Djerassi Executive Director Margot Knight describes the genesis of the Scientific Delirium Madness (now Leonardo at Djerassi) program: "What if we devoted a 30-day live/work residency to bringing artists and scientists together to live, work and explore the universe? What would happen? What could happen? Because of Carl Djerassi’s work in art and science, this sort of collaboration had happened a few times in the program’s history. But what if we deliberately selected a group of scientists with demonstrated interest in art and artists whose muses were informed by science?" On 1 July 2014 the experiment began.
July 9, 2023 (?)
It's hard to believe that we're almost halfway through.
It seems as though we have only recently arrived.
Despite our disparate origins and...
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On a winter's morning in Lovett Bay, NSW, I find myself preparing my suitcase for the life-...
I'm sitting in the Bowes Art Library at Stanford University, between my two scheduled office hours for my course Science, Technology,...
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Macrophones is one of those art+science projects that starts with a hypothesis and then requires an awful lot of labor getting the whole...
While I'm here at Djerassi, I'm working on my Macrophones project — essentially huge microphones that pick sound far below our range of...
Everything is light and air here, we look down on the clouds over the ocean, they stretch out to cover us in mist each night and then recede again each day. Innumerable hawks hunt gophers in the...
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Using the Little Bits Korg Synth Kits and sensor elements, Weidong Yang and I constructed an installation entitled A little bit of noise and protyped a system for sonifying...
When artist Weidon Yang and I were preparing for the Open House installation of our interactive project "Sharing" (with a beating heart that you could hold in your hand), we solicited the help of...
As we enter our last days here at Djerassi, I think it’s safe to say that a shift has occurred in all of us, even as the omnipresent marine layer of the first couple of weeks moves out to hot blue...
This is a fun little exercise of surveillance and surveillance technology.
Deep fake
Fake news has been on the news a lot these days. How easy is it to make one yourself? It turns out to be really easy, as easy as how people generated gossip in the past. You...
When our session ends at Djerassi, we're asked to leave behind an artist's page as a memento of our visit. Because one constant of my time on the ranch was seeing lizards, I thought it would be...
Some years ago (before GPS), my friends and I stopped at a Forest Service office in the Trinity Mountains of Northern California to inquire how to cut through to the nearby Siskiyous, which lay to...
The history of this place is like the fog, thick and enchanted. At one moment we are enveloped in its mystery, its care, the next the sun breaks through and we can see outward again. We are all...
I brought to Djerassi recordings of over 400 memorable REM dreams of more than 300 residents of the Bay Area of San Francisco that I had made over a period of 5 years as part of my anthropological...
Yesterday, July 5th, was the anniversary of Pamela Djerassi’s death. Her brother Dale joined us for dinner here in the hills, and moved some of us to tears with his remembrance. Pamela...
On one of my afternoon walks around the Djerassi grounds, I see a bright scrap of red set far back in the hunch of a thorny bush. The color draws my eye, but as I crouch down to look close, it’s...
Random news reading Science.com --> Washington Post --> Google News-ing, and then on the radio. Keep encoutering this topic:
Dark Energy is a force that makes the universe expand...
I'm writing now from my studio at Djerassi, looking down the green hills of the Santa Cruz Mountains that roll all the way to the ocean below. When it’s clear, you can see the water, which most of...
My third day in residence at Djerassi, I join fellow residents Wei and Daiane in their Tai Chi practice. I have only previously tried Tai Chi once, for twenty minutes, when it was part of an...
Dante wrote "Nature is the art of God", and we feel the art of nature here at Djerassi. The old master wrote The Divine Comedy while in exile from his daily responsibilities in Florence, while...
WATCH. A new landscape artwork at Djerassi ranch. This work was constructed by subtractive writing on a historic Djerassi ranch sign bearing the bullet holes of bygone days of exuberance. It...
This year I started to use computer fluid dynamics software, or maybe better said misuse, in my art practice. So far, I have been feeding data from specific environments in technical CFD...
A little bit about the first performance of the "Harmonic Roots Series" we presented last night in the Artist Barn - with Sebastian Perez and Dasha Lavrennikov .
These winners happen to be women but were selected simply because they most represented Steve Wilson's ideas with the quality and breadth of their work. Equally important were their philosophies...
Since my time at Djerassi, one cannot help but admire the beauty of lichen, following their tangles and patterns. It is everywhere, growing on and over things, pale green strings. Each pattern unique...
The maquette for my sculptural installation completed, I turned to making a larger version: five and half inch square faces. Since I’m working with cubes, the sized is not doubled, but cubed; of...
Even though I think I know all about it, a really solid grasp of the distinction between the additive and subtractive primary colors and their separate, nuanced properties can feel just beyond my...
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Waking to strong offshore breezes, I created a new photographic work, mindful of Nick's observation in The Great Gatsby that "... man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent,...
I met a fox today, hiking home on the Ridge Trail. This is our first truly sunny day at the Djerassi Ranch, and I chose, perhaps unwisely, to pack a lunch and go exploring for natural pigments. On...
Scientific Delirium Madness, Djerassi 2018. An Essay
Here on the ranch, on the western side of the Santa Cruz mountains, the sea mist begins its slow roll back towards the Pacific...
While writing a novel at Djerassi, I've been drawn sideways to create a phootographic work capturing the creative fire and awe induced by this place.
As a writer of a novel, experiencing the first week of the Djerassi Resident Artists Program has been both distracting and provocative.
A 2018 fellowship has been awarded to Sarah Rosalena Brady, a 2018 UCLA Media Arts graduate.
The following are a selection of the wishes for the future generated by audience members who attended my performances of Between the Wish and the Thing at the Boulder International Fringe...
"When the world ended, in April 1784, the shrapnel spread far and wide. I shouldn’t have been surprised to find a piece, a BIG piece, had landed on the Djerassi property, but I was." Art in the...
Even the gophers struggle
Tunnelling in dense caked dirt.
Fissures grow deeper
Widening the space between the plaques of dry brittle grass
The matter straining,...
Focusing light at the bottom of a tea cup is an every day experience, but a precise observation of the light pattern shows a very simple but singular bright curve with a clearly recognizable...
Wherein the operating instructions for the Djerassi artist-scientist residency come to you one random sentence at a time
The following are a selection of the wishes for the future generated by visitors to Djerassi's Open Studios/Open House event on July 16:
I wish we/I could learn from our/my...
I am making a dance that asks the audience to imagine the future. The following wishes for the future were generated from my personal studio practice with dancer Elizabeth Chitty, as well as in...
While we were in residence at Scientific Delirium Madness a large fireball was seen in the sky over Palo Alto. Actually it was seen from San Francisco down to Los Angeles at the same time and it...
Maya Spasova, London, UK. Visual Artist observed the centiSperm project and then took to drawing or channeling the lives of the centiSperm. Some are intertwined with each other. Some have wings. Some...
Flight of the centiSperm David Bowen a collaboration with Adam Zaretsky So David Bowen came up with this idea of using the centiSperm as a data set for flying his drone....
Twitter rain installation was created at the old barn during the Djerassi open house day on July 24th, 2016. The installation is part of a series of preliminary experiments, with the goal of...
Centipede DNA Isolation A – Kill Centipede B – Mash with mortar and pestle
Goals: To electroporate whole genomic DNA from a centipede into the center of human sperm.
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I remember that the word testament and testicles have etymological origins in common. Early swearing on the Torah was not always possible before the printing press. Often it was told that men...
Pertaining to the castration of Uranus’ Penis by his son, there is the question of the meaning of the word foam. According to the mythos, Uranus’ penis was dropped in the ocean and the bubbles or the...
Shevakadoo: body remainders, any part of a human separated from the main body, esp. referring to the taboo surrounding leftover flesh parts.
“you can check lines 188-190 of Hesiod's Theogyny ‘they fell from the mainland into the much-surging sea, so that the sea carried them for a long time.’ Therefore, no reference to the place where...
Ἑκατόγχειρες, Hekatonkheires also called the Centimanes or the Hundred-handers (Is Tartarus a castle analogy for Gaia's womb?)
I found this fog quote attributed to Joseph Conrad and I made a little sketch for it: “It is not the clear-sighted who rule the world. Great achievements are accomplished in a...
Since I arrived at the Djerassi residency I have been particularly fascinated...
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Got the electroporator to Djerassi Scientific Delirium residency... Considering using my sperm... And some centipedes" DNA... Wondering if you have any sense as to a DIY sperm salt rinse...
Dear National Science Foundation,
You were everything I ever wanted
when I was finishing my Ph.D. and I
have no idea why I didn’t pursue you...
I did not have a website for a long time. It’s not that I did not know how to make one or that I did not understand how important it was, it was simply that I did not know how to tell people who I...
I am considering the option of using the centiSperm as a glaze. Not for cupcakes although that came to mind. After electroporating raw centipede DNA into the germ cells, they could be used as a...
A few weeks ago Guillermo and I posted about our first foray into representing quantum dots...
Hi Leonardo readers! My name is Jordan Hochenbaum and I’m a professor at California Institute of the Arts, where I teach in the Music Technology: Interaction, Intelligence, and Design (MTIID)...
What a rare privilege to be at work and walks here among such a wild profusion of intelligence, inventiveness and ethos. The poet Robert Creeley once said that you forge ahead, writing poems “because...
On a walk during the first days here with four of my co-residents our conversation was peppered with references to authors, artists and movies. This struck me as one of the ways that we were getting...
On Sunday at Djerassi we did an open rehearsal of our show Daughhters of Hypatia about the struggles of women in mathematics, but I find unsettling contradictions. I ended this year at the...
Last night several residents and I were watching composer and scientist Eathan Janney perform an impressive improvisational piano piece. I recall the sounds coming from the piano as he...
Here's to my trial run as an artist-scientist (from my current writing efforts), an account of my attempt at research before I went to medical school: Luckily, another job opportunity came along....
Last night a conversation emerged among a group of Djerassi residents about our feelings on cross-disciplinary interactions—especially between the arts and sciences. Each of us was chosen to be here...
What is writing the story of one’s life if not a diagnostic exercise? We look at patterns, discard what’s irrelevant, and go through the old charts looking for early hints of trouble we’d once...
On Saturday I went on a morning run with fellow Djerassi resident and physicist Guillermo Munoz. As a result of a conversation about our respective fields of interest we decided to make a...
Early morning, 5:30am, cup of strong PG Tips in hand I step outside Middlebrook D and snap a picture of the landscape, writ-large, with my i-phone. The moon full, or almost full, up above the marine...
The art of doing nothing On arriving at Djerassi, I welcomed leaving productivity behind. I’d worked hard to jettison my usual obligations: teaching medical students, supervising residents,...
I am grateful to be able to add to Patricia Bentson’s welcome to Scientific Delirium Madness 2.0. If you don’t know me, I am the Executive Director of Djerassi Resident Artists Program. With each...
As Dawn and I were making the Djerassi version of our interactive, 3-D installation ...
The Dream Vortex, a collaboration between myself and Meredith Tromble, reached a new level during our residency at Djerassi. It is finally artistically interesting, with two scenes and several...
When most hear the name Jonas Salk, the man about whom I am writing a biography, they think about the polio vaccine. In 1959, however, Sir Charles Percy’s “The Two Cultures,” became his bible.
Meredith Tromble and I have been working on the Dream Vortex for a bit over three years - or I should say we started the project three years ago. We’ve made some progress but approaching the vision...
To enter another world you must first find an opening …baby, air and light and time and space have nothing to do with it. - Charles Bukowski...
Rather odd, but I find myself having to be an advocate for time. Things come into being through time. And so, to my mind, time is important. And, for that matter, time shouldn't need championing....
I have finally chosen one of the 5-6 projects floating through my musical mind to focus on developing. Or perhaps it chose me. ...
As you might expect, my job as the Resident Manager at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program is heavily influenced by the personalities and needs of the rotating artists in residence. Usually this...
At breakfast an engineer tells me about his plans to write a book on the science of art materials, observations that will influence the way many of us think about art. While hiking in some of the...
Let the cerebration begin! I have only experienced 3 of the first 72 hours of Scientific Delirium Madness but the words and ideas and laughter are flying. A dream since I first...
I use life forms as artistic media to comment on their phenomenal nature, bring intrigue to the species at hand, and illustrate the diversity of life. I propose the following questions: How does...