LASER Santa Fe: New Knowledge

CHAIRS: Andrea Polli and Susan Latham

EVENT Info

When: Saturday, April 29 at 3 - 4pm MDT, Find your timezone here

Where: Vital Spaces, 1604 St. Michaels Drive Santa Fe, NM 87505 United States

Registration via Eventbrite

PROGRAM

As part of a spring LASER series focused on New Knowledge, Kaitlin Bryson and Shane Coffing will discuss their artwork “Mutualism” and the lifestyles and potential applications of radiotrophic fungi. High exposure to ionizing radiation means death to nearly all living things -- but to radiotrophic fungi, it can mean life. While some organisms can survive radiation exposure, certain fungi can radiosynthesize, capturing and metabolizing energy from lethal radiation (analogous to plant photosynthesis).1 Remarkably the fungi melanize, growing increasingly capable of capturing radiation with continued exposure over time. By creating new environments for growing these radiotrophic fungi we explore a true collaboration between living species in high radiation environments. Our survivability depending directly on fungal success; fungal success dependent on our nurture.

Kaitlin Bryson is an ecological artist concerned with environmental and social justice. She primarily works with fungi, plants, microbes, and biodegradable materials to engage more-than-human audiences, while also facilitating human communities through social practice and environmental stewardship

Dr. Shane Coffing is a sculpture artist and physicist, experimenting with the concepts of approximation and interpretation, and exploiting our childhood experience and intuition to help redevelop the connections between our natural world and our modernized selves.

The event is taking place in the context of the SciArt Santa Fe Exhibition: Art as inquiry. The exhibition includes diverse array of works from a wide variety of disciplines. Through this exhibition SciArt Santa Fe asks how do scientific concepts and new technologies create new questions and drive discovery. 

For more information about SciArt Santa Fe and our LASER series, visit Sciartsantafe.org

SPONSORS:

The Leonardo/ISAST LASERs are a program of international gatherings that bring artists, scientists, humanists and technologists together for informal presentations, performances and conversations with the wider public. The mission of the LASERs is to encourage contribution to the cultural environment of a region by fostering interdisciplinary dialogue and opportunities for community building to over 50 cities around the world. To learn more about how our LASER Hosts and to visit a LASER near you please visit our website. @lasertalks