[Image: Trevor Paglen] Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous (LASER) - featuring presentations by Ken Goldberg, Carlo Sequin, Richard Rinehart, Kris Paulsen and Trevor Paglen :: May 12, 2008 6 - 10 pm :: SFSU Downtown, 835 Market Street, San Francisco, CA [organized by Piero Scaruffi on behalf of Leonardo/ISAST]

Trevor Paglen of the Department of Geography University of California at Berkeley on The Other Night Sky - Artist / geographer Trevor Paglen will talk about his recent project to track and photograph 189 classified “moons” (reconnaissance satellites) in Earth orbit. Along the way, he introduces us to an international network of satellite observers, tracks the history of two “stealth” satellites, and contemplates the relationship between classical empiricism and democracy.

Ken Goldberg, Director of the Berkeley Center for New Media on Robots as Naturalists - Ken will present experiments and questions raised by robots and social networks, ranging from ouija boards to human “tele-actors,” and tell a true story about how invasions of privacy led him and his students to investigate how robots can assist in monitoring the natural environment. He’ll describe a robotic system they’ve deployed to assist the search for the ivory billed woodpecker, a bird of extreme interest to birdwatchers, ornithologists, and conservationists whose last confirmed sighting was in 1944. Ken will also present the manifesto of the Berkeley Center for New Media and propose a hopefully controversial definition of “media.”

Carlo Sequin on Knotty Sculptures.

Richard Rinehart, Curator of the Berkeley Art Museum, on the forthcoming UC Berkeley Big Bang conference - Berkeley’s New Media Center and Leonardo ISAST are organizing a two-day academic conference to be held in June 2008 at the Berkeley Museum. Richard Rinehart, Curator of the Berkeley Museum, will present the Berkeley day of the conference (first day of the conference).

Kris Paulsen, grad student at Berkeley Center for New Media on Participation TV - Kris will examine a sequence of projects from the 1960s to the present in which artists have worked to reverse the unidirectional structure of broadcast television. These artists feed back into the networks by disrupting broadcasts, “hijacking” programs through pseudo-events and hostile takeovers, and by developing their own multi-directional systems that challenge the television viewer’s traditionally passive role. By exploiting the potential for liveness on television news, CCTV, and public access, the artists addressed in this talk attempt to put viewers into direct contact with the event and with the others who are watching - the network becomes a crowd.

Space is limited. Please RSVP to Piero Scaruffi: p [at] scaruffi.com