James K. Gimzewski

Chemistry
UCLA

Victoria Vesna

Design|Media Art
UCLA

 

Date: Friday, March 12, 2004
Place: Engineering Pavilion
_____ Engineering II, Rm. 1401
Time: 4:00 pm — 5:00 pm (Refreshments served at 3:30 pm)



Abstract:
Two UCLA professors -- media artist Victoria Vesna and nanoscience pioneer James Gimzewski are working together at the intersection of art and science. Their groundbreaking project, "nano," now on view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art Lab, presents the world of nanoscience through a participatory aesthetic experience. Together with architects from Johnston Marklee and a creative team consisting of media artists and scientists they created a hybrid space that is made up of nine interconnected interactive installations. These modular, experiential spaces using embedded computing technologies engage all of the senses to provoke a broader understanding of nanoscience and its cultural ramifications. The various components of "nano" are designed to immerse the visitor in the radical shifts of scale and sensory modes that characterize nanoscience, which works on the scale of a billionth of a meter. Participants can feel what it is like to manipulate atoms one by one with their shadows and experience themselves a part of the complex molecular world.

http://nano.arts.ucla.edu

This talk will address issues of collaboration between disciplines, in academia and in the museum environment and public space.

Biographies: Dr. Gimzewski is a Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California Los Angeles and Co-Director of the Center for Social Interfaces & Networks Advanced Programming Simulations & Environments (SINAPSE), UCLA. Until February 2001, he was a group leader at the IBM Zurich Research Laboratory, where he was involved in Nanoscale science since 1983. He pioneered research on electrical contacts with single atoms and molecules, light emission and molecular imaging using STM. His accomplishments include the first STM-manipulation of molecules at room temperature, the realization of molecular abucus using bucky balls, the discovery of single molecule rotors and the development of new silicon-based nanomechanical sensors, which explore the ultimate limits of sensitivity and measurement in chemical and biochemical systems. His current interests, as a member of the Executive Board of the California Nanosystems Institute (CNSI), are in the Nanoarchitectonics of molecular systems and molecular and biomolecular nanomechanics.

Dr. Vesna is an artist, professor and chair of the department of Design | Media Arts at the UCLA School of the Arts. Her work can be defined as experimental research that resides in between disciplines and technologies. She explores how communication technologies affect collective behavior and how perceptions of identity shift in relation to scientific innovation. Victoria has exhibited her work in 16 solo exhibitions, over 70 group shows, published 20 papers and gave over 100 invited talks in the last ten years.

Host: George Legrady, Professor of Art Studio and Media Arts & Technology