We don’t believe what we see; we see what we believe. Seeing the unfamiliar is extremely difficult and the artists and scientists who help us open windows to new worlds deserve our deepest gratitude. Our special October 9th Categorically Not! features presenters who are each masters at the art and science of seeing the unseen.
Science is all about seeing things differently. Shelley Claridge, a chemist at the California NanoSystems Institute a UCLA, will talk about how you see the world around you, why you can’t see something as small as an atom, and how her microscope can do just that, by ‘seeing’ like blind people do. Learning about the world at this tiny scale helps create and operate machines as small as a single molecule, observe quantum mechanical interactions, and may ultimately change the way we understand biology and design drugs to cure disease.
In 1898, Marie Curie began to see a world that had been until then invisible. She not only discovered two new elements but, in the process, discovered a revolutionary way to find new elements. Her work has helped us see into the past, tracking our origins by dating the decay of radioactive materials. In writing a play about her, says the writer, actor and science communicator Alan Alda, the trick was to see her as she was: not simply a heroic icon, but a three dimensional woman who was as passionate about the two men she loved as she was about science. Radiance opens at the Geffen Playhouse Nov.
Believing that the mission of art is to disturb the peace, Nancy Linehan Charles (award-winning actress and a director), is taking the Bard to the streets, erupting a flash-mob MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM on the Venice Boardwalk. Guerrilla Shakespeare is dropping scenes all across L.A.: Hamlet and Horatio discussing the Ghost on the ramparts in an office elevator at rush-hour; Romeo and Juliet calling each other from a mezzanine in a public mall. Nearly arrested twice, this brave Guerrilla troupe flashes on, turning Shakespeare on his ear for the “my-iPhone-is-fused-to-my-palm” generation.
Come at 6 for refreshments and wander the studios. Program begins at 6:30. We ask a for an $8 donation to cover expenses.
RSVP: 310/397-7449 or: [email protected]
What isn’t a mash-up? Certainly, we are—made up of mostly off the shelf parts that evolution stitched together and altered in ways that created critters who cooked up everything from hybrid cars to baked Alaska—not to mention classical jazz and chocolate covered bacon. DJs today are mash-up maestros, and we’ll have one on hand — Eduard Minobis of the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) in Barcelona, a performer at multiple venues. Currently visiting the USC Norman Lear Center, Eduard is researching celebrity, music, fandom and social media. And yes, he’ll play.
Eduard will accompany Johanna Blakely , the managing director and director of research at the Norman Lear Center, who will put her English PhD hat on to discuss mash-ups as a form of “intertextuality” in literature, music and fashion. Her research on fashion (which she’s shared in a popular TED talk) reveals it to be an industry especially receptive to mash-ups because of its lax copyright regime. Her photo was generated in a program called MacOSaiX and the source material for the mosaic was anything tagged “mash-up” on Flickr)
Eating and breathing rocks? Not so strange when you realize that breathing is analogous to running electrons through a wire to power an appliance. As it turns out, almost anything that will provide an electron can be used as a food by some kind of life, and almost anything that will take up an electron can be used for respiration. Ken Nealson, a mash-up addict all his life, founded the geobiology program at USC, and he’ll take us to that bizarre realm where the biosphere harvests energy from the geosphere.
Time, hairstyling, spreadsheets, luminosity, robotics and code are all actors in a show created by Emily White and Lisa Little, co-founders of Layer, an LA based architecture practice rooted in rigorous material experimentation and a sensitivity to the nuance of human perception. Their houses, interiors and installations, have appeared in the LA Times and Interior Design as well the 2010 California Design Biennial. Recent drawings examine “the relationship between lusciousness and control,” and will be on display at Santa Monica Art Studios..
This program will take place at our usual home, Santa Monica Art Studios. Come at 6 for refreshments and wander the studios. Program begins at 6:30. We ask for a $8 donation to cover expenses.
Please RSVP to 310-397-7449 [email protected]