A symposium at the intersection of art and technology, ArtTechPsyche. September 26, 2024, Cabot Science Library, Harvard University

Art Tech Psyche celebrates human expression at the intersection of technology and the arts. For the 7^th year, Harvard Library, in collaboration with Academic Technology for the FAS, invites you to participate in a day of immersive digital experiences, art exhibitions, technology demos, and visionary speakers on Thursday, September 26, 2024 at Cabot Science Library.

Explore the creative process and its impact on emerging technologies. Discover the ways in which technology shapes us, and conversely, how the artist continually challenges and informs technological development. Interact with cutting edge art installations and software demos to experience the world in new ways. Meet like-minded faculty, staff, students, researchers, and colleagues while exploring new projects and collaborations on and around campus.

Speakers for Sept 26th 2024

Skooby Laposky

Presenting: Sound designer and artist Skooby Laposky has shaped the personality for consumer robots, produced original music for couture runway shows, remixed music for major label artists and global brands, and added depth to documentary films with his field recordings and original scores. His most recent work has focused on biodata sonification music to enhance…
Jacqueline Arias

Presenting: Mola Truth Maps is a collaboration with Rosa Lidia Alba and her sisters that explores molas, traditional quilt designs crafted by indigenous Guna women in Panama. Through video, data-visualization, virtual reality, sculpture and works on paper, the molas are activated as visual and aural maps – lived maps – capturing the experiences of the…
Allison Tanenhaus

Presenting: Allison Tanenhaus (Quincy ’05) will present a retrospective of her work, starting as a Harvard English major, veering into typographic street art, and—most recently—exploring large-scale digital art via smartphone apps, AI software, and mixed media collaborations. Allison Tanenhaus (she/her) is a New York–born, Boston–based digital glitch artist. She specializes in trippy op art, anachronistic…
Eugene Wang

Presenting: The Mind Cave Much is known about Plato’s Cave as a prototype for cinematic and projective mediums. Less known outside Asia, however, is the Buddhist Shadow Cave of Central Asia in a region some called “Greek Asia.” Legend has it that Buddha, having subjugated a dragon there, leapt into a cave wall to become…
Duncan Irschick

Understanding the shape of living organisms is central to many aspects of ecology, evolution and functional morphology. Until recently, the techniques for correctly assessing form in 3D has eluded scientists, but with novel 3D photogrammetry and modelling techniques, it is now possible to reconstruct a wide range of living animals accurately. The Digital Life Project has…

Schedule:

10:00 Eugene Wang

11:00 Duncan Irschick

12-1 Break

1:00 Jacqueline Arias

2:00 Skooby Laposky

3:00 Allison Tanenhaus

Interactive displays/demos for 2024

3 books lying open on a blue velvet background. One book has black and white illustrations, one book has a print color test pattern, and the third has animal illustrations on top of printed words.

Stop by and make something! Check out electronics and other fun bits and pieces including the library’s 3D Doodler. Led by longtime DIY maker Rob Hart, this popular Maker area is also a popular space at ArtTechPsyche. Learn about maker opportunities at Harvard and network with likeminded folks.

AR Artists’ Books from the Fine Arts Library – Stop by and try out the AR enhanced features on a selection of artists’ books from the Fine Arts Library with our librarians

3D scanning and printing hands on. With Deidra Scott and Kevin Guiney.

Enter the Afterlife!
Check out the brand new game Netherworld: ancient Egyptian Afterlife Simulator w/ Luke Hollis
Discover Ra’s journey through night, exploring 3d scans of real ancient Egyptian monuments. As the sun disappears behind the Great Pyramid at Giza, you find you’ve sunken into the Netherworld of ancient Egypt with the sun-god Ra. Through the 12 hours of the night, solve puzzles in 12 different 3d captures of real ancient Egyptian tombs and temples to escape.
Developer: Mused, https://mused.com/

CAMLab’s Shadow Cave project consists of a series of digital multimedia installations that reinterpret a foundational myth of Buddhism
for an international contemporary audience. Around the year 400 CE, a story arose in Nagarahāra (modern-day Afghanistan) that the
Buddha had leaped into a cliffside cave and left his “shadow image” there to preach his teachings. Radiant like a mirror when seen
from afar, it miraculously receded into the rocky surface upon approach. Spread by word and image throughout the Buddhist world, this
story inspired pious yearning and ritual visualization, motivating a millennium of icon-making practices and drawing countless
pilgrimages along the Silk Road.

AI Image Generation Experimentation Station
Stop by and try out tools to create your own images with AI or see images created by participants throughout the day. A great way to be guided through what is possible with art and AI.

<– “Echoes of Rebellion: Myths and Machines” explores the intersection of history, technology, and ecology, using the Lithuanian festival Užgavėnės as a lens. This interactive installation reimagines history as a black box, revealing recurring patterns and events. The project integrates storytelling, AI, and interactive architecture, creating a dynamic space where the mythic and the real coexist.

Click for Sutanuka Jashu Bio

The immersive installation setup of “Echoes of Rebellion: Myths and Machines” features a unique array of analog TVs displaying the dynamic gameplay. Visitors interact with an AI Dungeon Master, exploring historical and speculative futures through engaging, real-time narratives. The multi-screen setup, controlled by Raspberry Pis and a central PC, showcases text, images, and videos, creating a rich, interactive experience that bridges the past and future using advanced AI technologies.

Make a Hacker Creation ————->

An all-day workshop led by Artisan Asylum artist, Melissa Glick. Stop by and make something! Melissa Glick creates 2D and 3D art from E-Waste. She will share the tips and techniques of combining computer parts with recycled imagery. See the beauty of hard drive platters, heat sinks and multi colored circuit boards, and more. Collage colors and patterns on a small wooden board, then use wire and hardware to attach a wide variety of disassembled computer parts. Resulting in a one of a kind artwork to hang on your wall.

All materials, tools and aprons will be provided.

Art Gallery for 2024

<–Installation–>

MindFlow is an immersive art installation featured at the Art Tech Psyche event, blending the boundaries between digital interaction and mental engagement. This installation uses a touch-interactive TV table where participants influence abstract fluid simulations, which in turn are interpreted by AI to generate captivating visual art. As users direct the flow with their touch, the changing patterns on the screen represent the fluid nature of human thought and emotion, rendered visible by advanced AI algorithms. MindFlow invites attendees to explore and manipulate the visual representation of cognitive processes, offering a unique perspective on how technology can extend and enhance our understanding of the mind’s workings. Presented by Joshua Widdicombe and Devon Bryant. (Bios)

Six examples of Wally Gilbert’s art will be shown on easels. These are 36”x24” dye-sublimation prints on Aluminum. They are intensely colored, and involve abstractions often created by superimposing several photographic images.
Wally Gilbert had a long career as a molecular biologist working on genes and DNA. He and Fred Sanger shared a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1980 for finding ways to decipher the order of chemical groups along a DNA molecule and hence to make it possible to read the genes. Those discoveries, and their follow-ups, drove the development of the last four decades and led to the working out of the Human Genome program and the current understanding of all organisms.

Wally now works in Digital Art. He makes large images of fragments of the world, focusing on form, texture, and color, using a small digital camera.

Wally sees the commonality between Science and Art in his work only as the expression of a common creative impulse, the drive to create something new, not yet known. In Science that drive is to create something new and true, true in the sense of experimental reproducibility by one’s peers. In Art that drive is to create something new and beautiful. The beauty stands by itself.

Online Gallery of Wally Gilbert’s work: https://www.kunstmatrix.com/en/wally-gilbert