BREAKOUT SESSION LEADERS

Sunday morning, December 8, 9:45 - 10:45 am:
7 concurrent sessions

• Peg Dirckx, Communications Specialist, Center for Biofilm Engineering at Montana State University-Bozeman
  
  Sara Mast, artist, professor, Montana State University-Bozeman
  
  Betsey Pitts, Sr. Research Assoc, Center for Biofilm Engineering at Montana State University-Bozeman

  QUESTION: How do interdisciplinary art-sci collaborators discern and evaluate which boundaries to push, and how far? -and which boundaries to respect, and why?
  
  Interdisciplinary, interspecies collaborations require participants to stretch, and often reconfigure, traditional boundaries-natural, cultural, disciplinary, gender, interpersonal and personal-in terms of new collective goals. The incorporation of other species into the work brings particular challenges, in consideration of life forms which cannot speak for themselves. Our experience with the Bioglyphs collaboration suggests that a productive art/science collaboration involves maintaining, over time, a complex dynamic balance between crossing some traditional boundaries and respecting others.

  
  Bioglyphs collaborative project:
  http://www.erc.montana.edu/Bioglyphs/
  
  IN NYC DURING SYMPOSIUM:
  Collaborative exhibition of BIOGLYPHS at Manhattan College
  [stunning glyphs on gallery walls are living bioluminescent organisms!]
  Saturday the 7th: 6 to 8 p.m.
  Sunday the 8th: 6 to 9 p.m.
  Monday and Tuesday, 9th & 10th: Noon to 6 p.m.
  LOCATION: Rooms 313 and 314 of the O'Malley Library at Manhattan College
  TRAINS: at the end of the 1 or 9 IRT subway.
  

  
  BRIEF BIO: Peg Dirckx  

  Communications Specialist, Center for Biofilm Engineering at Montana State University-Bozeman
  
  Peg Dirckx has worked at the Center for Biofilm Engineering, an interdisciplinary National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center, since its inception in 1990. With an educational background in English education (art minor), her career has included language arts instruction at the secondary and college levels, and over 20 years in professional graphic/information design. Throughout her tenure at the CBE, she has worked side by side with faculty, staff, and student scientists and engineers from 11 academic disciplines, assisting their efforts to communicate CBE research to academic, industrial and public audiences through word and image-and providing her a rare degree of exposure to, and participation in, communication across disciplinary boundaries. Her conceptual illustrations based on biofilm research have appeared in Science, New Scientist, The Lancet and Natural History, as well as numerous science textbooks.

BRIEF BIO: Sara Mast

Sara Mast, on the faculty of Montana State University-Bozeman, is a widely exhibited artist whose paintings and large scale collaborative installations employ encaustic, found objects and recycled materials in the exploration of environmental themes. Her work is an active meditation on the way verbal language defines our perceptions and experience of nature.

The stimulus for her process and imagery is that place (physical and psychical) where culture and nature permeate one another, and boundaries become uncertain. Recent exhibitions include: Collaborative Works: Terry Karson & Sara Mast, Holter Museum of Art, Helena, MT; Seraphin Art Gallery, Philadelphia, PA; Marcia Wood Gallery, Atlanta, GA; Encaustic Works '01, The Muroff-Kotler Visual Art Gallery, Stone Ridge, NY (Director's Award); Art From Detritus, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, NYC, NY; Morgan Gallery and the John and Maxine Belger Family Foundation, Kansas City, MO.

Her work is featured in: Encaustic Painting: Contemporary Expression in the Ancient Medium of Pigmented Wax, by Joanne Mattera, published by Watson-Guptill, NY, 2001; and New American Paintings, published by The Open Studios Press, Wellesley, MA, 2001. Currently, she is co-designing an artist/naturalist residency entitled Rio de Artes, in collaboration with Bosque Lluvioso Foundation, Salt Lake City, UT, and InBio (Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad), San Jose, Costa Rica. 15)

Address
MSU-Bozeman School of Art, Haynes Hall 244

Phone
406-994-2720

e-mail: smast@montana.edu

 

BRIEF BIO: Betsey Pitts  

Betsey Pitts majored in art for two years and taught elementary school in Louisiana for another two before completing an undergraduate degree in physics at the University of Idaho. She continued graduate studies in experimental high energy particle physics at the University of Rochester, where she worked on the DZero search for the top quark at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. After receiving her Master's degree in physics, she studied Environmental Science at Rutgers University, worked as a radiation physicist, and learned microbiology while working at a biotechnology company in New Jersey. She finally found her interdisciplinary niche at the Center for Biofilm Engineering, an international leader in the study of microbial communities attached to surfaces. At the CBE, she works in collaboration with researchers from numerous scientific disciplines and has studied everything from toilet bowl biofilms to a bacterial gene encoding for detachment. She has recently accepted the position as Center Microscopist, with the goal of optimizing the quality of biofilm image information gathered by Center researchers from the CBE's Confocal Scanning Laser Microscope. Phone
406-994-7813 e-mail betsey_p@erc.montana.edu

Pia Cordova, Biologist, MA in Development Communications, and Program Coordinator for the Venezuelan Science & Art Program

Alberto Sato, Architect, MSc, Professor at Universidad Central de Venezuela, and Science & Art Program Advisor to Venezulean government

QUESTION: How can a governmental program nurture the collaborative process between artists and scientists? What are the advantages and disadvantages of such a program?

This program provides the governmental support and action lines for scientists and artists working together. As an art and science initiative, its theoretical proposition about artistic experimentation in the science context will be presented. As a governmental initiative, its conceptual framework, goals and preliminary results will be presented and discussed with the audience.

The Venezuelan Science and Art program was born as a policy to promote and stimulate the innovation and social appropriation of science and technology to open up ways to innovation and to involve every part of society through the elaboration of products that, taking this into account, influence the amelioration of our social problems. For the purpose of this program it is important that the meeting place for these two fields, have a strong emphasis in technology applied into the productive processes.

The development and consolidation of the program proposes a strategy of promotion that contemplates constructing nets, supporting projects, opening spaces for debate and facilitating the construction of capacities. We have already held a big meeting among specialists to discuss the programs conceptual framework and announced our first Call for Projects.

This is an interesting experience developed within the governmental policies framework, that answers questions about the relationship between science, technology and society.

Venezuelan Science & Art Program:
satonas@telcel.net.ve
Address: Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnologia, Av. Los Cortijos, ed. Maploca I, Caracas 1080.
Phone: 0582-7536718
Fax: 2393145
WWW.mct.gov.ve

BRIEF BIO: Dr. Alberto Sato

He was born in Argentina in 1943. He is living in Venezuela since 1975. Architect, industrial designer and critic. Currently he is involved in architectural and industrial design projects. He was Director of the CIHE (Historical and Aesthetic Research Center at Universidad Central de Venezuela) and a member of the editorial board of the architecture section of the newspaper Economia-Hoy in Caracas. He has published extensively in Europe, the USA and Latin America on contemporary architecture and Industrial Design. As well, he is a professor of History and Theory of Architecture and Design at Universidad Central de Venezuela. Visiting professor at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile and at the Universidad de Puerto Rico. He was awarded a Scholarship by the Getty Grant Program, 1995.

e-mail address satonas@telcel.net.ve

Mailing address
Calle Chulavista, Res. Camino Alto
Sótano 2, Dpto. S-3 , Chulavista
Caracas-Venezuela

 

BRIEF BIO: Pia Cordoba

Venezuelan biologist, born in 1963 in La Paz, Bolivia. She grew up living in several Latin American countries until her high-school studies. She did her high-school and university studies in Venezuela (bachelor in Biology and in Education) and has worked in environmental education and alternative media for development (theater and puppetry). After her Masters Degree in Development Communication (UT-Austin), she worked at the National Science Museum for five years (1997-2001), developing communication strategies to promote the public understanding of research. Currently, she works at the Ministry of Science and Technology, developing national programs and strategies to promote and stimulate the innovation and social appropriation of science and technology. Two of the programs that she currently manages in the Ministry are the Science Museums and Interactive Centers Program and the Science and Art Program.

e-mail address
pcordova@mct.gov.ve
Phone - Fax Work
2393145
Phone - Fax Home
2847551
Address
Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnologia, Av. Los Cortijos, ed. Maploca I, Caracas 1080.

QUESTION: What are the criteria and the selection process of the Daniel Langlois Foundationâs Grants programs. How to submit a proposal?

 

Established in the spring of 1997 through an endowment provided by Daniel Langlois, the Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science, and Technology is a private non-profit organization whose scope of activity is international. The Foundationâs purpose is to further artistic and scientific knowledge by fostering the meeting of art and science in the field of technologies.

 

The Foundation has two calls for projects a year: one for individual artists and scientists (the deadline is January 31 annually) and one for organizations (the deadline is June 30 annually).

 

FUNDING PROGRAM FOR INDIVIDUALS

THE RESEARCH GRANT PROGRAM FOR INDIVIDUAL ARTISTS OR SCIENTISTS

Through this program, the Foundation offers grants to individuals making an exceptional contribution to advancing knowledge at the crossroads of art, science and technology, or to individuals whose project is highly original or innovative. This assistance is intended to support individuals in their research, their experimental work and the development of their projects.

 

FUNDING PROGRAM FOR ORGANISATIONS

 

STRATEGIC GRANTS FOR ORGANISATIONS

 

This program is being developed to replace and amalgamate the existing two programs for organizations: The exhibition, distribution and performance program for organizations and the program for organizations from emerging regions.

 

BIO:

Dominique Fontaine is Program Officer at the Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science, and Technology. She graduated in Visual arts and arts administration from the University of Ottawa. In addition, she is also trained as a curator and special events coordinator. Her previous work experiences as a curator or arts administrator include institutions such as De Appel Stiching (Amsterdam), Z.A.R Works (South Africa), Festival international de nouvelle danse (Montreal), The Canadian Museum of Civilization (Hull, Quebec).

Dominique Fontaine

Program Officer

The Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science, and Technology

3530 Saint-Laurent Blvd., suite 402

MontrŽal, QuŽbec  H2X 2V1  Canada

 

phone: (514) 987-7177     
fax: (514) 987-7492

email: dfontaine@fondation-langlois.org

url: http://www.fondation-langlois.org/

FOR RECENT NEWS: http://www.fondation-langlois.org/e/nouvelles/index.html