Paleolithic, Egyptian, Greco-Roman, Medieval, Renaissance, Industrial, and Contemporary.
• Jennifer Parker is the founding Director of OpenLab, a collaborative research center at UC Santa Cruz. Parker served as Art Department Chair from 2012-17, helped spearhead the UCSC IDEA Hub for Social and Creative Entrepreneurship program from 2016-19, and is currently serving as campus lead PI for PlaceMakers: UC Place-based Art + Design a 2019 Multi-campus Research Initiative with UCSC, UCB, UCD, and UCSB. Parker also served as principal faculty for the Digital Arts & New Media (DANM) MFA program where she directed the Mechatronics collaborative research cohort from 2009-2015 developing research projects that combine art, design, science, and technology. She serves on the faculty advisory board for UCSC CITRIS and the Banatao Institute and is an active board member for SOUNDWAVE , a a Bay area non-profit promoting innovative voices in sound with captivating sound art and performance experiences. Parker maintains a multifaceted art practice at the intersection of art and science. From 2008-2012 she collaborated with artist Barney Haynes on SonicSENSE, an expandable and evolving site for art, culture, new technologies, collaboration, and participation. More recently Parker has been working with the Genomics Institute to develop an Art + Media Lab and is a founding member of The Algae Society: Bio Art and Design Collective.
• Piero Scaruffi is a cultural historian who has lectured in three continents and published several books on Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science such as "Intelligence is not Artificial". He pioneered A.I. and Internet applications in the early 1980s and the use of the World-Wide Web for cultural purposes in the mid 1990s. He has published several books on music and his website, one of the oldest in the world, has been devoted to music, cinema and art since the beginning. He has also published "A History of Silicon Valley" that emphasizes the role that the arts had in shaping the biggest center of innovation of our age. He founded the Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous (L.A.S.E.R.) series in 2008, that now takes place in more than 30 cities of the world, and the Life Art Science Tech (L.A.S.T.) festival in 2014. Since 2015 he has been commuting between California and China, where several of his books have been translated.

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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.