This year’s symposium focused on the issues concerning environment, policy-making, urban planning, sustainable design, and related practices by artists and scientists. It brought a number of great speakers over a 2-day event. I’ve attended the most of it except the panel discussion on the first day due to class - which was a shame as a list of panelists looked interesting! (Did anyone attend this? If yes, how was it?)
Day 1 was run by LEONARD. As I was already familiar with their style (I go to their speaker series at SETI in Mt. View periodically), it was predominated by a perspective from scientists and technologists. Regardless, overall I thought LEONARD and CADRE complimented each other very well over the course of a 2-day event.
All speakers presented his or her expertise on the issues with passion, which was informative and very inspiring (although the problem and idea was nothing new.) But it certainly made me feel good to be part of this - the experience of being there and made me feel even more strong about the issues as an artist and a human being.
Day 2 was hosted by the CADRE Laboratory for New Media in the School of Art and Design at SJSU. I was particularly intrigued by the panel discussion by the Climate Clock teams, which was medicated by Joel Slayton and the focus was around their design strategies. They were posed hard questions (by Joel) and I was curious about their responses as well as enjoyed watching how each team interacted as a group and between teams (but ultimately as a competitor), etc.
Prior to the panel discussion, there was also a great introduction about the Climate Clock initiative by the Public Art Director for the City of San Jose Office of Cultural Affairs, Barbara Goldstein which helped me to understand better from a different angle (a big picture), followed by the presentations by each group which was still work in progress so it was a little bit hard to visualize clearly (but seeing them up on stage was helpful).
One of the Climate Clock teams, Amorphic Robot Works (Chico MacMurtrie, Geo Homsy, Bill Washabaugh, and Gideon Shapiro) also showcased a gigantic sculpture “Inflatable Architectural Growth during the festival on the First Street for Absolute ZERO (and held days of workshop at South Hall). I had a chance to talk to Chico and met his team members during Absolute ZERO and I was totally impressed by their robotic artwork as well as their teamwork. Looking forward to working with them when they will begin their residencies at SJSU and Montalvo Art Center in January.
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