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Friday, June 24, 2011

Healing Art Sites

We are grateful to Naimeh Tahna for giving us these links to healing arts sites.


http://www.thesah.org This site offers a lot of other links to research, projects, etc.


http://www.arttherapyblog.com/c/ptsd/


This was a major area of interest in our last DNA of Creativity meeting with lots of people interested in healing arts subjects.

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Art of Science Learning Conference.... Mining for Gold

Art of Science Learning Conference
Calit2, June 14 and 15, 2011

Report by Patricia Frischer
San Diego Visual Arts Network

Not a summary, but an attempt to pull out some new ideas.

Hearing about other projects that are successful is like looking at good art. It makes you want to go home and make some of your own. Looking at lots of bad art is rather depressing, rather like thinking about stale ideas. We heard about some fascinating projects, but there was lots of time spent “speaking to the choir”. I have 11 full pages of notes and this is my attempt to mine the gold and give you some links if you want more of the experience of having attended.

Harvey Seifter, Director and Principal Investigator The Art of Science Learning, Larry Smarr, Founder and Director, Calit2 introduced the conference. The buzz words are very familiar now: collaborate, innovate, Steam not Stem, out of the box, economics driven, value added, clarity of language. Here are a few newer twists on these themes I pulled over the day and half.

Visual Thinking helps to internalize and thus learn more deeply about the subject.

Problem based Thinking is doing instead of only thinking This is a variation of Critical Thinking which is long been used in the sciences.

Design based Thinking is about how to designing a new world, not replicating the old one. We need to re-design education. We need to think about how education serves the world. (Read the report from the Chicago conference by Trung Le)

Larry Rosenstock, CEO, High Tech High “Duality” We need to create the public and not just serve it. We need to broaden the idea of the classroom. We have a Catch 22 at the conference connected to Heisenberg’s Uncertainly Principal here as the closer we look at creativity and try to replicate it or scale it up, the more we destroy it. Creativity always has to be a new and fresh look, slightly mysterious and starts with being perplexed. We don’t need models, we need examples.

Harvey White, Co-founder of Qualcomm and LeapWireless "STEM to STEAM: The Future of American Innovation."
Interviewed by John Eger, The Lionel Van Deerlin Endowed Professor of Communications and Public Policy, SDSU Here is the link to the report of his talk in Chicago . White calls for a nationwide creativity index and a national imperative to urge business’s investment in education using STEAM not just STEM.


Randy Cohen
, Vice President for Policy & Research, Americans for the Arts "Creativity in the Workplace"

Read the report from Chicago. What skills sets are needed in the workforce (Problem solving and Problem identification were top two)? What is creativity and how is it measured? They can now prove that there is a correlation between overall higher academic performance and arts participation. But we have no testing process for creativity. Seven states are pursuing an Index of Creativity but no one has produced a sample yet.

Robert Root-Bernstein, Professor of Physiology, Michigan State University Author,“Spark of Genius”. Nobel Prize winners in the sciences are 25 times more likely to be involved in the arts than the general population.

Dr. Todd Siler Metaphorming Interactive Workshops John Reaves, Learning Worlds Institute Idea Harvesting

We were put in teams and asked to use a variety of ordinary material to illustrate how the arts could be integrated into the sciences. I was acutely aware that our team had two men that were talented but not team players. They stayed separate and did not join in. I was not stimulated by the ideas produced by our team which seemed forced and repetitive. I disappointed myself. But we took all of our disparate ideas and joined them together in a fun fair theme. From that, I got a spark about paying to enter this world of creativity so it was no surprise that I found myself on the workforce team the next day. I think this exercise might have led me to suggest that we try to show failing companies how they could use creativity of their staff to innovate for success. They would pay for results and would be perfect spokesperson to other successful companies to invest in art education. I think this was my Ah Ha moment of the whole conference.

Ideas generated: Branding of STEAM, using a standard language to educate the public and the art and science community; STEAM Day, Center (real and online), and Academy; Mapping with field surveys of projects and organization; Additional research in cross benefits to students and economy; Showcasing of cross discipline in gallery/museum exhibition, filed guides, books, documentaries, videos; Funding through awards/prizes, grants from government, business, school and foundations; Advocacy to showcase proof of benefits: Creativity Assessment for employers to use with employees;

Joyce Gattas, SDSU gave us a short list of barriers to innovation including relying on the predictable, silos which avoid collaboration, lack of money which can only be over come with collaboration for joint funding needs and current limits on accreditation which block innovation.

Ramesh Rao, Director, UCSD Division of Calit2. Energy Environment, Health and Culture

Scientist are problem solvers, Artist are problem creators. Scientist don’t define problems…artists do. Problem definition is a major and valued skill

Maurizio Seracini (read my report on him from a previous lecture he gave). Seracini showed us his technological tools of imaging developed to study layers of art works to see under the surface. He uses very impressive graphic designs for public education.

Carrie Fitzsimmons, Founding Director, ArtScienceLab Prize A world wide program in many parts starting with Idea Translation (conception) to Cultural Experimentation Lab (translation) to Realization founded by Harvard Professor David A. Edwards.

Educational Practices: Gabriele Wienhausen, Associate Dean for Education, Division of Biological Sciences, UCSD
Research: Jeffrey Remmel,
Associate Dean, Division of Physical Sciences, UCSD,

Workforce Development :Ted Buswick, Director, Boston Consulting Group History; Executive-in- Residence for Leadership and the Arts, Clark University (read the report from Chicago)
Sarah Murr, Community Investor – Arts & Culture, Boeing

Boeing Candidate skills/competencies are all those aided by an arts education: Inquisitive, Communication, verbal and written, Creative, Ability to work in a team, Analytical, Innovative, Problem solver, Self confident, Initiative, Strong work ethic, Flexible/adaptive to change She explains why Boeing invests in arts education.

· We believe the arts are an essential part of a complete education

· provides students with skills and abilities to succeed in life and navigate careers in the 21st century

· can be used to engage students who are in danger of dropping out or have special needs

· the arts, when integrated with other subjects, provides hands-on experiences for students

· In California, the arts are mandated by law as core curriculum; yet they are not available in thousands of schools.

· We believe policy and advocacy are key to keeping the arts as a critical part of our education system.

· This is a workforce issue and affects the creative economy of our state.

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Bob Lynch, American for the Arts on Education

From kindergarten to community college, art education budgets are being slashed to the bone. And we’re all going to pay the price.

Monterey County Weekly (local news periodical)

Published: Thursday, June 2, 2011 | (Link to story)

Excerpt from this article:

“We’re losing more than just art teachers in school. If we continue down this road, killing off arts education, America 20 years from now will be a very dull, ugly place, with fewer painters and musicians. It will also be significantly poorer. We’ll lose our innovative engineers and creative business minds,” says Bob Lynch (no relation to Paulette), president of Americans for the Arts, a nonprofit that lobbies for arts funding at the local and federal levels.

“We don’t in America understand the full value of the arts and what the arts actually bring to our society,” he says. “We take for granted and have kept too much a secret the broad values beyond entertainment and beyond decoration that the arts bring – better communities, better community development, helping people be more creative in their work.”

Not only do we end up losing something that brings beauty and enjoyment and maybe some spiritual uplift – we also face the loss of an economic engine that contributes to the creation of some 750,000 businesses and 5.7 million jobs in America.

“We haven’t paid enough attention to the role the arts have played throughout our history,” Bob Lynch adds.

During the Revolutionary War, George Washington commissioned plays to inspire soldiers before they fought battles. Abraham Lincoln insisted the Capitol dome be finished – and funded – in the middle of the Civil War.

Much more recently, a new study by IBM found creativity is the most important quality for success in business leadership. The largest-known sample of one-on-one CEO interviews included more than 1,500 corporate heads and public sector leaders in 60 nations and 33 industries.

Even more important than integrity and global thinking in the business world, according to the CEOs, is creativity.

“American companies are worried about competitors like China and India,” Bob Lynch says. “But because of their sheer size, China and India are going to be able to turn out more of everything, and their people will work for less money. So what is our competitive edge? Creativity. And arts is the thing that brings creativity.

“Businesses say they want it, presidents and generals have employed the arts in their work – and still do today – and yet when it comes time to pay for it, is so easily allowed to slip away.” He adds that part of the price is our businesses will be less creative and our children less employable. “If we lose the arts, and arts education, we have destinations that are not as interesting to visit because arts are great tourist attractions,” he says. “We essentially have a nation that is not able to live up to the potential that it was built upon: its creativity, its innovation, its ability to change on a dime.”

Submitted by

Dana Smith
Dean, Arts & Letters

Oceanside Campus
1 Barnard Drive
Oceanside, CA 92056
P 760.795.6818
F 760.795.6804
dsmith@miracosta.edu
www.miracosta.edu

Monday, June 20, 2011

Ruth West, San Diego Interdisciplinary Artist

We met Ruth West at the Art of Science Learning Conference in June, 2011. Take a look at her website and see a sample below.

Ruth West is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, and researcher working with emerging technologies. Her background spans new media arts, design, molecular genetics, information aesthetics/visualization, virtual/immersive environments, psychology, and mobile technologies. Current and prior affiliations include: UCSD Center for Research in Computing and the Arts, UCLA CENS (NSF Center for Embedded Networked Sensing), and NCMIR (National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research). Ruth's work has been presented or featured in SIGGRAPH, WIRED Magazine’s NextFest, UCLA Fowler Museum, CAA, Ingenuity Festival Cleveland, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, FILE 09 Sao Paulo, IEEE VR, Mobisys, SPIE, IEEE ICIP, the American Journal of Human Genetics, Genomics, Leonardo, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and NPR's The Connection, NY Times, Genome News Network, AMINIMA and Artweek.
Selected Project
ATLAS in silico ATLAS in silico reflects on one of the elemental scientific and cultural challenges of our time: the shift from an organism-centric to a sequence-centric view of nature made possible by metagenomics and it’s ensuing impact on our understanding of the nature, origins and unity of life. It is a physically interactive virtual environment/installation and art-science collaboration that provides a unique aesthetic encounter with metagenomics data (and contextual metadata) from the largest known protein sequence dataset, the Global Ocean Survey (GOS) - a ground-breaking snapshot of biodiversity in the world’s oceans.

Visit: http://www.atlasinsilico.net

A brief description and video are here.

Thursday, June 16, 2011

To Sciene and Art

This article was sent to us by Mark Rodma Smith and written by Fred Wilson is a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures.

I was passing by Cooper Union the other day and was struck by the words on the front facade of its iconic building on Astor Place.

To science and art

This phrase "to science and art" has been stuck in my mind since. I've been thinking about what happens at the intersection of science and art, how science impacts art, and how art impacts science, how New York City has been blessed to be at the intersection of science and art for at least two centuries, and how much of what is interesting to me in the technology revolution of the moment, the Internet, is at the intersection of science and art.

Peter Cooper, the founder of Cooper Union, was an inventor, industrialist, and NYC resident in the 19th century. He designed and built the first steam powered train in the US. He was the "Tim Berners-Lee" of the railroad technological revolution in the US. Cooper went on to become a very wealthy industrialist and businessman and was behind the company that laid the first cross atlantic telegraph cable. He was all about technology, science, innovation, and business. And yet, when he created and endowed a free institution of higher education, he understood that it had to be for both science and art.

Science and art are seen as two very distinct endeavors and I suppose they are. But I see science and art as the yin yang of creative culture and innovation. To quote from Wikipedia, science and art are seemingly contrary forces that are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world, and they give rise to each other in turn.

I was talking to a longtime reader of this blog, Chris Dorr, last night. Chris has been working in the film industry for a long time and blogs at the Tribeca Film Festival Blog. We were talking about changes in the film business and Chris blurted out that "filmakers and software developers need to start sleeping together and it is starting to happen." Filmmaking is art, particularly great filmmaking. But the art of filmmaking has always been based on a number of fundamental scientific inventions. And Chris' point is that the art of filmmaking will continue to be impacted by scientific inventions that are happening in real time.

And science is equally inspired by art. Just check out the music playing at the all nighter coding sessions that go on at New Work City or the number of listeners in the coding room on turntable.fm and you'll see that coding computers benefits from musical stimulation.

When I look at our portfolio, I see companies like Tumblr, Etsy, Canvas, Shapeways, SoundCloud, Boxee, Kickstarter, and GetGlue that exist somewhere in the overlap between technology and art. Most of these companies are based in NYC and the ones that aren't have a strong footing here.

I was at a meeting yesterday with an economic development group in NYC. We were talking about 3D Printing, an important new technology that was "science" a decade ago. The economic development types were explaining to me why 3D Printing technology is so important to NYC. They explained that our artist and design communities need 3D Printing technology because it allows these artists to turn their ideas into objects rapidly and at lower cost. It is a game changer for artists, designers, and architects. Our portfolio company Shapeways and other innovators like MakerBot are doing just that right here in NYC.

Peter Cooper understood the importance of science and art back in the mid 19th century when he created Cooper Union. He put the two words on the facade of his building. And they remain the twin towers of innovation in NYC and all over the world two centuries later.

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Waves

I don't think this needs an explanation.



Here is another one.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

SymbiticA at Dublin Ireland

SymbioticA and Science Gallery, Dublin begin a new experiment in January 2011 when science and art collide in Visceral: The Living Art Experiment.

VISCERAL will confront audiences with the delicate processes of modern biology to explore our changing understandings and perceptions of life in the light of rapid developments in the life sciences and their applied technologies. A range of award-winning work from 17 different artists will challenge visitors to consider the tension between art and science and the cultural, economic and ethical implications of biosciences today.

The exhibition will explore and provoke questions about scientific truths, what constitutes living and the ethical and artistic implications of life manipulation. The exhibition also marks ten years of intensive and challenging work carried out at SymbioticA.

Curated by SymbioticA’s Director Oron Catts and SymbioticA’s leading researcher Dr Ionat Zurr, Viseral will bring together more than a decade of work developed through SymbioticA’s art-science residency program at The University of Western Australia.

More info at http://www.symbiotica.uwa.edu.au/activities/exhibitions/visceral

Works in the exhibition will include ‘Midas’ by Paul Thomas, which examines the space where skin and gold meet; ‘Silent Barrage’ by Neurotica, an architectural scale arrangement of pole robots that stimulate neuronal activity of cells and provoke epilepsy in a culture dish in response to audience movements; ‘The Vision Splendid’ by Alicia King, an installation of cultured tissue within an artist-designed bioreactor and The Tissue Culture and Art Project’s ‘Semi-Living Worry Dolls’ offer absolution through whispering your troubles to bioengineered worry dolls. The exhibition will also include the unique ‘Lab Out of Context’, where artists and scientists will create new work and research in view of Science Gallery audiences.

Sunday, June 5, 2011

Brainwave Series at Rubin Museum of Art

The Rubin Museum's fourth annual Brainwave series examines the nature of this mysterious phenomenon of dreaming. Why do we dream? What function does this ancillary brain activity serve? Can dreams anticipate the future?

One of the 18 presentations this year was the Compass of Pleasure. Whether consuming chocolate, taking drugs, engaging in sex, or doing good deeds, the pursuit of pleasure is a central drive of the human animal. In The Compass of Pleasure Johns Hopkins neuroscientist David J. Linden explains how pleasure affects us at the most fundamental level: in our brain. The master chocolatier Jacques Torres provides the audience with samples of his most mouthwatering selections to allow participants to both experience pleasure while the process itself is being discussed.

Saturday, June 4, 2011

Latest from ESMA

Here is the latest edition of ESMA - European Society for Mathematics and Art.

Friday, June 3, 2011

World Science Festival Live Webcase

Michele Mitchell sent me a link to an article that led me to the World Science Festival this weekend in NYC. Good news is that there are some free webcasts for those able to join in from SD.Check out this site or use the schedule below http://worldsciencefestival.com/live_schedule. These webcast are for sold out event, so save the air fare!
The events at this fair should give us some inspiration for our meeting on June 21 at 6:30 and I urge you to check them out before you attend. Yes, you will get another reminder and a full agenda before the meeting.

World Science Festival Live Webcast Schedule

Can’t make it to New York for the Festival? Watch the 2011 World Science Festival live from your commuter. We’re excited to provide free, high-quality streams of the select events below, with live on-site commentary from the editors of Scientific American and other award-winning journalists. Tune in. Join the conversation. Expand your mind.

Thursday

The Dark Side of the Universe
7:45PM — 9:30 PM
For all we understand about the universe, 96% of what’s out there still has us in the dark. More
Live webcast commentary: Scientific American’s Philip Yam, accompanied by WSF’s Greg Boustead and Michael J Kennelly

Friday

The Illusion of Certainty: Risk, Probability, and Chance*
4:45 PM — 6:30 PM | Watch Live »
Risk, probability, chance, coincidence—they play a significant role in how we make decisions about health, education, relationships, and money. But where does this data come from and what does it really mean?(*Instant Rebroadcast from Thursday) More
Live webcast commentary: Boing Boing’s science editor Maggie Koerth-Baker , accompanied by WSF’s Maki Naro and Michael J Kennelly

The Mind after Midnight: Where Do You Go When You Go to Sleep?
7:45 PM — 9:30 PM | Watch Live »
We spend a third of our lives asleep. Every organism on Earth—from rats to dolphins to fruit flies to microorganisms—relies on sleep for its survival, yet science is still wrestling with a fundamental question: Why does sleep exist? More
Live webcast commentary: Scientific American’s Robin Lloyd, accompanied by WSF’s Greg Boustead and Maki Naro

Saturday

Cool Jobs
1:45 PM — 3:30 PM | Watch Live »
Imagine hanging out with some of the world’s kookiest critters in the jungle’s tallest trees, building a robot that does stand-up comedy, inventing a device that propels you into the air like Batman, or traveling back in a DNA time machine to study ancient animals! Meet the scientists who make it possible. More
Live webcast commentary: Scientific American’s Anna Kuchment, accompanied by WSF’s Maki Naro

Rebooting the Cosmos: Is the Universe the Ultimate Computer?
7:45 PM — 9:30 PM | Watch Live »
As computers become progressively faster and more powerful, they’ve gained the impressive capacity to simulate increasingly realistic environments. Which raises a question familiar to aficionados of The Matrix—might life and the world as we know it be a simulation on a super advanced computer? More
Live webcast commentary: To be announced

Sunday

2011 WSF Street Fair
10:00 AM — 6:00 PM | Watch Live »
Live scenes from the Street Fair at Washington Square Park in New York City on Sunday, June 5, 2011.


Special thanks to Livestream for hosting these broadcasts.
Visit our channel, where you can find embeddable widgets of these streams and much more

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Do You Hear What I Hear?


'The arts are central to a well-functioning system of education. They are not peripheral. On this point the research is clear.......' See Harmony Project
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