How would an artist and a scientist interpret the same data set? Artist Adrien Segal and scientist Stephen Guerin both physicalize data offering experiential opportunities to interact with the nature of wildfire. Segal creates fascinating sculptures that are the physicalization of data from actual wildfire events, while Guerin creates augmented reality simulations that can be interacted with in real time to learn about and understand wildfire behavior.

The work of both Segal and Guerin make data real for people unaccustomed to reading and interpreting data sets, touching on phenomenology, complex adaptive systems, and more. With the rise in large-scale wildfires in recent years, their conversation is especially prescient in broaching the need for both collecting and humanizing data for specialized audiences and the general public.

Past events

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Inflatable Architecture and Live Microscope Painting: international artists explore inner and outer space.

A LASER Santa Fe talk hosted by Biocultura. 6 PM at Santa Fe Community College, West Building, Lecture Hall. See details about the LASER here.

Register to reserve a seat. You can also reserve a Donation Seat to contribute to artists' travel expenses.

June 8

Artists working with NASA and CERN is a Leonardo Art, Science, Evening Rendezvous (LASER) Talk in in conjunction with the Santa Fe Institute Interplanetary Festival. New Mexico artists Richard Lowenberg and Agnes Chavez will present their work collaborating with NASA and CERN.

Richard Lowenberg will present work from 10 years of NASA/Arts collaborations, including the first artist’s use of satellite communications and performers participating in astronaut gravitational simulation experiments, as well as current collaborative work including “The Energy & Information Ecosystems of the Colorado Plateau: An Arts/Sciences Field Study.”

Agnes Chavez will present her collaborations with CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) where she created work exploring particle physics. She is currently collaborating with scientists and engineers at the CERN Data Centre as Artistic Director designing a permanent installation that will visualize real time and statistical data from the Large Hadron Collider.

For more information, see the June 8 LASER page.

Registration link will be available here May 25. Seating limited.

Past Events

December 1

Friday Happy Hour 4:30-7pm

Art and Science: The Two Cultures Converging

Watch party for the SciArt Center's conference

Location: Susan Latham's Studio

About the event:

As the first installment of LASER Santa Fe, Biocultura presents an evening hosted at Cloud 5 Project Space. This event will feature a globally renowned artist, a scientist and a curator to cross-pollinate their research in an evening of presentations and discussion. A reception will begin at 6:30 with talks at 7:30. Artist Stephen Auger of Santa Fe will present his collaborative work with chronobiologist Dr. Benjamin Smarr visiting from UC Berkeley. Their work entitled “The Meaning of Light” explores the art and neuroscience behind visual perception and the circadian rhythm. Biocultura will also welcome visiting curator, educator, and creative facilitator from the Netherlands Carolyn Strauss who will present “Slow Research: Seeking Intimacy with Reality.” The two presentations will be followed by a discussion and Q&A.

“Slow Research: seeking intimacy with reality”

Presented by Carolyn F. Strauss

Carolyn F. Strauss is a curator, educator, and creative facilitator whose experience traverses the fields of architecture, design, contemporary art, emerging technology, and social and environmental activism. She is the director of Slow Research Lab, a multidisciplinary creative and curatorial platform based in the Netherlands. There she engages a dynamic collection of thinkers and practitioners in a spectrum of local and international research activities—exhibitions, publications, workshops, in-situ dialogues, and immersive study experiences—realized in collaboration with academic, institutional, and nonprofit partners.

In her lectures, Carolyn shares her philosophical approach and provides details of some of the creative investigations that Slow Research Lab has facilitated—from ephemeral, (im)material experiments to large-scale urban interventions—at the intersection of phenomenology and ecology, mathematics and somatics, language and landscape. These projects aim to reimagine humanity’s place in a complex-interdependent world, in balance with and within other living systems and along a temporal continuum that stretches well beyond individual lives and lifespans. In sharing this expanded (Slow) realm of praxis, she challenges students and professionals alike to cultivate alternative visions and variant rhythms within their own creative inquiry and projects.

“The Meaning of Light”

Presented by Stephen Auger

Stephen Auger has worked as a Cross-disciplinary artist and light theorist for over four decades. He trained in physics and neuroscience at Hampshire College and The Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT. Auger’s paintings explore the boundaries of visual perception encouraging viewers to experience “sensing” as a conscious mode of perception. His pursuit of the enigmatic sensory qualities experienced in the light of dawn and dusk led him into collaborations with Dr. Margaret Livigstone and Dr. Benjamin Smarr. Auger’s exploration of time-base perception and self-organizing pattern and form emanate from his work with the dynamic interaction of matter with vibration and elemental forces of nature. Auger's mentors include Edwin Land as well as Joseph Albers's protege, Arthur Hoener. His paintings and sculptures are in private, corporate and museum collections internationally, including Yale University, Andrew Lloyd Weber, Malcolm Forbes Jr., The Carnegie Institute of Science. Stephen is currently involved in several collaborative curatorial, teaching, and research projects. Auger lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Dr. Benjamin Smarr studies the temporal structures that biological systems make as they move through time. He is a NIH-funded postdoctoral fellow with a Ph.D. in neurobiology from the University of Washington, Seattle. He joined the UC Berkeley Kriegsfeld Lab in 2013, where he works to understand how physiological dynamics like sleep, circadian rhythms, and ovulatory cycles are shaped by the brain, and how disturbances to those cycles give rise to disease. He uses comparative physiology and neuroendocrinology approaches coupled with data analytics and sensor design to build predictive models for use in personalized medicine and education optimization efforts. Dr. Smarr is also an advocate for scientific outreach, and routinely gives public lectures and visits K-12 classrooms to help promote the idea that by understanding the biology that guides us, we can live more empowered lives. Dr. Smarr's collaboration with cross-disciplinary artist Stephen Auger addresses the fundamental relationships between aesthetic perception, sensory well-being and the dynamic movement of light over time, which are central to Auger's artistic vision.

Join us for an evening with Scott Kildall and Andrew Erdmann.

Scott will be presenting his investigations over the last several years with transforming data into physical installations and sculptures. With the proposition that data has physical consequences, he will look at other artists and cultures that have physicalized data such as the Inca Quipus and the Marshall Island Stick Charts and tie into a conversation of artifact as social exchange. Finally, he will show his current installation work, Sonaqua, which is an artwork where he sonifies water quality using DIY water sensors.

Andrew will discuss water quality and give information about water use, conservation, the sources of water in Santa Fe. He will paint an overview of the City of Santa Fe’s drinking water system, how it’s managed, and how it interacts with the environment in and around the city.

Scott Kildall is a cross-disciplinary artist who creates art installations that use public data around issues of social justice. The resulting artworks often invite public participation through direct interaction. His current artistic research focuses on water data, which includes water quality, infrastructure and habitable exoplanets. His work has been exhibited internationally at venues including the New York Hall of Science, Transmediale, the Venice Biennale, the Vancouver Art Gallery and the San Jose Museum of Art. He has received fellowships, awards and residencies from organizations including the SETI Institute, ZERO1, Santa Fe Art Institute, Impakt Works, Autodesk, Recology San Francisco, Turbulence.org, Eyebeam Art + Technology Center, Kala Art Institute and The Banff Centre for the Arts. Scott resides in San Francisco. www.kildall.com @kildall

Andrew Erdmann is a Water Resources Coordinator with the City of Santa Fe’s Water Division. Working in this capacity, Andrew has been involved in many large-scale water issues including the management of San Juan-Chama project water, watershed restoration and management, water rights permitting, and planning for the impacts of climate change on future water availability. Prior to his work in municipal water management at the City of Santa Fe, Andrew held other positions in the water field including in the fisheries biology program for the US Forest Service and in water rights adjudication and administration at the New Mexico Office of the State Engineer.

The Future Energy Design Storm is a public interactive event designed for participants from diverse disciplines, from engineering and science to architecture and the arts. Based on the Stanford D-School Design Thinking Model, this event will engage participants in discussions about about renewable energy potentials in and around Santa Fe and invite ideas for a more sustainable future. Led by Andrea Polli and Madeline Bolding with participation from UNM students of Computational Sustainability.

Andrea Polli is an artist working at the intersection of art, science and technology whose practice includes media, public interventions, curating and directing, and writing. She is currently a Professor of Art and Ecology with appointments in the College of Fine Arts and School of Engineering at the University of New Mexico. She holds the Mesa Del Sol Endowed Chair of Digital Media and is the founder and director of the Social Media Workgroup research lab. She holds a doctorate in practice-led research from the University of Plymouth and her most recent book is Far Field: Digital Culture, Climate Change and the Poles. Madeline Bolding holds a PhD in genetics from the University of Missouri where she studied rare diseases and gene therapy. During her graduate work she came to love science communication and outreach, so upon moving to New Mexico in early 2017, she began working with Biocultura as an outreach specialist. In this capacity she has enjoyed searching for connections between the worlds of art and science in order to create unique, thoughtful events.

Please join us for a Fermented Freedom workshop with New York bio-artist Moira Williams Sunday, August 13 from 12-3 pm. We will learn how to wrangle wild yeast to make several fermented drinks. Including our own individual scoby– a microbial biofilm that creates kombucha. Kombucha is a fermented drink loaded with local microbe, microbes that in turn, aid our microbiome. We will also discuss the microbiome and its role, look at several biofilms and yeasts through a microscope, swab biofilms, learn about additional fermented foods and local plants to add to our fermented treat.

If you have a scoby bring it along for swapping, swabbing and/or a check up!

Limited to 20 people

Snacks will be provided; snacks to share are welcome too!

Please wear cozy kitchen working clothes and shoes.

More information: Wild yeasts swirl around us in every part of the world. Yet, wild yeasts are curiously invisible as they seamlessly interconnect with the environment and us. Until we feed them…

Then a biofilm, or Scoby, is born, supporting a diverse multitude of living “cultures!”

Wild yeast is unique to place and environment. Living “cultures” preserve place and are at times what makes a region known for its fermented foods, drinks and cultural identity. Although we have lived with wild yeasts for centuries, very little identification of yeast and bacterial species found in scobys has been documented.

Many kombucha brewers exchange their biofilms between one another. These trades across the world raise questions about the nature of biolfilms, about biogeography, selection and evolution. Can we consider kombucha, kombucha biofilms, perhaps all wild yeast fermentation, as living heritage sites? Can living “cultures“ lead us to collectively rethink preservation along with its signs, sites and language? Can these living “cultures” reveal a positive path to the environment’s health and subsequently our own?

Moira Williams’ co-creative practice weaves together performance, science, food, sound and installation to combine diverse bodies of knowledge about our environment and its complex ecology teeming with many forms of life and beliefs to ask: “How do we come to know what it is we know? She invites people to reconfigure familiar objects and social events to offer multiple opportunities for building our social imagination and questioning systems of power and influence. For Moira participation is not about homogeneity it is in service of human connections and our connections to our world: to participate is to generate empathy and vitality. Moira is currently an artist in residence at the Santa Fe Art Institute, working with biofilms, vernal puddles and creating poop postcards.

Like any skill, communication is greatly improved by thinking creatively about the process, planning ahead, and practicing often. This is especially important for those interested in Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math (STEAM) because it is often difficult to explain the complexity or importance of the work. Our STEAM Communicators program offers training and networking opportunities to help participants develop their skills communicating with audiences of all ages.

Led by experienced science educators Liz Martineau and Gordon McDonough, STEAM Communicators practice techniques developed by Portal to the Public (PoP). This program is based on current research looking at the ways we learn through formal and informal education. PoP is supported by the National Science Foundation through their efforts to establish best-practices in science education and promote meaningful interactions between local experts and the public. For more information click here.

Biocultura welcomes Chicago-based Civic Practice Artist Frances Whitehead and Los Alamos-based Scientist and Biodidact Creator Prisca Tiasse in conversation about Fruit Futures.

Fruit Futures takes its name from Whitehead's series of linked, civic, agri+cultural projects that initiate a new small fruit cultures and economies in Gary Indiana, with multipurpose landscapes that afford, engage and educate the public. Repurposing available land, these projects include: The Remediation Arboretum, which investigates how fruiting trees and shrubs can reboot urban soils; The Climate Corridor, a linear planting of ornamental flowering trees, which beautifies the streetscape, transforming it into a seasonal, place-based, climate visualization experience; and The Community Lab Orchard, where citizen scientists explore and demonstrate the culture of favorite and forgotten small fruits for a resilient foodshed.

Frances Whitehead is a civic practice artist bringing the methods, mindsets, and strategies of contemporary art practice to the process of shaping the future city. Connecting emerging art practices, the discourses around culturally informed sustainability, and new concepts of heritage and remediation, she develops strategies to deploy the knowledge of artists as change agents, asking, What do Artists Know? A series of linked civic initiatives include The Embedded Artist Project with the City of Chicago, SLOW Cleanup, a culturally driven phytoremediation program for abandoned gas stations, climate-monitoring plantings throughout the USA and Europe, and an urban agriculture plan with the City of Lima, Peru. Whitehead was the Lead Artist for The 606, a rail infrastructure adaptive reuse project in Chicago and continues to advise on the citizen science climate observation program as part of the art program. Whitehead is Professor of Sculpture at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she contributes to the Architecture program through courses in experimental urban practices.

Prisca Tiasse's skills and areas of expertise include molecular genetics, biochemistry and microbiology. She first came to Los Alamos as a Postdoctoral Research Scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and then decided to carry out her passion for science by starting New Mexico's first community biotech lab with the mission to provide hands-on biotechnology education for all. A molecular biologist with a broad research experience, her research first focused on Neurobiology and the regulation of gene expression in the tobacco hornworm. She used a number of molecular genetics and biochemical tools to uncover novel genes and their function in the bacterium, Vibrio cholerae. Her expertise in genetic engineering and fatty acid biosynthesis led her back to eukaryotes, to help genetically engineer algae strains for better biofuel production, as a postdoctoral research scientist. Tiasse also has a passion for science education...for all! She believes that the discipline, critical thinking, persistence and creativity required for good scientific research is an excellent basis for any education, whether one becomes a scientist or not.

SleepWalks: A Catnap is an evening of relaxation and lucid dreaming that aims to awaken your creativity and dreams.

You spend about one-third of your life sleeping and dreaming, yet scientists still don't know exactly why. In an average lifespan of 77 years that is 25 years of our lives. Bring your sleeping bags, pillows and security blankets to Biocultura for a 'catnap' with sound artist Andrea Williams.

Share mugwort tea, essential oils, pb&j star-shaped sandwiches, and milk and cookies before a 45-minute 'Catnap' version of Williams' project, SleepWalks, a live electronic music performance exploring the impact of sound on dreams by playing to a sleeping audience who then journal about their experience. Williams will cull sounds from field recordings, live samples of the room resonance, and various electronically processed acoustic instruments, to create an extended musical composition while you are encouraged to sleep in the performance space.

The goal of this long-term project is to compose engaging and collaborative soundwalks for dreamers; to compose soundwalk experiences in participants' dreams. Sleepwalks has been performed at numerous venues including Issue Project Room, NYC; Diapason Gallery, NYC; and Mills College, Oakland, CA as part of The Deep Listening Institute's Dream Festival. SleepWalks members include: musicians, Andrea Williams and Lee Pembleton and scientist, Todd Anderson. Most recently, SleepWalks received a NYSCA grant to perform SleepWalks: The Body of Dreams (with Ellen Sinopoli Dance Company), a multimedia dance performance created from the collaborative dreams of SleepWalks participants.