a Leonardo Education and Art Forum (LEAF) Rendezvous Event
LevyArts, New York, NY
Sunday, November 12th from 4:00 – 7:00 pm
Orshi Drozdik, Nina Sobell, Laura Splan, Orkan Telhan
Discussion moderated by Patricia Olynyk
NY LASER is a series of lectures and presentations on art and science projects, in support of Leonardo/ISAST’s LEAF initiative (Leonardo Education and Art Forum). Former LEAF Chairs, Ellen K. Levy, former IDSVA Special Advisor in the Arts and Sciences and Patricia Olynyk, Director, Graduate School of Art, Washington University co-direct these presentations to promote dialogue at the highest level among artists, scientists, scholars, and historians.
Orshi Drozdik is a Hungarian-born artist, who deconstructs science by showing its role in the creation of gender roles and reveals the construction behind the myth of female identity and objectivity. One such body of work involves taxonomic critiques of Linnaeus and another, Love letters to the Medical Venus, was inspired in part by her experience with the Medical Venus in Vienna. Research, theory and its language, and the manifest representation of these in art have been the ongoing driving force for her creative production.
Nina Sobell is a pioneer of brain computer interfaces that explore the synchrony of brainwaves between two or more people, which creates combined physical and mental portraits of non-verbal communication. She will present the developmental history of her Interactive BrainWave Drawing Installations beginning with work at the VA Neuropsychology Lab, BrainChat, an internet application, and a BCI app, BrainChatTrust. She has exhibited at venues that include the ICA London; Getty Museum, the Long Beach Museum of Art, and Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston.
Laura Splan is an artist and lecturer whose work explores intersections of art, science, technology and craft. Her conceptually based projects interrogate the material manifestations of our mutable relationship with the human body and examine perceptions and representations of the corporeal with a range of traditional and new media techniques. Her recent work uses biosensors (electromyography, electroencephalography) to create data-driven forms and patterns for digitally fabricated sculptures, tapestries and works on paper. Her recent solo exhibition at the NYU Langone Medical Center Art Gallery included 3D printed sculptures and computerized jacquard weavings that explored notions of agency, embodiment, and veracity through data visualization.
Orkan Telhan is an interdisciplinary artist, designer and researcher. Telhan is Associate Professor of Fine Arts, Emerging Design Practices in the School of Design at The University of Pennsylvania. He holds a PhD in Design and Computation from MIT's Department of Architecture was part of the Sociable Media Group at the MIT Media Laboratory. Telhan's individual and collaborative work has been exhibited internationally in venues including the Istanbul Biennial (2013), Istanbul Design Biennial. Along with his current work, he will discuss some of the ethics and philosophy of DIY Biological Art & Design.
