HOX ZODIAC at the Fowler museum

After 8 years of work on this project — feels like it is finally taking a wonderful form. Siddharth flew in from Seattle and we worked together on the book and the kickstarter — soon to be up and running. The idea was to have the book and kickstarter ready for this event at the Fowler museum but it took all our energies to pull it together as we were really pushing the possibilities — we had 60 amazing people join the dinner. Since it was held at the museum, we were not able to have our participants bring their food offerings and were super lucky to have Hsin Yu’s mother prepare the feast. Being Taiwanese she really understood the complexity and was excited to work with me closely on the menu based on the Traditional Chinese Medicine, Ayurveda and Western interpretations of both.

img_8795

Siddharth (sheep) overlooking the set-up and placement…

img_8839

Aleksa Mara (horse) sharing her experience with horses…

img_8851

Marla Berns, director of the Fowler museum speaking about the wonderful exhibition of Cuban printmaker Belkis Ayón.

img_8858

Mick Lorusso speaking about

img_8842

Lerah and Siddarth (sheeps) sharing their dishes.

HOX ZODIAC WORKSHOP at the Zürich University of the Arts (ZHdK)

I was prepared to do an actual workshop that would last half a day but was told that it would be 90 minutes and no more. This was a challenge so I decided to buy the food and do one round of the audience serving. Amazingly, we had 12 people and 3 were snakes, 3 rabbits and 3 pigs (incuding yours truly:). This was a good test how to do a fast session — it was TASTING not lunch or dinner! People certainly got the idea and many were asking how we may plan the real dinner sometime in the future.

img_8255

img_8230

img_8232

img_8236

img_8242

img_8238

More photos from the workshop

Arts and Business: Building a Common Ground for Understanding Society.

Claudia Schnugg from Austria was behind this — thanks to her persistence we finally managed to contribute our paper to this book: “Media Art in the Context of Art, Science and the Market: A Historical Perspective”. The book is so expensive ($120), you will have to get it from a library or already be in business making money. My ultimate challenge in life!!! Now I am stuck — got to start making money with art 🙂

artsbusiness

Octopus Brain Storming @ UCLA Luskin center

It was exhilarating to have the Octopus Brain Storm EEG working! After many different iterations that were mostly imagining how it could work, the art science team brain waves coming together created magic! Collaborator, neuroscientist Mark Cohen, and the art sci collecyive made it happen. We performed this at the opening of the new UCLA Luskin conference center for the very first time and it never failed. The sound, the EEG, the octopus crowns all worked. Octopus brainStorming was first performed live first by Anna Dumitiru and Alex May who happened to be here from the UK and this was followed by a second performance was by Patricia Olynyk and Samantha from Mark’s lab. The voice recording by jazz artist Kenton Chen was by solicited by Mark C. All came together magically. Read here the science behind this work!

Octopus BrainStorming: Empathy — Patricia Olynyk and Samantha from Art|Sci Center on Vimeo.

img_7574

img_7565 img_7563

img_7610

Moderating Ars Electronica Prix Forum: Interactive Art + winners

Because I was a jury member for the Interactive Arts +, they asked me to moderate the winners. More infocanyouhearme

Winners

Mathias Jud (CH) and Christoph Wachter (CH)
Winners of the Golden Nica of 2016 Prix Ars Electronica in the Interactive Art + category. Project: Can you hear me?

Frank Kolkmann (NL)
Award of Distinction of 2016 Prix Ars Electronica 2016 in the Interactive Art + category. Project: OpenSurgery

Moderation

Victroria Vesna (US)
Professor at Design|Media Arts UCLA and jury member of the 2016 Prix Ars Electronica

Art Sci retreat and visit to Jean-Pierre Herve’s studio

V_Jean-Pierre_interviewPreparing for the opening of Jean Pierre Herve’s work at the Art Sci gallery with a visit to his studio in Santa Barbara. Amazed to find out he was an intern at IBM in 1959! Reminded me of Casey Reas’s work so I wrote him to come along and it turns out they know each other well… small world!