UCSC’s Institute of the Arts and Sciences invites you to the first LASER of the academic year Tuesday, October 28! Leonardo Art/Science Evening Rendezvous (LASER) is a national program of evening gatherings that bring artists, scientists, and scholars together for informal presentations and conversations. Please join us in the Digital Arts Research Center (DARC) 108 for refreshments at 6:45 p.m. followed at 7 p.m. with presentations by:

Carolyn Dean “Moving Stones: An Inka Perspective”
David Glowacki “Modeling Humans as Energy Fields”
Stacy Philpott “Urban garden insect biodiversity: fascinating and functional”
Karen Tei Yamashita will be reading from her new work

Carolyn Dean is Professor of History of Art and Visual Culture at UC Santa Cruz. Dean studies Inca visual and performance culture. She is author of Inka Bodies and the Body of Christ: Corpus Christi in Colonial Cuzco Peru (Duke University Press, 1999) and A Culture of Stone: Inka Perspectives on Rock (Duke University Press, 2010).

David Glowacki is a Royal Society Research Fellow, holding joint appointments in chemistry and computer science at Stanford University and the University of Bristol. He specializes in computational nano-physics and interactive digital art. Glowacki is the creator of danceroom Spectroscopy (dS), an interactive digital framework that has been used to create the award-winning dance piece Hidden Fields.

Stacy Philpott is Associate Professor in Agroecology at UC Santa Cruz. She is an agroecologist and insect ecologist interested in community ecology, ecosystem services, urban agroecology, and interactions between agriculture, conservation, and farmer livelihoods. She has worked in agroecosystems the US, Latin America, and Indonesia.

Karen Tei Yamashita is Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at UC Santa Cruz, and currently co-holds the UC Presidential Chair for Feminist Critical Race and Ethnic Studies. She is the author of six books, including I Hotel and Anime Wong: Fictions of Performance, all published by Coffee House Press.