Leonardo ISAST and USF invite you to a meeting of the Leonardo Art/Science community. The event is free and open to everybody. Like previous evenings, the agenda includes some presentations of art/science projects, news from the audience, and time for casual socializing/networking.

Schedule

7:00-7:25: Gary Boodhoo (Videogame designer) on "Human Encounters With a Gregarious Learning Machine"

7:25-7:50: Jan Rindfleisch (Author) on "The Blossoming of Silicon Valley's Arts Community"

7:50-8:10: BREAK. Before or after the break, anyone in the audience currently working within the intersections of art and science will have 30 seconds to share their work. Please present your work as a teaser so that those who are interested can seek you out during social time following the event.

8:10-8:35: Melissa Merencillo (Virtual Reality Designer) on "Where We Are in XR (X Reality: Augmented, Virtual, Mixed and Cinematic Realities)"

8:35-9:00: Pantea Karimi (Media Artist) on "(Re) Visualizing Medieval Science"

Speaker Bios

Gary Boodhoo combines videogames and machine learning to create interactive science fiction. A Jamaican-born industry veteran, millions of players around the world use the interfaces he invented for games including Madden NFL, The Sims, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and The Elder Scrolls Online. His work examines how digital environments overlap real ones.

Pantea Karimi (Media Artist) has lived, studied, and worked in Iran, the UK and the US and presently resides in San Jose, California. She is a printmaker and painter and also holds a professional degree with work experience in graphic design, all of which have influenced her fine art aesthetic and practice. Karimi earned her MFA in printmaking and painting from San Jose State University in 2009. She also holds an International Diploma in printmaking and glassworks from Hastings College of Arts and Technology in England in 2004 and an MFA in graphic design from the University of Art in Tehran, Iran, in 1999. Karimi's fine arts and graphic works have been featured in several publications in Iran, Italy, the UK and the United States. Her prints and digital works have been exhibited in various venues in Iran, Algeria, Germany, Mexico, the UK, and the United States, including the de Young Museum and the Yerba Buena Art Center in San Francisco, 2012 ZERO1 Biennial, the Triton Museum in Santa Clara, the Peninsula Museum of Art in Burlingame, the Google Company in Mountain View, the NASA Research Center in Sunnyvale, the San Jose City Hall, the New Bedford Art Museum in Massachusetts, and Platform in Munich, Germany. She is the recipient of the 2016-2017 Kala Fellowship-Residency Award; the 2010 Distinguished Artist Award by the City of Cupertino Fine Arts Commission; and the 2011 Multicultural Arts Leadership Initiative Fellowship. Karimi's current work is an exploration into the pages of medieval and early modern scientific manuscripts, particularly, Persian, Arab and European and the long-term exchange of knowledge across these cultures. She works with a wide range of materials and uses installation and 2-dimentional forms as well as video projection to create a novel and dynamic visual interpretation of the scientific concepts and ideas presented in the manuscripts.

Melissa Merencillo is an X-Reality (XR = AR/VR/MR) enthusiast and technophile focusing on social presence, behavioral communication and interaction design in digital reality systems. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communication from California State University East Bay (2012) and a Master of Arts in Multimedia in Interaction Design also from California State University East Bay (2017). Her work on the collaborative thesis, Project: This Way!, explored the concepts of copresence in VR and was shown at the VR Mixer of the Game Developer's Conference in San Francisco, Maker Faire Bay Area in San Mateo, and at the symposium, If You Weren't: Playing with Realities in ARG, AR, and VR held at Stanford University in Palo Alto. She is a member of various AR/VR MeetUps and attends industry conferences on AR/VR technology throughout the Bay Area. She is currently the Instructional Support Technician II and Video Lab Coordinator of the Department of Communication at California State University East Bay supporting courses in digital video and media production.

Jan Rindfleisch is an artist, educator, curator/museum director and author. From 1978 to 1985, she taught art and art history at De Anza College, and in 1979 began a 32-year journey as executive director/curator of Euphrat Museum of Art. For decades, she has kept art in the forefront of the South Bay community through her visionary interdisciplinary exhibitions and programs at that museum. Rindfleisch has written essays and over a dozen books in conjunction with the California History Center, Euphrat Museum of Art, San Jos‚ Museum of Art, Arts Council Silicon Valley, Southern Exposure (San Francisco), Bronx Museum of the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, Artship Foundation (Oakland), and many other public, private, and governmental institutions. These include Coming Across: Art by Recent Immigrants; The Power of Cloth: Political Quilts 1845-1986; Content: Contemporary Issues; and Staying Visible, The Importance of Archives. Rindfleisch helped found the Cupertino Arts Commission, participated in the Getty Museum Management Institute, and served on the Santa Clara County Arts Council, the California Arts Council Visual Arts Panel, the Arts Council Silicon Valley Local Arts Grants Review Panel, and San Jos‚ City Hall Exhibits Committee. Her most recent book, Roots and Offshoots: Silicon Valley's Arts Community, explores the ignored history of the passionate individuals, creative partnerships, and maverick arts institutions that influenced South Bay Area arts and culture.

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.