The LASERs (Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous) are an international program of evening gatherings that bring artists and scientists together for informal presentations and conversation with an audience. See the program for the whole international series and the dates for the Bay Area.
Send an email to "scaruffi at stanford dot edu" if you want to be added to the mailing list for the LASERs.
Where:
LiKaShing room LK120
There should be ample parking in the structure on corner of Campus Drive West and Roth Way (355 Roth Way).
Parking is mostly free at Stanford after 6pm.
Stanford events page
Program (the order of the speakers might change):
-
David Eagleman (Stanford) on "What will AI mean for artists?"
If you missed this presentation, you can view it by clicking on the image:  .
Kathy Aoki (Santa Clara University) on "Art Attacks: Critical Wit in Absurd Times"
If you missed this presentation, you can view it by clicking on the image:  .
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Jay McClelland (Stanford/ Center for Mind, Brain and Computation) on "Shared Strengths and Weaknesses of Real and Artificial Minds"
If you missed this presentation, you can view it by clicking on the image:  .
- Discussions, networking
You can mingle with the speakers and the audience
Bios:
- Kathy Aoki is a multi-disciplinary visual artist who uses satire to critique the absurd value systems that dominate gender, pop culture, and politics. Her printmaking work can be found in major collections across the U.S. including the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. She received fellowships at MacDowell (NH), the Headlands Center for the Arts (CA), and Frans Masereel Centrum (Belgium) and other venues. Aoki has completed commissions for the San Francisco Arts Commission, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Museum, and the San Jose Museum of Art. Her studio is located in the San Francisco Bay Area where she is a Professor of Studio Art at Santa Clara University.
- David Eagleman is a neuroscientist at Stanford University, an internationally bestselling author, and a Guggenheim Fellow. Dr. Eaglemans areas of research include sensory substitution, time perception, vision, and synesthesia; he also studies the intersection of neuroscience with the legal system, and in that capacity he directs the Center for Science and Law. Eagleman is the author of many books, including Livewired, The Runaway Species, The Brain, Incognito, and Wednesday is Indigo Blue. He is also the author of a widely adopted textbook on cognitive neuroscience, Brain and Behavior, as well as a bestselling book of literary fiction, Sum, which has been translated into 32 languages, turned into two operas, and named a Best Book of the Year by Barnes and Noble. Dr. Eagleman writes for the Atlantic, New York Times, Economist, Time, Discover, Slate, Wired, and New Scientist, and appears regularly on National Public Radio and BBC to discuss both science and literature. He has been a TED speaker, a guest on the Colbert Report, and profiled in the New Yorker magazine. He has spun several neurotech companies out of his lab. He runs the top ranking science podcast Inner Cosmos and is the writer and presenter of The Brain, an Emmy-nominated television series.
- Jay McClelland is Co-Director of the Center for Mind, Brain, Computation and Technology at Stanford University, where he was formerly the chair of the Psychology Department. In fall 2006 McClelland moved to Stanford University from Carnegie Mellon University, where he was a professor of psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience. He also holds a part-time appointment as Consulting Professor at the Neuroscience and Aphasia Research Unit (NARU) within the School of Psychological Sciences, University of Manchester. In 1986 McClelland published Parallel Distributed Processing: Explorations in the Microstructure of Cognition" with David Rumelhart. His present work focuses on learning, memory processes, and psycholinguistics. He is a former chair of the Rumelhart Prize committee, having collaborated with Rumelhart for many years. Awards include: William W. Cumming prize from Columbia University (1970), Research Scientist Career Development Award from the National Institute of Mental Health (198186, 198797), Rumelhart Prize (2010), and C.L. de Carvalho-Heineken Prize (2014). He has been a Fellow of the National Science Foundation (197073). In July 2017, McClelland was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy.
- Piero Scaruffi is a cultural historian who has lectured in three continents and published several books on Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science, the latest one being "The Nature of Consciousness" (2006). He pioneered Internet applications in the early 1980s and the use of the World-Wide Web for cultural purposes in the mid 1990s. His poetry has been awarded several national prizes in Italy and the USA. His latest books of poems and meditations are "Synthesis" (2009) and "Dialogue of the Lovers". As a music historian, he has published ten books, the latest ones being "A History of Rock and Dance Music" (2009) and "A History of Jazz Music" (2007). His latest book on technology are "A History of Silicon Valley" (2011, revised edition in 2022) and "Intelligence is not Artificial" (2013, expanded edition 2019). The first volume of his free ebook "A Visual History of the Visual Arts" appeared in 2012. "A Cultural History of California" appeared in 2026. He has also written extensively about cinema and literature. He founded the Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous (LASER) in 2008. Since 2015 he has been commuting between California and China, where several of his books have been translated.
Photos and videos of this evening
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