BIOS Centre at London School of Economics:Upcoming Events

The BIOS Centre is a multidisciplinary research centre analysing the practice and implications of developments in bioscience, biomedicine, biotechnology and society.

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Exploring the Mind:

Creative State of Mind was an art project devised by artist Ruth Maclennan and Professor Nikolas Rose at the BIOS centre at LSE, supported by a People’s Award from the Wellcome Trust and the Arts Council England. The project was an original approach to a difficult and broad subject: the mind and brain in contemporary art, science and society. See full article here.

Beyond Mimesis and Nominalism: Representation in Art and Science

Two-day international conference in London, 22-23 June 2006

Representations play a critical role in both science and art. Perceived as different in kind, artistic and scientific representations have been studied as objects of distinct disciplinary and intellectual traditions. However, recent work in both the philosophy of science and studies of the visual arts suggests that these apparently different representational traditions may be related in challenging and provocative ways. “Beyond Mimesis and Nominalism,” a conference co-sponsored by the Courtauld Institute of Art Research Forum, the London School of Economics, and the Institute of Philosophy of the University of London, seeks to open conversations between and beyond these compartmentalized traditions of thinking about representation.

Click for more info.

OPEN CALL: Bio/Med SciART

OPEN CALL
Deadline: August 3, 2006
Digital06: Bio/Med SciART
International Digital Print Competition/Exhibition in NYC

Art & Science Collaborations, Inc (ASCI) is pleased to announce the Open
Call for its 8th annual, international digital print competition/exhibition,
"Bio/Med SciART," to be held at the New York Hall of Science from September
30, 2006 - January 15, 2007. The aim of this exhibition is to explore how
the health, medical, biosciences [including biology in general and also
neuroscience] and biotechnologies are influencing the content of
contemporary art via digital prints.

JURORS: This year's competition selections will be made in an art-science
collaborative process between ASCI Director, Cynthia Pannucci, and Ramunas
Kondratas, Curator of the medical collections in the Division of Medicine
and Science at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American
History.

Entry Details: http://www.asci.org/artikel795.html
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Cynthia Pannucci
Founder/Director
Art & Science Collaborations, Inc. (ASCI)
www.asci.org

RTE announce commissions for science television programmes

RTE have announced that they are looking to fund original science programme ideas for a prime time television slot after the 9 o'clock news up to €480,000. The deadline for proposals is August 28th. Here is an excerpt from the presentation of the new commission: "Home-produced science programmes have not had a prime place in our schedules for some time now – So, with this in mind, RTÉ is now seeking to commission a short series of exciting, inventive, imaginative and, above all, accessible, Irish programmes on science. What we’re looking for are proposals for four one-hour programmes which will showcase exciting, science-related stories with an Irish angle. The programmes will go out in a prime time slot – most likely in the documentary slot after the 9 o’clock news. We’re specifically looking for proposals for programmes that treat science in a non-scientific way: human-interest stories with a science angle or populist, personal stories with science content are particularly welcome. Think “The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off” – a deeply personal and moving landmark documentary, about a boy with a rare medical condition and how he coped with it. There was science there, but the human story was paramount. We do not want worthy, voiceover-heavy, technical programmes about exciting new gismos; we don’t want to bash people over the head with science; what we want to see is science as part of life. So stories about people, and stories which have an undercurrent of science will help to bring science to a wider public. We’d also welcome new faces: if there is an exciting “new face of science” out there who will engage and excite the audience, we would be happy to receive proposals based around that person’s ability to bring science to as wide an audience as possible".
For more details see the RTE website.
If you have an idea for an art-science programme and might be interested in partnering with SEED on a submission, contact Eimear Bruen: ebruen@googlemail.com

Featured artist: Robert Lang's computational origami

Robert Lang is a pioneer in the emerging field of computational origami, a branch of mathematics that explores the formal properties and potentialities of folded paper. Like the study of knots, pioneered in the late nineteenth century, computational origami and its practical offshoot origami sekkei or “technical folding” turn out to have a surprising range of applications to real world problems; from working out how to fold up stents so they can be threaded into arteries, to designing thin-film telescopes that are packed into the hold of a space shuttle. Lang is the inventor of the TreeMaker computer program, which allows him to design and calculate crease patterns for a wide range of origami models—including intricate insects, crustaceans, and amphibians. He has been one of the very few Western columnists for the Japan Origami Academic Society and is the author of eight books, including Origami Design Secrets: Mathematical Methods for an Ancient Art. Lang received a doctorate in physics from Caltech and spent twenty years as a laser physicist before becoming a fulltime paper folder (from the Institute for Figuring) Link (thanks, Josh)

Lines of Enquiry: Thinking through Drawing

Even with cameras in our phones sometimes only a drawing will do. Lines of Enquiry is a new exhibition opening on July 15 in Kettle's Yard, Cambridge exploring drawing as thinking through drawings by physicists, geologists, architects, engineers, zoologists, archaeologists, palaeontologists, geneticists, surgeons, historians, philosophers, and composers as well as artists.
(image: Drosophila cell, prometaphase stage by Adelaide Carpenter, Dept. of Genetics, University of Cambridge)
Link

Living Lenses exhibition at IMMA opens tomorrow

Tomorrow (Tuesday July 11) Living Lenses will open an exhibition of some of their latest explorations at the Irish Museum of Modern Art where they are currently artists in residence. Living Lenses, an art duo based between Copenhagen and Berkeley California, made up of Louise Bertelsen and Po Shu Wang, believe that we live every day in a reality that is constantly inspiring the most wonderful and tragic human interactions, and their work involves subtle alterations of the bits and pieces of everyday reality in public places, mischievous social experiments that reveal the underlying dynamics of everyday experience. Link

Read Kroto on Art and Science

The SEED art-science salon with Harry Kroto was a great success, participants got to build their own buckyball models and hear about how a promising graphic designer had his career prospects thwarted by the discovery of Buckminsterfullerene, and also enjoyed the jazz duo of Francesco Amico and Lou van Laake at the Odessa Club.
Professor Kroto has kindly made his article Art and Science I: Drawing Buckyballs available to SEED -- enjoy.

New Science Communication Blog

Diarmuid MacMathuna's new Science Communication blog has interesting info on science communication/science journalism in Ireland.

Radio interview on art and science with Harry Kroto

In addition to participating in the SEED art-science salon last night Professor Harry Kroto generously agreed to do a live radio interview on the connections between art and science for RTE's Rattlebag yesterday afternoon. Listen to the interview (Real Audio).