MAT :: Seminar Series

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
SANTA BARBARA

JUNE			6

MAY			23

			20

APRIL			22

			8

MARCH			15

			11

			4

FEBRUARY			25

			12

			11

			4

JANUARY			28


ABOUT · LOCATION · PREVIOUS YEARS ARCHIVE

	What is Happening Over There? \ MONDAY. JANUARY.28TH. 2019 · 1PM · ROOM 1601 (California NanoSystems Institute CNSI)

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David Bowen is a studio artist and educator whose work has been featured in numerous group and solo exhibitions nationally and internationally. Bowen’s work consists of interactive, reactive and generative processes that emerge from intersections between natural and mechanical systems. He is currently an Associate Professor of Sculpture and Physical Computing at the University of Minnesota.

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Using intersections between natural and mechanical systems, David Bowen produces unique relationships within his sculpture and installation. With robotics, custom software, sensors, tele-presence and data, he constructs devices and situations that are set in motion to interface with the physical and virtual world. The devices he constructs often play both the roles of observer and creator, providing limited and mechanical perspectives of dynamic situations and living systems. These devices and situations create a dissonance that leads to an incalculable changeable situation resulting in unpredictable outcomes. The phenomenological outputs are collaborations between the natural form or function, the mechanism and the artist.

https://www.dwbowen.com

START IT UP
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MONDAY. FEBRUARY.4TH. 2019 · 1PM · ROOM 1601 (California NanoSystems Institute CNSI)

START IT UP - a round table discussion on the pathways towards starting a business connected to research conducted within the University at large and MAT in particular.

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Round table participants:

- David Adornetto, Enterpreneurship Program Director, Technology Management Program
- Kristin Denault (founder/CEO of Fluency Lighting Technologies)
- George Legrady, Professor MAT
- Alan Macy, Research and Development director and founder of Biopac Systems Inc.
- Tal Margalith, CNSI executive director of technology, CNSI Technology Incubator
- Sherylle Mills Englander, UCSB Office of Technology & Industry Alliances
- Evan Strenk (founder/CEO of Milo Sensors)
- Matthew Turk, Chair Computer Science Department, Professor MAT

Moderator: Marko Peljhan, Chair and Professor, MAT

"The stars look very different today"
(David Bowie)
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MONDAY. FEBRUARY.11TH. 2019 · 1PM · ROOM 1601 (California NanoSystems Institute CNSI)

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The talk will explore the implications of space as an environment for future habitation both materially and conceptually. Research and development projects of LIQUIFER - implemented as part of the European space exploration programme - highlight topics of living with limited resources, in limited spaces and living self-sufficiently. The basis of LIQUIFER’s work constitute concept studies for lunar and Martian bases as well as building prototypes set within future scenarios for living on earth and in space. Arts-based and basic research in the fields of biomimetics and integrating biological systems into architecture add to the circular systems perspective of future narratives for our extended world.

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Barbara Imhof is a space architect, researcher and educator. She is also the co-founder and co-manager of LIQUIFER Systems Group that comprises experts from the fields of architecture, design, human factors, systems engineering and science. Their space related projects focus on feasibility and scenario studies as well as designing and building mock-ups and prototypes. LIQUIFER partners with renowned research institutions and well-known enterprises to conduct research and technology development through contracts with the European Space Agency, the space industry and with the EU-Framework Programmes and other funding bodies.

As project lead Barbara currently works on the Gateway project, designing the habitat module for the next International Space Station in a lunar orbit. She also led projects such as SHEE, a Self-deployable Habitat for Extreme Environments, the first built European simulation habitat. The SHEE habitat became part of another LIQUIFER project named MOONWALK, developed to test human-robot collaborations in two space simulation missions in Rio Tinto and subsea. In addition, Barbara pursues projects in the field of biomimetics and losed-loop systems such as Living Architecture - in collaboration with Rachel Armstrong - and GrAB–Growing As Building which looks at growth principles in nature and their proto-architectural translations towards self-growing buildings.

http://www.liquifer.com

Participatory Strategies in Interactive Art
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TUESDAY. FEBRUARY.12TH. 2019 · 6PM · ROOM 2001 / ENGINEERING SCIENCE BUILDING

Professors and Heads of the Interface Cultures Program at the University of Art and Design Linz, Austria

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Artists and designers in the area of interactive art have been conducting artistic research in human-machine interaction for a number of years now. Interaction and interface design have not only had their roots in human computer engineering but have also seen parallel developments in media art. It is interesting to see where early notions of interactivity and user participation came from and how artists over the past 40 or more years have already looked at the merits of audience involvement in their artistic work. In this lecture artistic and social notions of interactivity will be addressed and specific examples of the artistic works by Sommerer and Mignonneau as well as the Interface Cultures Department at the University of Art in Linz will be presented.

Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau are internationally renowned media artist, researcher and pioneer of interactive art. After working, researching and teaching in the US and Japan for 10 years, they set up the department for Interface Cultures at the University of Art and Design in Linz, Austria. Sommerer is also currently also a Visiting Professor at CAFA Central Academy of Fines Arts Bejing, she was an Obel Guest Professor at Aalborg University in Denmark, and a Visiting Professor at Tsukuba University Department of Empowerment Informatics in Japan. Laurent Mignoneau was also Chaire International Guest Professor at the Université Paris 8 in Paris, France. Sommerer and Mignonneau created around 30 interactive artworks, which have been shown in around 300 international exhibitions. They have received numerous awards: the BEEP Award at ARCO Art Fair in Madrid in 2016, the 2012 Wu Guanzhong Art and Science Innovation Prize which was bestowed by the Ministry of Culture of the People’s Republic of China; the 1994 Golden Nica Prix Ars Electronica, among others.

More information is available at: http://www.interface.ufg.ac.at/christa-laurent

Currently a selection of Sommerer & Mignonneau interactive artworks is presented in their first US retrospective exhibition at the BEALL Art Center at UC Irvine:

http://www.beallcenter.uci.edu/exhibitions/christa-sommerer-laurent-mignonneau

	A Media Archaeology of Vector Graphics lecture (public) \ MONDAY. FEBRUARY.25TH. 2019 · 1PM · ROOM 1601 (California NanoSystems Institute CNSI)

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Derek Holzer (USA 1972) is a sound+light artist based in Helsinki & Berlin, whose current interests include DIY electronics, audiovisual instrument building, the relationship between sound and space, media archaeology, and participatory art forms. He has performed live, taught workshops and created scores of unique instruments and installations since 2002 across Europe, North and South America, and New Zealand.

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The development of any kind of media technology combines utopian and dystopian tendencies, and nowhere is that more true than in the development of computer vector graphics. Taking the activation of the AN/FSQ-7 computers at the heart of the SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment) defense stations in the United States in 1958 as its starting point, this talk explores the military/scientific legacy at the heart of modern computing and attempts by artists of the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s to decouple these tools from their destructive origins.

https://tinyurl.com/holzer-vectorhack2018 | http://macumbista.net/

“Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion.” Francis Bacon
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MONDAY. MARCH.4TH. 2019 · 1PM · ROOM 1601 (California NanoSystems Institute CNSI)

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The talk will explore how to find ideas - an intersection of entrepreneurship, art, and research.

Adam Kearney is currently a Knowledge Engineer at Amazon working on Alexa. Formerly, he was the Founder and CEO of Propsboard, which helped companies broadcast employee recognition to their office TVs. Before that, he was the Founder and CEO of The Connectome - a music intelligence platform with over 15,000 musicologists contributing data. The Connectome was acquired in October 2015.

Adam was on the leadership board of Philly Startup Leaders where he co-founded a Startup Bootcamp, as well as the PSL Accelerator. He also serves on the board of The Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College.

	From Ego to Eco \ MONDAY. MARCH.11TH. 2019 · 1PM · ROOM 1601 (California NanoSystems Institute CNSI)

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Özge Samanci, a media artist and graphic novelist, is an associate professor in Northwestern University’s School of Communication. Her interactive installations have been exhibited internationally. In her art works she merges the procedural power of computer code with comics, animation, interactive narrations, sculpture, projection art and performance. Her work motivates awareness on rather gloomy subjects such as the collapsing balance between nature and culture and the impact of ego. Her autobiographical graphic novel Dare to Disappoint (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2015) has been translated into five languages and was positively reviewed in The New York Times, The Guardian, Slate and others.

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Humanity's relationship with the natural world is multifaceted. Due in part to our sensory system, we perceive an illusionary boundary between our bodies and the rest of the world. While we are an extension of the universe, we are destroying the eco with our ego. For example, humans forget that we evolved from the oceans and now we are destroying the source of our origins. Our human impact is collective and massive, leading to narrations of environmental cataclysm and points-of-no-return. These repeated environmental narrations are turning into clichés. We are developing a resistance to hearing the core of the problem. Can media art help to overcome this collective immunity? In this talk, I will explore some of my interactive installations made to internalize Donna Haraway’s theory: humans are not superior to any ecosystem and they exist in the intertwined web of all ecosystems as an extension of the planet.

http://ordinarycomics.com/portfolio/

Constructing a Continent' via Data-driven Design
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FRIDAY. MARCH.15TH. 2019 · NOON · Experimental Visualization Lab (Elings Hall 2611)

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Skye Morét is a data-driven designer and marine scientist. Her diverse background on the ocean—having sailed 80,000+ miles around the globe—fuels her belief in the power of art and design in communicating nature and science. Her work investigates the complex relationship between nature and technology-mediated human expectations, experiences, and engagement. Skye is an Assistant Professor in the Collaborative Design + Design Systems graduate program at the Pacific Northwest College of Art and is a Senior Researcher on the Ocean Archive Project with User Group Coop. Her work has been published in Science, Slate, Migrant Journal, Popular Science, Roads & Kingdoms, and Public Radio International, among others.

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How do we explore new and creative ways of portraying complex marine ecosystems, particularly regarding places that most people will never see? In an effort to engage a broad audience with this theme and create energy and synergy in fields beyond the Antarctic context, I exploited opportunities inherent in visual information design: color, contrast, and motion. Here, I explain how, within the framework of Antarctic environmental studies, information design can be used for facilitating conversation and participation, geographical and disciplinary place-making, and as a means of visual storytelling. We now have the opportunity, in a tech-advancing 21st century, to engage in a more pragmatic approach to Antarctic knowledge dissemination—one that sees the value of contextualizing the Antarctic experience through the lens of human engagement both on and off the continent. New modes of Antarctic dialogue and experiential media, particularly those that harness data-driven design and storytelling, will only increase in scientific, cultural, and political value within the context of rising socio-environmental concerns about polar regions.

	ThE CURATORIAL PROGRAM AT THE Beall Center for Art + Technology \ MONDAY. APRIL.8TH. 2019 · 1PM · ROOM 1601 (California NanoSystems Institute CNSI)

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David Familian, Artistic Director of the Beall Center for Art + Technology for the past 11 years, will present a lecture about the curatorial program he has developed at the Beall. He will focus on his approach to organizing group exhibitions as well as the Black Box Project Artists’ Residency program. Additionally, he will discuss the exhibition, Drawn from a Score, featuring artists whose work ranges from analogue to code-based scores.

Photo credit:
https://museumofnonvisibleart.com/interviews/david-familian/

David Familian is the Artistic Director of the Beall Center for Art and Technology at University of California Irvine. He started working at the Beall in 2005 where he has curated one-person exhibitions of artists Shih Chieh Huang, Golan Levin, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Chico MacMurtrie, Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, Nam June Paik, Eddo Stern, Victoria Vesna and Zimon. He has also curated group exhibitions such as: Grand Text Auto, exploring new forms of gaming and narratives; DataVIz, data visualizations made by artists across media; Live, works that employed live, real-time data; Play in Three Acts, a trio of interactive installations and Sight and Sound, sound art projects ranging from noise to music.

An artist and educator, Familian received his BFA from California Institute of the Arts (1979) and his MFA from UCLA (1986). For twenty-five years he taught studio art and critical theory in art schools and universities including Otis College of Art and Design, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Santa Clara University, San Francisco Art Institute and UC Irvine.

Although Familian started his career as a photographer, since 1990 new media has become integral to his own artistic practice. In 2013 he premiered Echo and Narcissus a new sound video installation with interactive elements at the Art/Sci Gallery at UCLA.

IN 2012 Familian initiated Black Box Projects, in which artists are invited to do residences with scientists in areas such as cognitive robotics, computational genetics, biology and information science. The first exhibition in 2013 was Paul Vanouse’s Evidence, which utilized light boxes, live biological experiments, electrophoresis gels, and interactive performers in the gallery to reveal varying aspects of DNA. The next project was in 2016, Wetware: Art | Agency | Animation a group exhibition of artists that create works in the emerging field of BioArt. This exhibition also included 2 residences that produced work for the exhibition.

Constructing a Continent' via Data-driven Design
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MONDAY. APRIL.22ND. 2019 · 1pm ·ROOM 1601 (California NanoSystems Institute CNSI)

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LoVid will discuss their process of working with handmade analog audiovisual synthesizers and producing textile and other tactile objects based on their media works. The presentation will include images, videos, and a conversation on DIY culture.

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LoVid (Tali Hinkis and Kyle Lapidus), have been collaborating since 2001. LoVid's practice includes immersive multimedia performances and installations, textile works, participatory projects, and videos. Their projects have been exhibited at Real Art Ways (CT), Moving Image Art Fair (NY), Daejeon Museum (Korea), Everson Museum (NY), Smack Mellon (NY), CAM Raleigh (NC), Netherland Media Art Institute (Netherlands), The Jewish Museum (NY), The Neuberger Museum (NY), The New Museum (NY), and ICA (London), among many others. LoVid has performed and presented works at: Issue Project Room (NY), Museum of Moving Image (NY), Lampo (Chicago), International Film Festival Rotterdam (Netherlands), MoMA (NY), PS1 (NY), River to River Festival (NY), The Kitchen (NY), and FACT (Liverpool) among many others. LoVid’s projects have received support, awards, grants, and residencies from organizations including: NY Hall of Science, The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Cue Art Foundation, Eyebeam, Harvestworks, Wave Farm, Rhizome, Franklin Furnace, NYFA, LMCC, NYSCA, and Greenwall Foundation.

	Wild Labs for Wild Tools: Developing the Behavioral Medium via Jungle Crafting \ MONDAY. MAY.20TH. 2019 · 1PM · Experimental Visualization Lab (Elings Hall 2611)

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Dr. Andrew Quitmeyer is a hacker adventurer studying intersections between wild animals and computational devices. He left his job as a tenure track professor at the National University of Singapore to start his own Field Station Makerspace in Gamboa, Panama: Digital Naturalism Laboratories (dinalab.net). Here he blends biological fieldwork and DIY digital crafting with a community of scientists, artists, designers, and engineers from around the world. He runs mobile workshops called “Hiking Hacks” where participants build interactive technology in outdoor, natural contexts. The Digital Naturalism Conference (dinacon.org) is his research’s largest event, pulling in over 100 participants annually from all fields to collaborate on finding new ways of interacting with nature. His research also inspired a silly spin-off international television series he starred in for Discovery Networks called “Hacking the Wild.”

The behaviors of living creatures help shape, and in turn, are shaped by their surrounding environment. Similarly, your tools shape how you understand and interact with the world, but they also take on characteristics of the environments in which they are developed.

We will discuss the development of in-situ jungle laboratories for scientific and artistic tools, and explore the question of how can technology developed in harsh environments differ from those developed in more traditional laboratories. Chiefly, we will underline the importance to create tools where scientists maintain agency over their own instruments, and the scientific imperative they have to document and share their technology openly with others. We will also discuss the pros and cons of on-site rapid technology prototyping, and its ability to maintain the integrity of research questions.

In short, the technology you use is very much alive and evolving. We need to find new, less prescriptive, ways to cultivate its development since, like any living system, our technology is not simply bound by our intentions.

It will be presentation full of visuals of strange wild laboratories built into the jungle or on the ocean and developed all around the world including: Panama, Madagascar, the Philippines, and Thailand.

Performance, Art, and Cyber-Interoceptive Systems (PACIS)
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THURSDAY. MAY. 23RD. 2019 · 6pm · ROOM 2001 / ENGINEERING SCIENCE BUILDING (ESB)

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During the talk we would provide an overview of the research-creation activities of our collaboration, Performance, Art, and Cyber-Interoceptive Systems (PACIS). PACIS has been exploring how technology can help us create deeper connections with the world around us, each other, and ourselves by combining the latest advances in bioinformatic sensing technology with physiological awareness techniques found in The Batdorf Technique (TBT). Primary outputs of this research involve the development of new and novel interfaces that integrate complex physiological data in performance and computational art contexts. The talk will include a small demonstration consisting of an explanation and demonstration of TBT, a discussion of the implications of connecting somatically aware performers to biosensors, and a demonstration using interoception as a content driver for computational art via the PACIS Pak wearable biosensing system.

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Erika Batdorf (www.batdorf.org), has written, created, performed, directed and choreographed original performance art, theatre and movement theatre since 1983. Her award winning productions have been shown in Canada, the United States, and all over Asia and Europe. She is a Professor in Theatre atYork University with over 25 years, having taught at institutions such as Boston Conservatory, Brandeis University, Emerson College and the University of Alaska Anchorage. Central to her research-creation activities is the Batdorf Technique, a Somatic education technique that systematizes the full scope of a performer’s work from the early stages of interoceptive awareness to the complicated juggling of this somatic work with layers of external structure. The technique organizes the practitioner’s access to specifically located awarenesses that can be consciously modulated to vary the kinaesthetic state being communicated to an audience. Through he work in the Batdorf Technique she has has been a guest artist in universities and theatres internationally.

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Kate Digby (digbydance.org) is a performer, choreographer, and movement teacher. In addition to creating over 30 original dance works which have been presented across the U.S., Digby has worked with Batdorf for nearly 20 years collaborating on both artistic projects and focused research into the methods and effects of the Batdorf Technique. Digby is also a Registered Yoga Teacher and anticipates certification in two Somatic Movement Education programs developed by Dr. Martha Eddy: BodyMind Dancing® and Moving for Life DanceExercise for Recovery® by June 2016.

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Mark-David Hosale (www.mdhosale.com) is a computational media artist and composer and Professor in Digital Media at York University. His solo and collaborative work has been exhibited internationally at festivals, conferences, museums, galleries and universities. Mark-David’s research and work explores the boundaries between the virtual and the physical world. His work as an artist and composer is an interdisciplinary practice that is often built on collaborations with architects, scientists, and other artists in the field of computational arts. The output of his work results primarily in the creation of interactive and immersive installation artworks and performances. His research activities support his work and are concerned with the development of custom solutions (electronics hardware and software), primarily for the development of technology-based interactive art works, using open source and open platform resources in their development. He is also invested in a parallel theoretical practice that has been focused on a concept called worldmaking. Works that focus on worldmaking attempt to construct immersive realties that express an essence of experience that reveal the ontology of philosophical propositions. Concepts in the worldmaking discourse are primarily drawn from cybernetics, phenomenology, and Deleuzian philosophy.

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Alan Macy (alanmacy.com) is the Research and Development Director, past President and a founder of BIOPAC Systems, Inc. He designs data collection and analysis systems, used by researchers in the life sciences, that help identify meaningful interpretations from signals produced by life processes. Trained in electrical engineering and physiology, with over 30 years of product development experience, he is currently focusing on psychophysiology, emotional and motivational state measurements, magnetic resonance imaging and augmented/virtual reality implementations. He presents in the areas of human-computer interfaces, electrophysiology, and telecommunications. His recent research and artistic efforts explore ideas of human nervous system extension and the associated impacts upon perception. As an applied science artist, he specializes in the creation of cybernated art, interactive sculpture and environments.

	Decomposed Portraits, Disfigured Selves: Critical Resistance in Digital Aesthetics \ THURSDAY. JUNE.6TH. 2019 · 3PM · ROOM 1605 (California NanoSystems Institute CNSI)

Meredith Hoy is Assistant Professor of Art Theory in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 2010 in the department of Rhetoric. Her first book, entitled From Point to Pixel: A Genealogy of Digital Aesthetics, was published by the University Press of New England in 2017 in the series Interfaces: Studies in Visual Culture. Hoy’s interdisciplinary research considers the increasingly complex web of relations between technological, ecological, scientific, and social systems. She identifies connecting threads between “old” and emergent technologies, and maps tectonic shifts in geographies of knowledge and material culture. Her current book project is provisionally entitled “The Fate of Nostalgia in the Age of Big Data and Digital Memory.” This body of research considers the impact of digital stored memory systems on affective, cognitive, phenomenological, and (possibly) neurological dimensions of human memory. Hoy’s writing has appeared in journals including Leonardo, Media-N: The Journal of the New Media Caucus, in the Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, published by Oxford University Press, and in various exhibition catalogs. She has co-curated exhibitions including Water, Climate, Place: Reimagining Environments, held at ASU as part of the 4th International Conference Balance/Unbalance; Mathematical Rhymes, sponsored by Leonardo Electronic Almanac and Boston Cyberarts; and Mediating Place, held at the Harbor Art Gallery at UMass Boston.



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ABOUT	LOCATION
Since 1998, the Media Arts and Technology graduate program hosts a periodic seminar series. The transdisciplinary nature of our program is also reflected in the diverse range of fields our speakers come from: engineering, electronic music, art and science. They are all free and open to the public. > Archive 2015-2016 > Archive 2016-2017	Most of our seminar talks take place at Elings Hall (CNSI. California NanoSystems Institute), room 1601 & 1605. See each talk's information for the final location. > UCSB Interactive Campus Map > UCSB Parking

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CREDITS

JM ESCALANTE
Visual identity, original web design,
video footage & post-production

DIARMID FLATLEY
Year 2018-2019 Logistics and contact administrator

MARK HIRSCH
video footage & post-production

SWAPNA MADINENI
Logistics, financial and technical coordination

PROF. MARKO PELJHAN
MAT Chair

THE MAT SEMINAR SERIES
University of California Santa Barbara
M M X V I I I - M M X I X

The 2018/2019 Seminar Series is supported by the generous support of the Media Arts and Technology Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara, the Chair's Fund at MAT, Prof. Yon Vissel, The Systemics Lecture Series, The UCSB College of Engineering, The UCSB College of Humanities and Fine Arts.