“Laser Talks”: Bay Area Art & Science Night | UC Berkeley

Submitted by the Event Organizer

The LASERs (Leonardo Art/Science Evening Rendezvous) are a national program of evening gatherings that bring artists and scientists together for informal presentations and conversations with an audience.

The LASER series was started by cultural historian Piero Scaruffi in January 2008 as a local forum for presenting art and science projects underway in the Bay Area. The Bay Area LASERs now alternate between San Francisco (at USF), Silicon Valley (at Stanford Univ) and the East Bay (at UC Berkeley). 

The mission of the LASERs is to provide the general public with a snapshot of the cultural environment of a region and to foster interdisciplinary networking.
Each evening, in a casual academic setting, free of charge and open to the public, presents up to four artists, scientists, philosophers, historians, inventors and scholars who are working on paradigm shifts. Each evening also allows the audience to socialize and encourages people in the audience to briefly introduce their work.

The agenda includes some presentations of art/science projects, news from the audience, and time for casual socializing/networking.

Program (the order of the speakers might change):

• 7:00-7:25 pm: Andrew Blanton (San Jose State Univ) on “Alchemy, Cyberpunk Aesthetics and Digital Art”
  A philosophical look at the relationship between alchemy and cyberpunk aesthetics of the 1980s.
• 7:25-7:50 pm: Erling Wold (Composer) on “The Descent of Opera”
  Trends in modern opera.
• 7:50-8:10 pm: Break. Before or after the break, anyone in the audience currently working within the intersections of art and science will have 30 seconds to share their work. Please present your work as a teaser so that those who are interested can seek you out during social time following the event.
• 8:10-8:35 pm: Brewster Kahle (Founder and director of the Internet Archive) on “Universal Access to All Knowledge“
• 8:35-9:00 pm: Melissa Merencillo (Virtual Reality Designer) on “Where We Are in XR (X Reality: Augmented, Virtual, Mixed and Cinematic Realities)“

Disclaimer: Please double check event information with the event organizer as events can be canceled, details can change after they are added to our calendar, and errors do occur.