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Wonder Cabinet
The New York Institute for the Humanities and the Humanities Initiative at NYU
Present An All-Day
Wonder Cabinetcurated by Lawrence Weschler
with Jonathan Lethem, Tara Donovan, Robert Krulwich, Bill Morrison, Richard McGuire, Bob Sabiston, Lauren Redniss, Wholphin, and others
Saturday February 21, Noon till 9pm Cantor Film Center at NYU, 36 East 8th Street
Free and open to the public, on a first-come, first-in basis
On Saturday, February 21, the NYIH will delve back into the roots of the modern Humanities in the sixteenth century’s Age of Marvels, when the sorts of disciplines that would eventually separate out into distinct Arts and the Sciences, as currently understood, still comingled promiscuously and sometimes well-nigh deliriously. For, as the curator of the day-long event, Lawrence Weschler (director of the Institute and the author, among others, of the Pulitzer-nominated Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonders and the NBCC-Award-winning Everything that Rises: A Book of Convergences) suggests, what with the expansion of the Web, the Net, and other such proliferating technologies, our current era is witnessing a similarly happy debauch of interpenetrating categories, a time when scientists and artists, fictionaros and filmmakers and historians and digital innovators all have a whole lot to say to each other
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
SEGMENT 1 {Noon to 3:00 pm}
Noon
NPR and ABC’s Robert Krulwich and marine biologist Roger Hanlon (of the Marine Biology Lab in Woods Hole, MA) blowing the whistle on octopus camouflage
1:00 pm
Celebrated avant-garde filmmaker Bill Morrison (Decasia) and the legendary cartoonist and graphic artist Richard McGuire (of the New Yorker, among other venues), offering gorgeous new filmwork
2:30 pm
Novelist Jonathan Lethem (Motherless Brooklyn, The Fortress of Solitude) reading a new story
{3:00 pm - break}
SEGMENT 2
{3:30 pm to 6:30 pm}
3:30 pm
Work in progress from MacArthur award winning artist Tara Donovan (ink on paper) and graphic master Lauren Redniss (Marie Curie in love!)
4:30 pm
Cultural historian Norman Brosterman on the invention of kindergarten in the 19th century and the unlikely origins of the vanguard passions of such modernist geniuses as Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Cobusier, Mondrian and Klee
5:30 pm
Artist Matt Shlian and materials scientist Max Shtein of the University of Michigan, folding paper within an inch of its life, with implications ranging from protein folding to renewable energy
{6:30 pm - break}
SEGMENT 3
{7:15 pm to 9:00 pm}
7:15 pm
John Underkoffler of Oblong Industries, fresh from presenting technological marvels at Sundance, breaking the digital fourth wall
7:45 pm
Brent Hoff offering a short-film miscellany from Wholphin, the DVD quarterly out of McSweeneysland, featuring everything from sunspots in delirium to bubblewrap in extremis, and rotoscope magus Bob Sabiston (Waking Life, A Scanner Darkly) accompanying an autistic lad on a pilgrimage to roller coaster heaven as part of his latest effort, The Even More Fun Trip.
{We hope as many of you as possible will be able to spend the day with us, feasting on the Wonder Cabinet in its entirety. However, should you be unable to stay for the whole program, we strongly recommend that you come for each segment in full—you’ll understand why when you do!}
Nearest Subway Lines to Cantor Film Center
(at 36 East 8th Street, btw University Place & Greene St.):
A, C, E, B, D, F, V to West 4th Street (6th Ave.)
R, W to 8th St.--NYU (Broadway)
6 to Astor Place
For interviews, images, and further information about the event or the New York Institute for the Humanities, please contact Stephanie Steiker at 212.998.2101 or nyih.info@nyu.edu.
PARTICIPANT BIOS
Norman Brosterman, an architect, sculptor, and collector, first became interested in the history of kindergarten while assembling the world's finest collection of antique building block and construction toys. In 1989, Brosterman's collection was acquired by the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal. Discovering that the famed "Froebel Blocks", which are well-known to all students of Frank Lloyd Wright, were merely part of a much larger system of elegant, nature-based, design toys, Brosterman embarked on years of research into the history of this lost world, culminating in the publication in 1997 of his award-winning book, Inventing Kindergarten.
Tara Donovan is a sculptor known for creating site-specific installations that transform everyday materials—whether pencils, plastic straws, Styrofoam cups, or Scotch tape—into organic-looking abstract forms, often with a biomorphic or geographical quality to them. She received a B.F.A. from the Corcoran College of Art and Design, Washington, D.C. and an M.F.A., in 1999, from Virginia Commonwealth University. Her work has appeared in numerous solo and group exhibitions, at such venues as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the UCLA Hammer Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. Donovan is the recipient of various awards and fellowships, including the inaugural 2005 Calder Foundation Prize and a 2008 MacArthur Fellowship grant.
Roger T. Hanlon, currently Senior Scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, previously served as director of its Marine Resources Center. Hanlon received his doctorate from the Univ. of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, was a NATO Postdoctoral Fellow at Cambridge University, and a professor at the Marine Biomedical Institute, Univ. of Texas Medical Branch, where he later became Chief of the Division of Biology and Marine Resources. His interest in cephalopods began in 1968, when he encountered an octopus on a coral reef in Panama and was intrigued by its body patterning and changing coloration.
Brent Hoff is the editor and co-founder of Wholphin: DVD Magazine of Rare and Unseen Short Films, where he films drunk bees, crying competitions, and illegal trans-border volleyball matches. Before that he authored Mapping Epidemics, a book on pandemic disease transmission, made TV at The Daily Show, VH1, and Nickelodeon, and wrote articles about squid.
Robert Krulwich, NPR Science Correspondent and co-host with Jad Abumrad of Radio Lab, is known for explaining the complexities of science, technology and economics in a clear and compelling style. He has explored the structure of DNA with a banana, explained arbitrage by wearing Groucho glasses and illustrated the Texaco-Pennzoil battle with Barbie and Ken dolls. A Special Correspondent for ABC News, Krulwich appears regularly on Nightline and other news programs, including ABC News Tonight and Good Morning America. As host and executive editor of PBS's five-part documentary series, NOVA science NOW, Krulwich explored scientific breakthroughs and their applications, from fuel cells and hydrogen-powered cars to secrets of the genetic code and nanotechnology. Krulwich won an Emmy Award, a Polk Award and a DuPont Award for his PBS Frontline programs on Internet privacy, the savings and loan scandal and campaign finance, respectively.
Jonathan Lethem is the author of seven novels, including You Don’t Love Me Yet and The Fortress of Solitude, and Motherless Brooklyn, which won the National Book Critic’s Circle Award. He is the author of two short story collections, Men and Cartoons and The Wall of the Sky, Wall of the Eye, and a collection of autobiographical essays, The Disappointment Artist. As editor, he created The Vintage Book of Amnesia, guest-edited The Year’s Best Music Writing 2001, and was the founding fiction editor of Fence magazine. Lethem’s short stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, McSweeny's, Tin House, The New York Times, and other publications. He lives in Brooklyn and Maine.
Richard McGuire, a regular art contributor to The New Yorker, has created experimental comics, children's books and toys. He has also designed record sleeves, posters and music videos for his band Liquid Liquid. Most recently he directed part of the animated feature film Peur(s) du Noir (Fear of the Dark), a collection of six tales by renowned comic and graphic artists that was produced in France. He currently resides in NYC.
Bill Morrison’s films have been screened at festivals, museums and concert halls worldwide, including the Sundance Film Festival, the Tate Modern, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall. The Museum of Modern Art has acquired eight of his titles. Morrison is a Guggenheim fellow and has received the Alpert Award. His work with the Ridge Theater has been recognized with two Bessie awards and an Obie Award. Decasia, his feature-length collaboration with composer Michael Gordon, is described by J. Hoberman of the Village Voice as “the most widely acclaimed American avant-garde film of the fin-de-siècle.”
Lauren Redniss is the author and illustrator of Century Girl: 100 Years in the Life of Doris Eaton Travis, Last Living Star of the Ziegfeld Follies, named by Slate one of the Ten Best Books of 2006. She teaches at the Parsons School of Design, and frequently contributes Op-Art pieces to the Op-Ed page of the New York Times. A fellow this year at the New York Public Library's Cullman Center for Scholars & Writers, Redniss is currently working on Radioactive, a visual book about Marie Curie that traces her life and loves, and also links the themes of her life and research--symmetry, magnetism, fission, isolation, fusion--with more recent episodes in the history of scientific developments she helped set in motion.
Bob Sabiston and his company Flat Black Films have been making innovative animation since 1987. Sabiston’s interpolated rotoscoping software has achieved international recognition as it has evolved in such films as RoadHead, Snack and Drink, Waking Life, and A Scanner Darkly. With each film they do, Flat Black Films strives to recast our world in ever more beautiful and revealing light. As an accomplished graphics programmer, Sabiston is also involved in live-graphics projects for musical accompaniment and Inchworm, a paint/animation program for the Nintendo DS. He has most recently released "Headspace", a mind-mapping application for iphone.
Matthew Shlian, an artist, designer, and paper engineer, received his BFA from Alfred University in 2002, and his MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2006. Currently he is working with scientists as a visiting research scholar at the University of Michigan and teaching at the School of Art and Design in Ann Arbor. "As a paper engineer my work is rooted in print media, book arts and commercial design. Beginning with an initial fold, a single action causes a transfer of energy to subsequent folds, which ultimately manifest in drawings and three-dimensional forms. I use my engineering skills to create kinetic sculpture, which have lead to collaborations with scientists at the University of Michigan. Researchers see paper engineering as a metaphor for scientific principals; I see their inquiry as basis for artistic inspiration.”
Max Shtein is Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan, where he specializes in organic semiconductor device design and processing, particularly in the area of next generation energy conversion devices. He obtained his B.S. from UC Berkeley (1998) and Ph.D. from Princeton (2004). His thesis on Organic Vapor Phase Deposition (OVPD) and Vapor Jet Printing (OVJP) resulted in several widely cited publications, patents, and is the basis for emerging, scalable organic flat panel display fabrication methods. He has received the Materials Research Society Graduate Student Gold Medal Award in 2001, the PRISM-Newport Award of Excellence and Leadership in Photonics and Optoelectonics in 2004, the Jon R. and Beverly S. Holt Awards for Excellence in Teaching in 2007, and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers for 2007.
John Underkoffler is founder and Chief Scientist of Oblong Industries, Inc., and developer of G-Speak, the world's first commercial gestural interface system. As a spatial operating environment, G-Speak is an interactive system where data is lifted off from the computer screen and transferred into real space, and the user is able to navigate through data using gestures and arm movements instead of keyboard or mouse. Earlier, during 15 years at MIT’s Media Laboratory, Underkoffler produced innovations in optical and electronic holography, built novel animation systems, invented several large-scale visualization techniques, and created the I/O Bulb and Luminous Room systems. His custom applications and installations are in use at commercial and educational facilities, have been shown in galleries and museums, and have received various awards. The human-machine interfaces he has devised over the past two decades remain widely influential. Additionally, Underkoffler has served as science and technology advisor on several Hollywood films, including The Hulk, Aeon Flux, and The Minority Report.
Lawrence Weschler is Director of the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU, and Artistic Director of the Chicago Humanities Festival. For over twenty years he was a staff writer for The New Yorker, where his work shuttled between political tragedies and cultural comedies. His books of political reportage include A Miracle, A Universe: Settling Accounts with Torturers, Calamities of Exile, and Vermeer in Bosnia. His "Passions and Wonders" series includes the Pulitzer-nominated Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonders and Everything that Rises: A Book of Convergences, recipient of a Book Critics Circle Award. UC Press just published his paired books on artists Robert Irwin and David Hockney: an expanded edition of Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees and True to Life, respectively. A contributing editor to McSweeney’s and Virginia Quarterly Review, Weschler is also a curator at large for Wholphin, and director of the Ernst Toch Society, dedicated to the promulgation of the music of his grandfather, the noted Weimar émigré composer.
The NYU Humanities Initiative sponsors research, collaborative teaching, conferences, working groups, and outreach by way of fostering a university-wide community in the humanities at NYU. Launched in 2007, its mission replaces and significantly expands that of the former Humanities Council. For further information on the Humanities Initiative, please visit www.nyu.edu/humanities.council or call 212.998.2190.
The New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU was established in 1976 for promoting the exchange of ideas between academics, professionals, politicians, diplomats, writers, journalists, musicians, painters, and other artists in New York City--and between all of them and the city. It currently comprises 220 fellows. Throughout the year, the NYIH organizes numerous public events and symposia. For further information, please call 212.998.2101.
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