Creative Disturbance

Maryam Veysmoradi is a young Iranian filmmaker and director who has produced several short films. My dialogue with her revolves around issues such as the nature of the short film versus the feature film, the relationship between short films and ethical dilemmas, political realities, and the human being’s existential predicaments. Instead of dealing with subjects rooted in the minutiae of everyday life, in some of her works, she has tried to touch upon issues which are concerned with war and universal peace. Primarily, in this podcast, Maryam Veysmoradi elaborates on the nature of short film as an autonomous artistic medium which is aesthetically and ontologically distinguishable from its counterpart feature film. Although “brevity” is the principal characteristic of the short film, but Maryam emphasizes that this characteristic does not detract the strong influence of the short film in terms of engaging and evoking the emotional and mental state of its audiences. In her works, she wishes to achieve a universal cinematic language which can exceed human linguistic differences and that would enable to call upon human beings all across the world.   

Hello everyone, I am the channel host Siying Duan, currently conducting my doctoral research in new media instillation and comparative aesthetics at Shanghai University. In this episode, I introduce the main contents of this podcast channel with a particular focus on the idea of “象(Xiang)” which has both the connotation of “elephant” and “image”. In Chinese aesthetics, “象(Xiang)” is an important concept which basically means an aesthetic object that both present and absent, which creates an effect transcends the barrier between viewer and artwork. This kind of aesthetic thinking is not exclusive to traditional Chinese art practice; on the contrary, its dynamic, relational and non-dualistic features resonate with characteristics of contemporary media art practices.

In order to make these art practices more visible and accessible, in this podcast, Chinese artists who are experimenting with all kinds of interesting media will be invited to the conversion in this channel, to share about their artworks, their feelings and motivations, their working methods, how they react to the contemporary world with these works, how they relating themselves to the tradition, not in the sense of kongfu panda or spring roll, but as natural and at the same time unavoidable as the mode of thinking lurking in the language being spoken everyday, and so on.

I am sorry that probably most of the episodes will be in Chinese, please don’t hesitate to contact me via [email protected] if you would like to learn more about them or have any suggestion.

Knowledge Link through Art and Science (KLAS) is an Artist in Residence program of the Max Planck Society. KLAS fosters ArtSci exchange and transdisciplinary innovation and education whilst also establishing a link between Synthetic Biology research groups of two research institutions – Rijksuniversiteit Groningen [RuG] and two Max Planck Institutes [MPI]. In addition to awarding two Artist Residencies in 2017, KLAS will present a series of events and conversations around specific thematic topics. KLAS is funded by the Max Planck Society and the Schering Foundation and organized by Polyhedra. 

Wolfgang Knapp focuses on interdisciplinary projects, art and the media, curatorial activities and international project cooperation. Knapp is professor h.c. at the Department of Fine Arts and Design at Zhejiang Commercial Technical College in Hangzhou/China and has been chairperson of the Commission for artistic and scientific projects at the University for the Arts in Berlin. He created the  UdK-Preis für interdisziplinäre Kunst und Wissenschaft(UdK Prize for interdisciplinary art and science).

Knowledge Link through Art and Science (KLAS) is an Artist in Residence program of the Max Planck Society. KLAS fosters ArtSci exchange and transdisciplinary innovation and education whilst also establishing a link between Synthetic Biology research groups of two research institutions – Rijksuniversiteit Groningen [RuG] and two Max Planck Institutes [MPI]. In addition to awarding two Artist Residencies in 2017, KLAS will present a series of events and conversations around specific thematic topics. KLAS is funded by the Max Planck Society and the Schering Foundation and organized by Polyhedra.

Tom Robinson, from the Max-Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, and his group, aim to build membrane structures using lipid vesicles, which mimic biological cell organelles. The goal is to understand how enzyme-catalyzed metabolic processes occur within confined organelles; and eventually, construct a cell using artificial membranes in order to understand how a cell functions.

A podcast on the various elements of human computer interaction and the evolution of coding explained through the multidisciplinary journeys of Anvit Srivastav, an artscilab alumni presently working in the field of computer science, and Yusra Khan, the digital community manager for the ArtSci lab, currently pursuing her master's in Applied Cognition and Neuroscience.

Hosted by Ritwik kaikini.

This is one of many excellent videos he has produced and distributed on YouTube, but this one was so germane to the topic of this channel that I had to give him a ring. In doing some research on him, I discovered that he is, himself, a very talented composer, which for me gives him some basis for his well founded criticisms of many “sonifications” out there. Here is a pointer to a piece of his that might interest some listeners.

We had an freewheeling conversation that I hope you find interesting.

I refer but do not name the Temporal Semiotic Units developed at the Laboratoire Musique et Informatique de Marseille. This work may be of interest to some as well. http://www.labo-mim.org/site/index.php?2013/03/29/225-temporal-semiotic-units-tsus-a-very-short-introduction

Charlie Cotton speaks about collaboration and discovery in the context of KLAS. 

Edited by Oskar Olsson.

Knowledge Link through Art and Science (KLAS) is an Artist in Residence program of the Max Planck Society. KLAS fosters ArtSci exchange and transdisciplinary innovation and education whilst also establishing a link between Synthetic Biology research groups of two research institutions – Rijksuniversiteit Groningen [RuG] and two Max Planck Institutes [MPI]. In addition to awarding two Artist Residencies in 2017, KLAS will present a series of events and conversations around specific thematic topics. KLAS is funded by the Max Planck Society and the Schering Foundation and organized by Polyhedra.

Caterina Benincasa, born in Rome, Italy, studied physics and philosophy at Bristol University, UK, and specialized in Aesthetics & Theory of Contemporary Art (MD), History of Science (MD) and World Heritage Studies (MD). She has been visiting lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Sassari, Italy, researcher in Contemporary Visual Art, France, researcher in Neuroaesthetics at Don Gnocchi Foundation, Italy, and recently worked for the ‘Modern Geometry and the Concept of Space’ research group at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Germany.

In this episode, aesthetician and physicist Caterina Benincasa discusses the goals and inner workings of KLAS.

Eun Ah Lee and Emma Newkirk talk about a STEM student's choices, doubts, and how to overcome such doubts and keep going.