In 2016 I co-founded the ArtSci Salon at the Fields Institute for Research in mathematical Sciences. Founded and run as a collective, it consists of presentations and interactive demonstrations, roundtables and performative events; curatorial projects and workshops to facilitate the cross-pollination between science, technology and the arts.

ArtSci Salon has been supported  by Ontario Arts Council,  SSHRC , The Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences, and other institutions such as the University of Toronto, York University and the Toronto Metropolitan University. ArtSci Salon is a member of Leonardo Network/The International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology (Leonardo/ISAST).

IMG_2661

Objectives

Based on the demographic, the requisites, and the interests of our members, our goals are:

  1.  To facilitate respectful dialogue and a forum of discussion and cross-pollination between science, technology and the arts. Specifically, ArtSci Salon responds to a growing expansion in the GTA of a community of scientists and interdisciplinary and media artists, seeking new dialogues and collaborations across disciplines.
  2.  To provide outreach opportunities for local and international innovative research projects in the Sciences and in the Arts.
  3. To foster critical dialogue on topics and concerns shared by the sciences and the arts. This is an important aspect informing our programming, as we try to think past the excitement generated by state-of-the-arts technologies and scientific innovation.

History

Since 2012, ArtSci Salon has offered a needed outlet for debate across disciplines to complement the programming of the Subtle Technologies Festival. The series has now become autonomous and has started to formulate its own programming to expand its activities. To this end, and thanks to a grant from York University, we redesigned our website in order to accommodate a database of artists and scientists working at the intersection of disciplines, and an archive containing recording of past events and other outreach material.

In addition, we joined the Leonardo Network/The International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology (Leonardo/ISAST), an organization that serves the global network of scholars, artists, scientists, researchers and thinkers through programs focused on interdisciplinary work, creative output and innovation. Thanks to this membership, we were able to advertise and disseminate a number of our events internationally under the title of LASER Toronto. At the moment, two of our talks have been advertised as “ArtSci Salon/LASER Toronto” events, and are being streamed and archived them on our website.

Images:
Apr-May 2017. The Cabinet Project ; a distributed exhibition in underutilized cabinets across the University of Toronto
Nov. 11 2016: Revealing Neutrinos. With Mark-David Hosale (computational artist) and James Madsen (physicist
Jan 28 2015: Assistive/Adaptive Technologies.
Jan 2016. The Map and the Territory. he first exhibition featuring Stephen Morris and Ron Wild at the RedHead Gallery, Toronto
Nov 29 2019. Fantastic Fungi Future. A collaboration with Tosca Teran and the Toronto Mycological Society
Nov 21 2019 Classifying the New? and Oct. 7 Altered Identity, two events part of the series “Emergent. Coping with Complex Phenomena