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| L: A detail of "Kirigami Music Pavilion", R: A short text and a page from my score "Kirigami I. |
Jenny and I developed a plan for a "Kirigami Music Pavilion", which we hope to see created in the near future. I have attached a 1-page pdf that shows a detail of the structure, a short text and a page from my score "Kirigami I" (from the concert we did together in Fall 2014). Right now we are planning a similar event for 2017 at Cornell. I would love to develop more work using these concepts of origami and kirigami.
I launched a new line of research and work around the Auditory Pathway of the Brain. I have created one work this year called "The Geometry of Thinking", which is a 21 minute work for solo cello based on the research of several scientists. In this work I have represented in music the complete auditory pathway, from the 3 stages of mechanical hearing into the auditory nerve and through the various stages of information processing, ending with the highest level thinking of the so called frontal networks. My work in this line continues with a work for string quartet (commissioned by the Fromm Foundation at Harvard) and an opera (!). Is anyone on this list involved with neuroscience?
Jenny Sabin
With strong links to the Sabin Design Lab at Cornell AAP, Jenny Sabin Studio is an experimental architecture studio based in Ithaca, NY. The studio investigates the intersections of architecture and science, and applies insights and theories from biology and mathematics to the design, fabrication, and production of material structures and spatial interventions. We collaborate with scientists and engineers and employ architects, designers, and artists. Our applied projects are diverse and operate across multiple length scales including adaptive materials, building facades, installations, pavilions, tapestries, rugs, and architectural interventions.
website: www.jennysabin.com
recent lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kJuBWLI23U
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| Detail of PolyThread Pavilion, A project by Jenny Sabin Studio, 2016; Commissioned by Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum for "Beauty-Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial"; Photo by Bill Staffeld. |
Melina Blees
A physicist by training, Melina Blees has always had a strong passion for the arts and for the vibrant communities that grow between disciplines. Her doctoral work with Paul McEuen at Cornell focused on translating design principles from the traditional paper art of kirigami to graphene, an atom-thick sheet of carbon. She has just completed a postdoctoral scholarship with STAGE, a collective laboratory for creating and developing multimedia theatre pieces inspired by science and technology at the Institute for Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago. Melina has collaborated on cross-disciplinary projects with the Smart Museum of Art, the Manchester Museum of Science and Technology, and the art department at Cornell University. She has long been interested in design, printmaking, and conceptually driven sculpture. A selection of her recent art projects can be found here.Marie Elcin
I'm Marie Elcin, a fiber artist and art educator working with young adolescents in both school and community art settings. I have a BFA in 2D Fine Art and Textile Design from Moore College of Art and Design and an M.Ed in Art education from Tyler School of Art, Temple University. I recently participated in the Skirkanich Internship in Network Visualization at Penn, and have introduced some of the concepts we learned about creativity, the brain, and networks into both my art classes and technology classes with students. I think it's very important to introduce young people to big ideas and real world applications, because passions discovered in adolescence often develop into lifelong pursuits. As an artist, my interests dwell around themes of environment, communities, history, and the push and pull of the natural and the man-made. Nicole Koltick
Nicole Koltick is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Architecture + Interiors in the Westphal College of Media Arts and Design at Drexel University. She is the founding Director of the Design Futures Lab where she leads a graduate research group in speculative design practices. The Design Futures Lab is currently pursuing research at the intersection of artificial intelligence, robotics, design and the philosophies of ethics and aesthetics relating to these areas. The genre of this work can broadly be classified as speculative design, critical design or design fiction. This field of design prioritizes the provocation of questions over solving defined problems. The production of design objects, experiences and environments for the future is not meant to be simply predictive, but rather to stimulate debate on the potential implications of emerging technological and scientific developments within society. Her practice spans the disciplines of art, science, technology, design and philosophy. Nicole holds a BFA, in Art from Carnegie Mellon University and a Master’s of Architecture from UCLA. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Philosophy, Art and Critical Thought at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee Switzerland. She is writing on Non-Human Aesthetics, with a focus on the philosophical implications of aesthetics relating to emerging developments in computational creativity, artificially intelligent autonomous systems, robotics and synthetic biological hybrids.
Danielle Bassett
http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~dsb/
Danielle Bassett is an Associate Professor in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania. She runs the Penn Network Visualization Program:
The impact of networks is becoming increasingly apparent in our everyday lives. Social networks like Facebook and Twitter inform our beliefs and opinions, while brain networks capture our thoughts and guide our decisions and actions. The Penn Network Visualization Program seeks to support the development of new network visualization techniques to enhance scientific research, to increase dialog between artistic and scientific communities, and to optimize educational efforts to teach children about our network life. The program includes a summer internship in which young artists spend time with scientists at Penn who are performing cutting edge research in network science as applied to social systems, human biology, and physical materials with the underlying goal of advancing bioengineering. During the course of the internship, the artist produces 3 pieces interpreting and capturing the intricacies of these networks in novel ways. The goal of the internship is to provide scientists with new conceptualizations of their research and to provide the intern with new knowledge in scientific art applications. Pieces created by young artists during the course of this internship are displayed at outreach events in local schools to encourage young children in the exploration of the arts and sciences. The outreach events also include hands-on activities to familiarize students with the concepts of network architecture.
Toen Castle
I work on the concepts behind kirigami: the cutting and folding of a flat sheet into a desired shape. Kirigami is similar to origami, except that the cuts allow greater control, simplicity and possibility. Models of my ideas are typically made from paper, but the shapes scale up to building size, and down to nanotechnology. Using kirigami we build a variety of structures, which are typically dynamic, in the sense that further folding or unfolding can transform the structure. My research so far has focussed on the use of "blocky” shapes and cuts, which simplifies design and construction, and naturally inspires scaling up the paper models into buildings or sculptural motifs build of flat panels and reinforcing rods. The future direction of my research is into more gentle and smooth curves, both in cutting and folding, which will produce more natural-looking and less faceted objects.
Mike Tanishttps://www.instagram.com/hyperqbert/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/miketanis
Mike Tanis is the Artist in Residence in the Kamien Group in the Dept of Physics and Astronomy at UPenn. His varied interests include kirigami and structures build from filaments and folding.
Randy Kamien
Randy asked one of his mignons to make this webpage without providing his own information.