Encountering the Unseen 2019 was the second volume of a lecture series produced by Isla Hansen and Tucker Marder
Produced by Isla Hansen (Assistant Professor Design Media Arts UCLA) and Tucker Marder (Lecturer Design Media Arts UCLA) with support from the UCLA Arts Initiative, UCLA Design Media Arts, UCLA Art|Sci Center + Lab, and the Center for Musical Humanities, Encountering the Unseen is an academic symposium as work of experimental live theater. The project pairs artists, choreographers, performers, and musicians from both UCLA and the greater Los Angeles area with professors working in STEM fields. The event is an evening of five brief, stimulating lectures on topics ranging from plant evolution to atomically precise manufacturing, including distinguished speakers from the fields of ecology and evolution, biochemistry, physics and astronomy, and biomolecular engineering. Abandoning their powerpoint slides, speakers will instead be accompanied by thought-provoking visual phenomena, live music, physical manifestations, props, and kinetic sculpture -- all activated and brought to life by artists, dancers, and musicians.
view the program
FELIPE ZAPATA
Assistant Professor of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
SUSAN SIMPSON accompanied by Heather Lockie
LA-based artist, puppeteer, Founder of Automata
JIM GIMZEWSKI
Professor of Chemistry & Biochemistry
ANNA WITTENBERG
LA-based artist
MAYANK MEHTA
Professor of Physics and Astronomy
RACHEL MASON accompanied by Haylee Nichele & Chenhui Mao
LA-based video and performance artist
NANDITA GARUD
Assistant Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
WEBREAK
LA-based Hip Hop Dance Company
AMIR SHEIKHI
Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering, Penn State
(at UCLA, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Biomolecular engineering)
TUCKER MARDER & JONATHAN FLETCHER MOORE
LA-based artists