Sherwood.
My artwork is an exploration of the intersection of art and neuroscience. I had been working with images of the brain at least six years prior to my cerebral hemorrhage - I always say that it took a while for my life to catch up to my art! I will share examples of my paintings both before my stroke and during the long period of recovery where I consciously made use of painting to heal myself. My work makes use of images appropriated from Western neuroanatomy from the 16th to the 21st century, including both historical drawings of neurons and cerebral angiograms of my own brain. I will also show my most recent work - constructions of multiple paintings and fabric which I call the Healers from The Yelling Clinic series, after the art and disability collective that I co-founded. Finally, I will discuss my course Art, Medicine, & Disability, and my research into historical and contemporary artists' responses to illness, disability, and death.

Paulos.
This talk will present and critique a body of work evolving across several years of research at the intersection of computer science and design research. It will present an augment for hybrid materials, methods, and artifacts as strategic tools for insight and innovation within computing culture. It will explore and demonstrate the value of urban computing, citizen science, and maker culture as opportunistic landscapes for intervention, micro-volunteerism, and a new expert amateur. Finally, it will present and question emerging materials and strategies from the perspective of engineering, design, and new media.

Curt Frank.
In collaboration with Sara Loesch-Frank, artist, calligrapher and teacher, I have taught a Stanford Sophomore Seminar on "Art, Chemistry and Madness: the Science of Art Materials" for the past six years. In this class, the basic concepts of materials science are taught in the context of examining paintings, calligraphic works on paper or vellum, and ceramics. Paintings provide the primary emphasis in the class, where the central thesis is that a painting is a physical object. This laminated structure consists of several layers of varying properties: wood, fabric, or metal substrate; natural or synthetic sealant; natural or synthetic ground; paint layer consisting of pigments bound by egg yolk, oil, or acrylic medium; and possibly a natural or synthetic protective varnish. This composite material is subject to mechanical stresses due to variation in thermal expansion coefficients of the different layers and photo-oxidation followed by embrittlement of the polymeric binders, the combination of which leads to predictable failure patterns (the cracquelure or "crackle"). Through analysis of a painting using the basic approaches of materials science, I hope to develop an appreciation that everything around us is made of materials. If we can view the painting as a physical object, we can understand the reasons why some things break and others do not, why some objects discolor in the sun and others do not, and why some items are toxic and others are not. Thus, the painting is a metaphor for our man-made world: everything is made of something, and the performance of that something will depend on its composition, processing, and morphology. My LASER presentation will attempt to capture the spirit of this Sophomore Seminar through discussion of several historical pigments, including ultramarine, vermillion, orpiment, and azurite.

This talk will focus on a series of artworks that draw on the pioneering medical imaging research of Etienne Jules Marey -- 19th century physiologist and father of motion pictures. Between 1995 and 2007 I created a series of pieces that were inspired and informed by Marey's experiments and his mechanistic theories of biological function. Since the 1980's I have been making interactive wood mechanical installations that explore the conflicted relationship we have with machines -- machines upon which we have become so dependent and in which we often see ourselves. Although my installations are interactive my work is adamantly low tech. As they play with my installations, participants tap into a reservoir of tactile knowledge stored in their bodies. The way that pieces feel, move and sound as you rock, pedal and press against them applies the kinesthetic comprehensions of childhood to the tasks of philosophy. The art installations I make often model the models and simulations we make about our world and ourselves often incorporating mechanical analogues for our social psychology. Like medieval diagrams they are maps of ideas that are powered by visitors to the show. Both the way I have made these pieces and the way that visitors to the show play with them helps to reveal how we stumble towards an understanding of who we are. It is epistemology that interests me. How do we know what we think we know?