The Goethe-Institut presents: VISIONS: Through Art to Science In collaboration with MINDKISS project and Academy of Art University San Francisco October 20, 2012

This symposium brings together art and science, paintings by the German artist OUBEY, and scientists from a wide range of disciplines. The meeting between one scientist and one painting by OUBEY is the basic idea of the MINDKISS project which has used the Internet as the key communication channel so far.

On October 20, 2012 the Goethe-Institut San Francisco and MINDKISS project will present a special symposium, a live encounter with OUBEY’s art work and extraordinary scientific studies. Far away from interpretations of art experts, this symposium will open a compelling view with the goal of encouraging the audience to look at art from a new perspective – and to be part of a spontaneous private encounter with one of OUBEY’s paintings.

PRESENTATIONS:

„Transience and Permanence: I love you forever“ by Joe Betts-Lacroix, Chief Technical Officer at Medical Intelligence, San Francisco

“Visualizing Simulations of Cosmology and Galaxy Formation” by Nina McCurdy, Science Visualization, Physics Department, University of California Santa Cruz

“Return to One, embrace Many. Oubey and the Integral Vision of Ken Wilber” by Peter Erlenwein, sociopsychologist, journalist and author, San Francisco

“Life in Space, and the Future of Intelligent Beings” by Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer, SETI Institute, Mountain View

“VISIONS: Through Art to Science” by Dagmar Woyde-Koehler, Head of MINDKISS project, Karlsruhe

ABOUT OUBEY

After his first and very successful commercial exhibition in 1992 the German artist OUBEY pursued his creative work far away from the art world, avoiding any form of publicity. He was just preparing to offer his art to the public after a long creative period of withdrawal when he was killed in a car crash in 2004. Following his death, Dagmar Woyde-Koehler, his widow, founded the MINDKISS project and dedicated herself to the posthumous realization of his visions. Complexity, chaos, order and entropy, biology, astrophysics, quantum physics, and the science and philosophy of the ancient Greeks were OUBEY’s special interests. Dagmar Woyde-Koehler decided to bring his art works to the attention of scientists who are experts in these fields; to present them one painting of OUBEY they had not seen before. These encounters open a curtain to very specific ways of looking at the paintings and are heavily influenced by the research subjects and interests of those who interact with the paintings. All these encounters were filmed on video and posted on the Internet:
www.oubey.com/de/inside/encounters

ABOUT OUR GUESTS

Joe Betts-LaCroix worked in biophysics at Harvard and at Caltech did research on electron tunneling in redox proteins such as cytochrome and hemoglobin, which has received over 500 citations in Science. He also studied ocean chemistry at MIT. He then founded OQO, a startup that employed 110 people and was in Guinness World Records for smallest PC. More recently Joe spent two years working with Halcyon Molecular to develop better gene-sequencing methods, using DNA threading and electron microscopy. A prolific inventor, he holds scores of patents, and enjoys buying and selling them in his spare time. Presently Joe is CTO and co-founder of a new startup, Medical Intelligence, devoted to bringing personalized, preventative, evidence-based medicine to primary-care practices.

Peter Erlenwein is a sociopsychologist, journalist and author from Germany. His work and life has been deeply inspired by his decade long intercultural studies, especially in India (Guest professor for experimental interreligious dialogue in Pune, De Nobili College) and Namibia, Africa. His work is based on the writings of the outstanding American philosopher and mystic Ken Wilber.

Nina McCurdy is the Public Outreach and Scientific Visualization Coordinator for UC HiPACC, creating scientific visualizations and acting as a liaison between the scientific, artistic, and planetarium communities. She is also UC HiPACC's website developer/ webmaster. Nina graduated from UCSC in 2009 where she received her B.S. in Applied Physics with highest honors. Her senior thesis focused on scientific visualization for the purposes of public outreach.

Seth Shostak is the Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute, in Mountain View, California. He has an undergraduate degree in physics from Princeton University, and a doctorate in astronomy from the California Institute of Technology. For much of his career, Seth conducted radio astronomy research on galaxies, and has published approximately sixty papers in professional journals. During more than a decade, he worked at the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, in Groningen, The Netherlands. Seth has written more than four hundred popular magazine and Web articles on various topics in astronomy, technology, film and television. He lectures on astronomy and other subjects at various academic venues, and gives approximately 60 talks annually at both educational and corporate institutions. Seth has been a Distinquished Speaker for the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He is also Chair of the International Academy of Astronautics’ SETI Permanent Committee. In 2004, he won the Klumpke-Roberts Prize for the popularization of astronomy.

Dagmar Woyde-Koehler lived and worked for over 20 years together with OUBEY. After his death in 2004 she started the MINDKISS project with the aim of presenting OUBEYs previously unknown works to a broad global audience. Dagmar Woyde-Koehler is CEO of a management and organizational development company for whose innovative approach she won the "Chief Learning Officer of the Year" Award. She studied German, History, Philosophy and Educational Science at the University of Heidelberg.