Category: Featured Posts

Roger F. Malina

The UTDallas ArtSciLab is a university research lab and studio. We seek to apply trans-disciplinary, trans-cultural and trans-generational methodologies on problems that are desirable to solve.

Tomas Londono, and subsequently Tommy Ayala, initiated the application of Smart Village methods to our research lab. The hope is that we will uncover new ways of doing, discovering, and applying to societal contexts outside the ArtSciLab.

On of the ideas that Tomas Londono initiated was a quick application of the Methods of Urban Acupuncture. We propose to convert this to Smart Acupuncture, in a Smart Village Research Lab.

The simple version of the idea is that we tend to over think and over-analyze and plan. Sometimes a quick jab can create desirable change and ideas, drawing on the ideas of Maturana and Varela: auto-poetic smart acupuncture. Pin prick both the social system and the technologies used, separately to together.

About the Author:

Roger F. Malina is a space scientist and astronomer, with a specialty in extreme and ultraviolet astronomy, space instrumentation and optics. He served as director of the Observatoire Astronomique de Marseille Provence and was NASA Principal Investigator for the Extreme Ultraviolet Satellite project at the University of California, Berkeley.

He is also a publisher and editor in the new emerging research fields that connect the sciences and engineering to the arts, design and humanities. Since 1982, he has served as Executive Editor of the Leonardo Publications at MIT Press. He founded, and serves on the board of two nonprofits, ISAST in San Francisco and OLATS in Paris, which advocate and document the work of artists involved in contemporary science and technology.

He is currently a Distinguished Professor of Art and Technology and Professor of Physics, at the University of Texas at Dallas and Directeur de Recherche for the CNRS in France. He serves as the Associate Director of ATEC, and founded the ArtSciLab in the ATEC program fall 2013.

Roger F. Malina, Tomas Londono and Tommy Ayala

On Dec 13 2023 Roger Malina and Tomas Londono did a first public presentation on the idea of using Smart Village methodologies to convert the UTD ArtSciLab into a Smart Village.

They were invited to present at 2023 China Design and Artificial Intelligence Liangzhu Summit, held from December 13th to 16th, 2023.

They were told that Liangzhu entered the realm of national civilization over 3,000 years ago. Industrial design, originating from the “Industrial Revolution,” represents innovative design. When these two meet across time and space, from culture to industry, from nation to design, the mission of the “School of Industrial Design” at the China Academy of Art is set. Starting from the steam era (Industrial 1.0), the electrical era (Industrial 2.0), the information era (Industrial 3.0), and now entering the intelligent era (Industrial 4.0), design is constantly evolving in the intersection of humanism and technology. “Industry” represents the industrial circle, and “School” represents academia, while “Design” in the context of great innovation is our shared endeavor.

In this blog Roger Malina tries to explain his motivations for being involved in the project.

You can also view slides and watch the recorded presentation.

About the Author:

Roger F. Malina is a space scientist and astronomer, with a specialty in extreme and ultraviolet astronomy, space instrumentation and optics. He served as director of the Observatoire Astronomique de Marseille Provence and was NASA Principal Investigator for the Extreme Ultraviolet Satellite project at the University of California, Berkeley.

He is also a publisher and editor in the new emerging research fields that connect the sciences and engineering to the arts, design and humanities. Since 1982, he has served as Executive Editor of the Leonardo Publications at MIT Press. He founded, and serves on the board of two nonprofits, ISAST in San Francisco and OLATS in Paris, which advocate and document the work of artists involved in contemporary science and technology.

He is currently a Distinguished Professor of Art and Technology and Professor of Physics, at the University of Texas at Dallas and Directeur de Recherche for the CNRS in France. He serves as the Associate Director of ATEC, and founded the ArtSciLab in the ATEC program fall 2013.

Roger F. Malina – ORCID

So here goes:
Deep Sensing is, perhaps, an OBSERVATORY OF CRITICAL ZONES. In January 2024, Richardson Texas, you will be able to sense deep space:

You will be accessing the latest data from big telescopes in orbit and on earth to sense the universe we are embedded in (details at the end of this blog).

At the simple level, the team is converting NASA data into sensory experiences involving sight, sound, touch and walking around. No human has ever been to the places you will be “visiting’. What you
will experience are ‘fabrications’ made a team of artists, scientists,
administrators and…

By that I don’t mean that they are ‘false’ but that they are “made up’’ so we can make sense of these places. In some cases they may be false “hallucinations’, but we can only find that out by collecting different kinds of data.

The place you will be visiting has been named by some humans as “the pandora cluster’ a collection of galaxies orbiting each other. Go figure why this name makes sense.

About the Author:

Roger F. Malina is a space scientist and astronomer, with a specialty in extreme and ultraviolet astronomy, space instrumentation and optics. He served as director of the Observatoire Astronomique de Marseille Provence and was NASA Principal Investigator for the Extreme Ultraviolet Satellite project at the University of California, Berkeley.

He is also a publisher and editor in the new emerging research fields that connect the sciences and engineering to the arts, design and humanities. Since 1982, he has served as Executive Editor of the Leonardo Publications at MIT Press. He founded, and serves on the board of two nonprofits, ISAST in San Francisco and OLATS in Paris, which advocate and document the work of artists involved in contemporary science and technology.

He is currently a Distinguished Professor of Art and Technology and Professor of Physics, at the University of Texas at Dallas and Directeur de Recherche for the CNRS in France. He serves as the Associate Director of ATEC, and founded the ArtSciLab in the ATEC program fall 2013.

After reading: Strong Emergence Arising from Weak Emergence

Roger F. Malina – ORCID

See abstract at bottom of this blog:
a) Don’t bother reading this article. The abstract says enough. The authors applied state of the art analysis tools. Their conclusion: Predictions of emergent phenomena, appearing on the macroscopic layer of a complex system, can fail if they are made by a microscopic
model.
b) How did meaning emerge in my brain as I read this next to the Calatrava bridge in Dallas. 3000 people are running a long distance race. The runners were in small clusters, like in the game of life (GOL) that the authors study. Yes some of the clusters are friends, but
others are clustering for other or no reason.
c) Maybe the meaning of complex is ‘phenomena we don’t understand, yet’ so?

About the Author:

Roger F. Malina is a space scientist and astronomer, with a specialty in extreme and ultraviolet astronomy, space instrumentation and optics. He served as director of the Observatoire Astronomique de Marseille Provence and was NASA Principal Investigator for the Extreme Ultraviolet Satellite project at the University of California, Berkeley.

He is also a publisher and editor in the new emerging research fields that connect the sciences and engineering to the arts, design and humanities. Since 1982, he has served as Executive Editor of the Leonardo Publications at MIT Press. He founded, and serves on the board of two nonprofits, ISAST in San Francisco and OLATS in Paris, which advocate and document the work of artists involved in contemporary science and technology.

He is currently a Distinguished Professor of Art and Technology and Professor of Physics, at the University of Texas at Dallas and Directeur de Recherche for the CNRS in France. He serves as the Associate Director of ATEC, and founded the ArtSciLab in the ATEC program fall 2013.

Upon mid-reading of Dehaene’s 2020 book “How We Learn: The New Science of Education and the Brain”.

Roger F. Malina – ORCID

The first take home from this book, that I haven’t finished reading yet, is to: REDESIGN YOUR NAME. I called the wrong person yesterday, as I was reading Dehaene, when I called Patrick Mc in my phone address book. I reached Patrick McCray (my favorite historian of science and technology) when I was trying to reach Patrick McCully (my favorite police captain, the lead in the artscience of creative policing). Try searching them online. My cell phone is stupid its not affected by it’s context, my brain is.

I am sitting in my favorite brunch restaurant in Dallas.

Why is this relevant to this blog post? Because I now think differently about how my brain functions after reading this book. And in January I start (co) teaching a graduate seminar on Experimental Publishing and Curating. I will redesign the seminar based on this book. My previous syllabus is clearly erroneous and based on incorrect understanding of the brain.

About the Author:

Roger F. Malina is a space scientist and astronomer, with a specialty in extreme and ultraviolet astronomy, space instrumentation and optics. He served as director of the Observatoire Astronomique de Marseille Provence and was NASA Principal Investigator for the Extreme Ultraviolet Satellite project at the University of California, Berkeley.

He is also a publisher and editor in the new emerging research fields that connect the sciences and engineering to the arts, design and humanities. Since 1982, he has served as Executive Editor of the Leonardo Publications at MIT Press. He founded, and serves on the board of two nonprofits, ISAST in San Francisco and OLATS in Paris, which advocate and document the work of artists involved in contemporary science and technology.

He is currently a Distinguished Professor of Art and Technology and Professor of Physics, at the University of Texas at Dallas and Directeur de Recherche for the CNRS in France. He serves as the Associate Director of ATEC, and founded the ArtSciLab in the ATEC program fall 2013.

Roger F. Malina – ORCID

Roger Malina is stepping down as Executive Editor of Leonardo publications after 40 years of volunteer labor. As part of this ISAST is carrying out a strategic review to try and understand the future of academic publishing.
When Leonardo Journal was founded by Frank Malina, at Pergamon Press, it was different in a number of desirable ways:

1. Until the end of WWII academic publishing was carried out by Academies of Art and Academies of Science, and other non-profits such as some Universities, not by commercial publishers.
2. Secondly artists were almost never asked to write about their art making and artwork; the founder of Leonardo was told “if you have to plug it in, it isn’t art”. Show it in a cinema museum.
   
   Now there are dozens of academic journals in the commercial and non-profit worlds including MIT Press, the current publisher of Leonardo Journal and Books. And artists can publish in dozens of peer-reviewed
   journals. Artists in academic settings often need to publish in peer reviewed academic journals in order to get promoted and tenure.

About the Author:

Roger F. Malina is a space scientist and astronomer, with a specialty in extreme and ultraviolet astronomy, space instrumentation and optics. He served as director of the Observatoire Astronomique de Marseille Provence and was NASA Principal Investigator for the Extreme Ultraviolet Satellite project at the University of California, Berkeley.

He is also a publisher and editor in the new emerging research fields that connect the sciences and engineering to the arts, design and humanities. Since 1982, he has served as Executive Editor of the Leonardo Publications at MIT Press. He founded, and serves on the board of two nonprofits, ISAST in San Francisco and OLATS in Paris, which advocate and document the work of artists involved in contemporary science and technology.

He is currently a Distinguished Professor of Art and Technology and Professor of Physics, at the University of Texas at Dallas and Directeur de Recherche for the CNRS in France. He serves as the Associate Director of ATEC, and founded the ArtSciLab in the ATEC program fall 2013.