Thursday June 14th     8PM     

We know that sounds can be broken down into their component sine waves,images to the intensity of their pixels. Mathematicians refer to such building blocks as "basis functions" - if you know these, you can generate other works from them. In this talk, we'll see how this idea arises in a variety of contexts - not just in the finite element method, used to solve engineering problems, but even fiction! We'll also briefly look at some other connections between the two fields I work in: writing and applied mathematics. 

Manil Suri is a mathematics professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. His fiction (including the novels The Death of Vishnu, The Age of Shiva and The City of Devi) has been translated into 27 languages. He is a frequent contributor to The New York Times, writing op-eds on mathematics, India and LGBT rights. He is in the process of completing a new novel, The Godfather of Numbers, which explains mathematics to non-mathematicians

Do butterflies dream of evolutionary free-jazz and genetic tattoos

Let us go deep into the study of the greatest art show on Earth, and explore these principles using the visually stunning features of butterflies and their wing patterns. How does the scientist approach these simple questions: how does DNA instructs pattern formation on the wing? and the diversification of shapes and color motifs therein? Can we manipulate these patterns, and shall we? What are the ethical limits of the modification of nature, are we harnessing it, or interrogating it, can it strengthen our relationship with it, or alienate us from it? 

Arnaud Martin is an Assistant Professor at the George Washington University since 2016 and has been carrying research in the field of Evolutionary Developmental Biology for the past 12 years at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon(France), UC Irvine, and UC Berkeley.

When: Thursday March 15th, 7:30pm    (free / donations appreciated)
 

We live in a universe that is filled with beautiful and complicated phenomena. By digging into these marvels, physicists have uncovered a relatively small set of rules that govern everything we see. These interaction laws create everything from an atom, to an apple, to a supernova, to even galaxies. What kinds of things can exist if we could tweak these underlying rules?

Scientist Kyle McElroy will explain how materials you can hold in your hand essentially create different sets of rules that allow brand new states of matter, and particles that can’t exist by themselves in the universe we live in. In essence material scientists find ways to bend the laws of physics in ways that science fiction writers would be jealous of.

There will be demonstrations.

Entropy is a measure of the disorder and randomness of a system. It was introduced in the 19th century through the study of thermodynamics, a branch of physics. Entropy underlies the tendency for all matter and energy in the universe to evolve toward a state of inert uniformity. The concept of entropy has been employed in fields as diverse as telecommunication systems and environmental systems.

The French-American art collective Tropisme has invited two artists, a curator, a philosopher and two scientists to collaborate on an event exploring entropy. Through art installations, performances and talks, the investigation of the concept will crisscross different areas of expertise and might serve as an entropic system in itself.

As has been seen in recent tsunami and hurricane disasters, many lives depend on the interpretation of complex global information. A series of languages for communicating this mass of data is evolving, and part of that development includes sound. Artist and scholar Andrea Polli, Professor of Art and Ecology at the University of New Mexico, discusses her journey towards activist art related to climate change, including work in the Arctic and Antarctic.  Her talk will ask participants to consider the complex question of how we might reach towards understanding climate change through sonic experience and design.