CHAIRS: Andrea Polli and Susan Latham

Ana MacArthur will present her work at Santa Fe Art Institute and will be featured at our evening of science and art--LASER Santa Fe. This is part of an international series of talks sponsored by Leonardo/ISAST.

Ana MacArthur’s history of working with light, light-based technologies, and biological fieldwork aims to understand key functions of light as utilized by organisms and to integrate those observations as ecological and metaphorical transformers while increasing the human/ non-human co-mingling. Based in Santa Fe but traveling for research, her cross-disciplinary practice-based research has collaboratively engaged scientists in solar innovation, photonics, behavioral biology, ceramic/ glass engineering, and materials science.

She is a pioneer in dichromate (DCG) holography and co-founder of a DCG lab for 20 years located in Santa Fe, NM. A 2008 - 2012 exchange with Dr. Pete Vukusic, a physicist at the University of Exeter, UK, culminated in a residency at his lab to research and produce artistic outcomes from the nano-architecture on the wings of several species of blue morpho butterflies. In 2017 she was awarded a fellowship with Dr. Markus Buehler at MIT, an international expert in multi-scale modeling and properties of spider silk, and she continues collaborations with his PhD’s exploring the biomimetic properties of specific organisms. In early 2000’s, Sandia National Laboratories hired her as part of the New Mexico Optics and Photonics Education Ladder, the first in the world, with intent to educate from middle school to university about unfolding photonics technologies.

SPONSORS:

LASER (Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous) Talks is Leonardo's international program of evening gatherings that bring artists and scientists together for informal presentations and conversations. LASER Talks were founded in 2008 by Bay Area LASER Chair Piero Scaruffi and are in over 30 cities around the world. To learn more about how our LASER Hosts and to visit a LASER near you please visit our website. 

The mission of the LASERs is to provide the general public with a snapshot of the cultural environment of a region and to foster interdisciplinary networking.