Leonardo Art & Science Evening Rendezvous (LASER) is an international program bringing together artists, scientists, and scholars for presentations and conversations. LASER Talks are a program of the Leonardo International Society for Art, Science, and Technology (ISAST).
Join us at 6:30 for a reception followed at 7 p.m. with presentations by dancer and choreographer Gerald Casel, biochemist Carrie Partch, director of Leonardo, Danielle Siembieda, and artist and theorist micha cárdenas.
micha cárdenas, “Poetic Operations: Algorithms of Trans of Color Art”
Gerald Casel, “Dancing Around Race”
Carrie Partch, “Morning larks, night owls, and the daily rhythms that control your life on Earth”
Danielle Siembieda, “On Art and Social Practice”
This event is FREE and open to the public. Metered parking is available in the Arts Parking Lot #126 adjacent to Digital Arts Research Center. For additional information and disability or access needs please contact ias@ucsc.edu.
micha cárdenas, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Art & Design: Games + Playable Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz. cárdenas is writing a new algorithm for gender, race and technology. Her book in progress, Poetic Operations, proposes algorithmic analysis as a method for developing a trans of color poetics. cárdenas’s co-authored books The Transreal: Political Aesthetics of Crossing Realities (2012) and Trans Desire / Affective Cyborgs (2010) were published by Atropos Press. Her artwork has been described as “a seminal milestone for artistic engagement in VR” by the Spike art journal in Berlin. She is a first generation Colombian American.
Gerald Casel, Associate Professor of Dance, UCSC, is a dancer, choreographer, cultural activist, and artistic director of GERALDCASELDANCE. Casel’s choreographic research and social practice complicates and provokes questions surrounding colonialism, collective cultural amnesia, whiteness and privilege, and the tensions between the invisible/perceived/obvious structures of power. A recipient of the New York Dance and Performance Award and a Bogliasco Foundation Fellowship, Casel is a founding member of the Racial Equity Working Group sponsored by the San Francisco Arts Commission and the Human Rights Commission
Carrie Partch, Associate Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, UCSC, is a leading researcher in the field of chronobiology, studying the molecular mechanisms of the biological clock that drives the daily rhythms of life. She is the recipient of the Aschoff's Ruler, the top honor in her field, as well the Margaret Oakley Dayhoff award for her lab’s integration of cellular and biophysical studies leading to new insights into the molecular basis of circadian rhythms. She has multiple publications in the most important journals in the field.
Danielle Siembieda, Deputy Director of Leonardo/The International Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Technology, is an art service provider and creative entrepreneur in the San Francisco Bay area, emphasizing and building relationships between art, science, the environment, and technology. Siembieda develops collaborative explorations through partnership-driven programs such as Leonardo Education and Art Forum, art-science residencies with Djerassi Program and Nokia Bell Labs, and LASER Talks. Siembieda holds an MFA in Digital Media Art from San Jose State University at the CADRE Laboratory for New Media, with a focus on green technologies and sustainable materials.