Metabolic Studio Public Salon:
M.A. Greenstein
Friday, June 4, 2010 @ Noon
Free Admission

Beautiful! Sticky! Plastic!

(Why putting your brain/mind back into your body matters now more than ever before!)

Immersive, connective, regenerative, the embodied brain/mind is a beautiful thing: It lights up like a Christmas tree when we feel most alive, engaged and active in the world; it's lights go out when we die. In this salon, publisher, researcher, somatic tracker and arts advocate M. A. Greenstein discusses the neuroscience research that has long inspired her to set up an 21st century, whole-brain learning and consulting institute dedicated to improving lives with embodied, "brain-aware” thinking and creative inquiry. The goal of the institute? To insure the future practice of more vivid, sustainable and open source design thinking and problem solving in facing the challenges of day-to-day urban life.

M. A. Greenstein, an internationally recognized commentator, researcher, educator and coach on best and future practices for "opening the doors of perception." Based in L. A. with networked alliances throughout the Asia Pacific region, she founded The George Greenstein Institute and the future-focused e-zine BODIES IN SPACE to advance high level strategy in designing and adapting creative and holistic learning systems as well as to encourage progressive leadership in related issues of neurotech innovation and designing sustainable lifestyles. Dedicated to BIG THINKING energized by visionary "sci-art" and anchored by S.I.T. (Somatic Intelligence Training), Dr. G is a whole-brain systems generator who privileges "interoception" as a search engine for catapulting & mapping best design images and ideas. An Adjunct Associate Professor at Art Center College of Design, Dr. G. is also member of TED, Mindshare.la, The Neuroleadership Institute and in alliance with the Society for Neuroscience and the Neurotechnology Industry Organization. Dr. G. online: [email protected].

http://bodiesinspace.com

http://greensteingroup.com

http://greensteininstitute.com

Photo courtesy: Van J. Wedeen, MD: www.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/martinos/people/showPerson.php?people_id=196

 



 

Metabolic Studio Public Salon
Linda Duke
Friday, May 28, 2010 @ Noon
Free Admission


The Museum of Wonder


This program explores the idea of museums, especially art museums, as places to have extraordinary experiences. More and more, museums are measuring their success in terms of facts or information remembered by people after a gallery visit. Are there other take-aways that, while harder to measure, hold more value for people or even empower them? Could schools learn something from these less-recognized museum take-aways and be inspired to enlarge definitions of “learning”? What value lies in attempts to find words for the ineffable or for what, at least at first, seems to lie beyond language? We will look at images, listen to visitor voices, and share perspectives as we consider wondering as a positive experience, far from the right-answer paradigm.


Linda Duke studied and taught Asian art history before art museum education became the locus of her work. She has led education and public program efforts at Krannert Art Museum at the University of Illinois, the UCLA Hammer Museum, and the Indianapolis Museum of Art. She is especially interested in different learning, including what is sometimes called learning disability, and the relationship between visual experience and language.


Above: Ole Worm's Cabinet of Curiosities from Museum Wormianum, 1655. Smithsonian Museum.

 



 

Metabolic Studio Public Salon:
Karen Atkinson
Friday, May 21, 2010 @ Noon
Free Admission



10 Steps to Getting Your Sh*t Together

Karen Atkinson will present various steps every artist should know in order to have their sh*t together, using the software she created for her artist run company. As a follow up to the presentation, Karen will hang around to answer any questions.

Karen Atkinson is an artist with a wide variety of experience that includes curating and exhibiting in multiple countries, guest editing publications, producing independent projects and public art. She has taught for 30 years, 22 at CalArts. Karen’s company Getting Your Sh*t Together has a professional practices blog, tons of free information on the website, an Artist Manual publication and a Teaching Manual for teaching the business of art. She has spoken at numerous conferences and events.

Further information: www.gyst-ink.com

 



 

Metabolic Studio Public Salon:
Lev Manovich
Friday, May 14, 2010 @ Noon
Free Admission


How to read 1000000 Manga pages?
Visualizing patterns in art, cinema, TV, animation, games, comics, user-generated content and mass media

Over the last 20 years, information visualization has become a common tool in science and also a growing presence in the arts and culture at large. However, the use of visualization in humanities is still in its infancy. In 2007 we established a new lab (softwarestudies.com) at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and California Institute for Telecommunication and Information (Calit2) to focus on the analysis and visualization of patterns in large sets of visual data - art, photography, film, animation, motion graphics, video games, magazines, web sites, and other visual media.

I will show how use of visualization allows us to ask new kinds of questions about cultural evolution and history and will show a number of current research projects - including the analysis and visualization of patterns across 1,074,790 Manga pages (912 titles).

Cultural Analytics:
http://lab.softwarestudies.com/2008/09/cultural-analytics.html
Software studies initiative:
softwarestudies.com
Visualizations:
flickr.com/photos/culturevis/

Lev Manovich's books include Software Takes Command (released under CC license, 2008), Soft Cinema: Navigating the Database (The MIT Press, 2005), and The Language of New Media (The MIT Press, 2001) which is hailed as "the most suggestive and broad ranging media history since Marshall McLuhan." He has written 100 articles which have been reprinted over 400 times in many languages. Manovich is a Professor in Visual Arts Department, University of California - San Diego, a Director of the Software Studies Initiative at California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), a Professor at European Graduate School, and a Visiting Research Professor at De Montfort University (UK).