The 3rd LAST Festival

October 16-18
Stanford University
Cubberley Auditorium

The LAST (Life Art Science Technology) festival celebrates the confluence of art with the technologies and sciences that are shaping the 21st century. Free and open to everybody.

Contact Us Mailing List

Schedule Speakers Artworks Homo Digitalis Performances Sponsors About Home

Symposium - Engineering the Future (Saturday 1pm-5pm)

We chose the disciplines that will change the world in the near future and invited a visionary speaker for each one. Saturday's speakers will include world experts on Artificial Intelligence, Neuroscience, Nanotech, Space Exploration, and Robotics.

Featured Speakers:

Chris McKay, planetary scientist at NASA
Drew Endy, director of a Synthetic Biology lab at Stanford
Peter Norvig, director of research at Google, on Artificial Intelligence
Jennifer Dionne, director of a Nanotech Lab at Stanford
Bruno Olshausen, director of a center for Neuroscience at UC Berkeley


Art Expo - Interactive Digital Experimental Art (IDEA)

This expo features a dozen interactive digital installations that break the "Do not touch!" taboo of the traditional museum. In alphabetical order:

  • Cere Mona Davis
  • Jeffrey Bryant
  • Evan Clayburg
  • Michal Gavish
  • Robert Edgar
  • Yuan-Yi Fan
  • Yoon Han
  • Kinetech Arts
  • Colin Bowring
  • Ytai Ben-Tsvi
  • OpenLab
  • Ed Kirshner
  • Robin Lasser
  • Andy Lee
  • Danielle Siembieda
  • Al Linke
  • Carl Pisaturo
  • Alex Reben
  • DC Spensley

See the Call for Submissions if you are interested in submitting your artwork for future editions.


Performances

Adventurous and creative performances by sound and dance artists.

Erin Alexi Huestis, an alumna of New York's choreographers and ballet companies, will perform "Fractal Passage", an interaction with Kinetech Arts' installation "Fractal Motion". Fri & Sat 7:30pm.
David Grunzweig, a graduate student at Stanford's CCRMA (Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics), will perform his composition "Tape Ghost" for digital synthesis and field recordings, Sat 3pm-ish.
Raquel Boluda , founder of Alchemy Spinning, a holotropic whirling dance platform, will perform the multi-stylistic "Ephemeral Footprints" interacting with Kinetech Arts' audiovisual installation. Fri & Sat 8:30pm.
Parhealion , a free-jazz duo will perform an improvised jam with Romain Michon of Stanford's CCRMA. Fri 7pm.

"Homo Digitalis": The "L in "LAST" (Sunday)

The "L" in "LAST" stands for how digital media are changing our lives. This section features talks, panels and Q/A with the audience: The Digital Mystique, People and Robots, The Age of Cybercurrencies, Art in the Digital Age, and closing remarks by Burning Man pioneers. Click here for the program of this session.

Robert Buelteman (Photographer)
Cere Mona Davis (Media Artist)
Tracy Freedman (Art Business Advisor)
Animesh Garg (UC Berkeley)
Sarah Granger (Author)
John Law (Burning Man cofounder)
Arun Rao (PIMCO Economist from Los Angeles)
Alex Reben (Inventor)
Dorothy Santos (Blogger),
Piero Scaruffi (Author)
Danielle Siembieda (Media Artist),
Kal Spelletich (Seemen founder)
Michael Sturtz (Stanford)
Melanie Swan (New School from New York)
Leila Takayama (Google)

Schedule

Friday, October 16th, 6pm – 10pm

6:00pm Art Expo opens at Cubberley Auditorium

Saturday, October 17th, 1pm – 10pm

Cubberley Auditorium

1:00pm - 5:00pm Symposium - Engineering the Future

1:00pm - 10:00pm Art Expo

Sunday, October 18th, 1pm – 4pm

Li Ka Shing Center - Room 101/102

1:00pm-4:00pm "Homo Digitalis"


Artwork

C.A.T.

C.A.T.

C.A.T. is a collection of acrylic LED clutches that mingle design and technology to redefine social experiences.

Al Linke Al Linke is currently Senior Director of Information Technology at a Fortune 500 company with 20 years of experience in the IT industry. Al uses a programmable LED matrix array to create pieces of pixel art that is customizable and remote-controlled through mobile phones' bluetooth feature. http://ledpixelart.com.

Robotic Headgasm

Robotic Headgasm

Robotic Headgasm is a robot arm equipped with a wire head scratcher, a robot that induces pleasurable feelings of being tickled, goose bumps and shivering, the first of a "psychological" robot series.

Alex Reben Alex Reben, an MIT Media Lab alumnus, has built robots for NASA and worked on particle accelerators. He is currently a visiting scholar in the UC Berkeley Psychology department and a director at Stochastic Labs. Alex has exhibited at Ars Electronica, Volta, The Whitney Biennial, Axiom, TFI Interactive, IDFA, ArtBots, The Tribeca Film Festival, The Camden Film Festival, Doc/Fest, and The Boston Cyberarts Gallery. His BlabDroids are making the world's first documentary entirely shot and directed by robots. http://areben.com.

Fractal Motion

Fractal Motion

Fractal Motion is an interactive installation that senses the participants' touch and movement, responding with drawings created by fractal noises, in turn resulting in an ever changing, quasi-intelligent system.

Kinetech Arts Kinetech Arts, founded in 2013 by physicist Weidong Yang and dancer/ choreographer Daiane Lopes da Silva in San Francisco, nurtures unique creative partnerships between scientists and artists. Their goal is to create interdisciplinary art projects that combine dance, science and technology, based in a spirit of experimentation and play. Kinetech Arts holds a weekly Open Lab (at SAFEhouseArts) open to artists of many disciplines. http://kine-tech.org.

God's Eye

God's Eye

God's Eye offers a rare chance to see how magnets dynamically effect one another at long distances through the use of curved dishes in a low-friction environment. The free motion of inductively propelled magnets invites us to experience the electromagnetic field that is ordinarily hidden from sight. Parabolic reflections are shifted through the aggregate motion of spherical magnets. Central and peripheral copper coil driven magnets influence the motion of neighboring magnets. This piece uses the same basic principles of motion as a speaker, but with an extra twist.

Cere Mona Davis Cere Mona Davis is a acousto-kinetic sculptor, engineer, musician and dancer with a background in computer systems architecture, physics and vocal improvisation. Her work crosses the boundaries between engineering, soulful expression, and laboratory experimentation, inviting the audience to vicariously re-experience and re-explore our everyday experience of science and technology through a new lens. http://ceredavis.com .

Portraying DNA

Portraying DNA

Portrarying DNA is a 3D portrait of DNA that describes the breakthrough DNA discoveries from professor Brandman's laboratory that were published in Science Magazine on January 2015 with Profs. Frost and Weissman from UCSF. This mixed media installation has been constructed from material and video projections with an original soundtrack composed by Brandman. The viewer is invited to stand inside the largerAthanAlife, 3D molecular sample and experience it from within. Through this hierarchical inversion, the observer becomes part of the scientific data, experiencing the multitude and vibrancy of the essential sub-molecular world that is hidden to the eye.

Michal Gavish Michal Gavish is a visual artist with a past career as a PhD physical chemist. She paints and creates installations and video animations based on scientific research. http://michalgavish.com.

Spiroglyph

Spiroglyph

Spiroglyph is a motorized light sculpture which "draws" mathematical functions in space similar to those of the spirograph toy. It moves LEDs on 3 superimposed rotational axes at high speeds, and through the principle of persistence of vision, an observer sees roughly the most recent 1/4 second of the functions. In other words, an LED on a rotating platter rides on a second rotating platter which itself is riding on a third rotating platter.

Carl Pisaturo Carl Pisaturo is a LuminoKinetic sculptor who specializes in designing and creating robotic pieces with traditional machine building techniques. Ranging from animatronic figures, kinetic light sculptures, and even a 3D strobe illusion device (dubbed the Transmutoscope). His work follows and fuses the traditions of scientific demonstration, structural design, sensualist kinetic sculpture, as well as technical amusement, for inverse profit. http://www.carlpisaturo.com/.

Burg

Burg

Burg is an artwork that anthropomorphizes a building by connecting energy systems (cold water, steam and electricity) with human systems (cardiovascular and respiratory systems). It does this using a exhibiting in real time the Energy Information Systems (EIS) set up at the Charles W. Davidson College of Engineering San Jose State University building. It also has a micro version that connects to the activities of the electricity loads (computer, light, cell phone charge) of the building occupants. The micro system is represented in a kinetic interface mobilized by a set of motors and Arduinos and tweets status information to a social network.

Danielle Siembieda Danielle Siembieda is an Arts Entrepreneur working in the intersection of New Media Art, Sustainability and Community. She practices between genres of Social Practice, Institutional Critique, Intervention and New Media. Most of her work includes an emphasis on the environment and technology. www.siembieda.com .

Boxer Bob's Mansion West Side

Boxer Bob's Mansion

Boxer Bob's Mansion West Side is part of the "Refuge in Refuse: Homesteading in Art and culture" project that explores the art, culture, politics and ecosystem of the Albany Bulb, a decommissioned landfill serving as a homeless refuge and public park for over 30 years. This is a collaboration between Danielle Siembieda and Robin Lasser. http://refugeinrefuse.weebly.com

Robin Lasser Robin Lasser is a Professor of Art at San Jose State University. Lasser produces photographs, video, site-specific installations and public art dealing with socially and culturally significant imagery and themes. Lasser often works in a collaborative mode with other artists, writers, students, public agencies, community organizations, and international coalitions to produce public art and promote public dialogue. Robinlasser.com .

Abstract Architecture

Abstract Architecture

Abstract Architecture is an interactive performance art series exploring control in a digital environment. This series utilizes a medium in performance art in which audience members control the performer(s) using video game controllers.

Evan Clayburg

Evan Clayburg is a multi-media performance artist interested in the ways in which technology shapes our lives, not always positively, not always negatively, but inevitably. Using live performances that incorporate humans along with elements of technology, his works explore the relationship between humankind and the technology it creates, between the physical and the abstract, the tangible and the intangible. clayburgcreate.com.

PixelBoard

PixelBoard

PixelBoard is a PHP based web page and a binary feedback application that empowers the "art viewer" to instead become the "art maker". PixelBoard does this by facilitating the creative impulse of a person who might be in any physical location using their web enabled phone, tablet or computer.

DC Spensley

DC Spensley is an artist/technologist who investigates opportunities for participation, engagement and play as art experiences. Spensley's work has appeared internationally at venues such as Ars Electronica in Linz Austria, the Dutch Electronic Arts Festival, Boston's Cyber Arts Festival, ISEA (International Symposium of Electronic Arts), etc. His collaborator Peter Spangler is a web developer and system administrator. http://dcspensley.com.

Digiti Sonus

artwork title

Digiti Sonus is an interactive audio/visual art installation based on fingerprint sonification. Transforming fingerprints’ unique patterns into sonic results allows the audience to experience the discovery of sensory identities. The sonification of data produces a real-time music composition as a representation of integrated human identities. The distinct visual features of fingerprints as an open musical score are executed in diverse ways and converted into three-dimensional animated images. http://yoonchunghan.com/portfolio/DigitiSonus.html

Yoon Han Yoon Han is an interaction designer, multimedia artist, and researcher. Her researches include data visualization, biometric data visualization and sonification, new interface for musical expression, and mobile user experience design. She studied at Seoul National University, at UCLA and at UCSB's Experimental Visualization Lab, and has been a Visiting Researcher at SENSEable City Lab at MIT. http://yoonchunghan.com

Danger, Dancing Mushrooms, Bowl of Chaos

Danger, Dancing Mushrooms, Bowl of Chaos

Danger, Dancing Mushrooms, Bowl of Chaos are glass and plasma sculptures. Employing the kinetic graphics of video feedback, these sculptures are based on the same physical phenomena of gas plasma manifestation as the Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights. They represent a way to create self-organizing chaos in space and time. The self-organizing chaos of gas plasma is one of the very few natural processes, beyond biochemistry, that might evolve the feedback mechanisms to enable self-replication and thus possibly even life.

Ed Kirshner Ed Kirshner is a sculptor who works in glass with gas plasma. To produce his dynamic light effects in glass vessels, he ionizes rare gases with electronic Tesla coils. Many variables such as gas type, mixture and pressure, along with glass vessel geometry, have to be very finely tuned to create the often mesmerizing effects. It's mostly Alchemy. www.aurorasculpture.com .

Symbols and Boundaries

Symbols and Boundaries

Symbols and Boundaries is an immersive sound installation that invites listeners to sculpture soundscape by exploring space. In this installation, the computer observes moving listeners in the environment, alters its internal representation for algorithmic spatialization, and reacts to spatial movement history by projecting a heatmap-like soundscape. Steered by a composition plan that organizes interplay between listeners movement and the projected soundscape, sonic outputs from Symbols and Boundaries are collective expression favoring aleatory and emergent spatial developments.

Artist name Yuan-Yi Fan is a creative research engineer based in Los Angeles. He studied computer music, media arts, and multimedia engineering at Media Arts and Technology, UCSB. His works have been included in international events, including Leonardo, Leonardo Music Journal, ACM MM, IEEE VIS, ISEA, ICMC, NIME, ZERO1 Biennial, and ZKM Globale: inSONIC. Before UCSB, he worked at the Ultrasound Imaging Lab in Taiwan. www.yuanyifan.com .

Water Tank

Water Tank

Water Tank visualizes sound by translating the auditory into the visual by way of vibration. As low frequencies match the intrinsic harmonics of the tank, they excite the dancing localized waves on the surface. Different frequencies excite different patterns in the reflective pool.

OpenLab UC Santa Cruz's OpenLab Research Center is directed by Professor Jennifer Parker. Collaborating artists include: Zach Corse, Adam Fischer, David Harris, Sean Pace, Jennifer Parker, and Steven Trimmer. This is a collaboration with the DANM Mechatronics Research group at UC Santa Cruz http://openlabresearch.com .

Mergeemerge

Mergeemerge

Mergeemerge is an installation that locates the Simultaneous Opposites image stream so that it is coterminous with the 3D reflection of the viewer's face. The result is an extended moment when one can observe one's own perceptual system as it tries to make sense. The video for 2015 is an anthro-poetic day in the life. (video)

Robert Edgar Robert Edgar is a digital media producer. Robert creates and employs software engines to examine mediated artifacts forged at his zone of proximal development. His engines include Memory Theatre One (1985), Living Cinema (1988), Sand, or How Computers Dream of Truth in Cinema (1992), Memory Theatre Two (2003), and Simultaneous Opposites. He works at Stanford University, and teaches at the Art Institute of Sunnyvale. robertedgar.com

Tube Frames

Tube Frames

Tube Frames explores ways of creating large scales wire frames models of tubes and digitally fabricated connectors.

Andy Lee Andy Lee is a sculptor interested in recursion and concepts of geometry. An engineer by training he works with digital technology to create his work. www.5cell.net .

Generis

Generis

Generis is is an interactive art installation that sees every human being as a unique individual regardless if other people may not see them as such. Any person that walks in front of Generis is given a silhouette with its own unique color projected onto a wall and can combine colors with others to create a distinct painting.

Jeffrey Bryant Jeffrey Bryant is an installation artist and creative coder who is interested whose work focuses on the way people perceive each other by allowing a user to take on the perspective of another individual who they may not entirely understand in order to bring human beings closer together. cargocollective.com/jeffreybryant .

Harmonograph

Harmonograph

The Harmonograph makes drawings on paper with a pen. The pen is moved by two pendulums and the paper is moved by a third. The speed ratio of the pen to the paper is adjusted by moving the weights up or down on the pendulums. Different harmonic patterns form from these ratios. Spiraling patterns form that have intricate concentric loops are drawn on the paper for mesmerizing minutes at a time.

Colin Bowring Colin Bowring, The Wizard, explores the medium of science to make his art. Working with large adjustable mirrors, holographic gyroscopes, human sized water prisms and bicycle rim water lenses, he transforms beams of sunlight into scattered patterns of spectral bliss. wizardofthelight.wordpress.com/ .

IOIO Plotter

IOIO Plotter

IOIO Plotter is a drawing robot, which generates interesting renderings of real-life images, mainly portraits. An Android tablet captures camera images, processes them using one of several available styles and finally drives the machine via the IOIO board. Most drawing styles have a random component in them, so every output is unique, even if the same image is processed twice.

Ytai Ben-Tsvi Ytai Ben-Tsvi is a software/electrical engineer with a soft spot for art and design. He is most known in the Maker community for his invention of the IOIO board, which makes it simple to interface Android devices with electronic circuits, such as sensors and motors. His projects often emerge from technical proof-of-concepts and explore the borders between art and technology. ytai-mer.blogspot.com.

Our Mission

Creativity does not happen in a vacuum, whether it's art, tech or science. They all coexist, influence each other and interact. Silicon Valley did not happen in a vacuum, it happened within the intense cultural ecosystem of the Bay Area. The L.A.S.T. festival aims at presenting art, tech and science within the same venue. The art expo features a dozen interactive high-tech installations that break the "Do not touch!" taboo of the traditional museum and that are meant to let you experience something you never experienced before. The symposium features talks on Artificial Intelligence, Graphics/Animation, Nanotech, Space Exploration, Computer Graphics, etc by leaders of today's science and technology.

The Life Art Science and Technology (L.A.S.T.) expo celebrates the confluence of art with the multiplicity of new media technologies and nascent sciences that are transforming sociality and experience in the 21st century.


A History of the LAST Festival

The L.A.S.T. festival, organized by the nonprofit Thymos Foundation and originally conceived by piero scaruffi, is structured around four programs:

  • Interactive multimedia art installations
  • Inspirational talks by luminaries on cutting-edge technology and science
  • Live performances
  • Interactive workshops or talks by artists

Get Involved!

Join the team and help make this happen!

Contact Us Mailing List


Organizing Team:

  • Piero Scaruffi, founding director and curator of the tech/science symposium
  • Curator of the Art Expo: Kiri Rong
  • Communications: Maria Cerrone
  • Coordination: Wu Bin
  • Production: Judson Rogers, Sofia Lozano, MariaTeresa Caminiti, Irina Pesterean, Alessandra Tursi, Beibei Song, Carl McFarland
  • Website design: Scott Friedman
  • Graphic design: Mengru Liang
  • Moderators of Homo Digitalis: Tracy Freedman and Arun Rao
  • MC of Symposium: Anna Davidson

Advisory committee:

  • Kishore Hari (Director of the Bay Area Science Festival)
  • Curtis Frank (Stanford faculty)
  • Jaime Austin (Director of Exhibitions at California College of the Arts)
  • Soraya Murray (Faculty at UC Santa Cruz)
  • Jennifer Parker (Director of UC Santa Cruz' OpenLab)
  • Erich Richter (Co-producer of the 1st LAST festival)
  • Tracy Freedman (Art Business Consultant)

SPONSORED BY: