Event 5: LASER Symposium

Before the presentations started. 

            I attended the LASER Symposium, which consisted of around ten speakers and each one spoke about his or her in art and science.  This event gave me exposure to many different areas.  The following are a few of my favorite speakers. 

            Misha Rabinovich and Caitlin Foley are interdisciplinary artists.  One of the projects they spoke about was pink noise.  The idea behind Pink Noise is that it occurs often in nature, and they made the distinction between pink and white noise.  White noise is the sound of all frequencies at maximum energy, whereas pink noise has an inverse relationship between frequency and volume.  In their Pink Noise Salon, they had people listen to the ocean using seashells and listen to their own heartbeat; both of these sounds are pink noise.  

Misha Rabinovich and Caitlin Foley describing pink noise. 

            Tamira Elul is a neurobiologist and artist at the Touro University.  I was particularly interested in her projects because they were all related to biology.  In one research project, she showed that forms in paintings by Sam Francis were statistically similar to biological tissues.  Elul and her collaborators used morphometric measurements commonly used in cell biology in order to make these comparisons.  Elul really took the connection of science and art to the next level by using scientific practices to analyze works of art!

Tamira Elul comparing the paintings and biological images.