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:
The Hub at Stanford Research Park (3215 Porter Dr, Palo Alto)
There should be ample (free) parking in the back.
This is two LASERs in one. The online portion will take place at lunch-time and will host speakers from the East Coast. The in-person portion will take place at the Stanford Research Park.
Register here for the online LASER: 12pm California time.
Program for the online LASER:
Harpreet Sareen (New School) on "Post-Human Design / The Great Decentering"
If you missed this presentation, you can view it by clicking on the image:  .
Alexander Sorenson (Binghamton University) on "Hidden Hearts: On Selfhood and the (Un)sayable in Rilke's Poetry"
If you missed this presentation, you can view it by clicking on the image:  .
Program of the in-person LASER, not necessarily in this order (no need for RSVP - just show up at 5:30pm at The Hub):
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Takako Fujioka (Stanford) on "Joint coordination and improvisation in music"
If you missed this presentation, you can view it by clicking on the image:  .
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Jason Kelly Johnson and Nataly Gattegno (Futureforms) on “Futureforms: Digital Craft”
If you missed this presentation, you can view it by clicking on the image: .
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Jared Moore (Stanford) on "The Realities and Illusions of AI"
Discussions, networking
You can mingle with the speakers and the audience
Bios:
- Takako Fujioka is the founder of the Neuromusic Lab at Stanford University. She grew up in Japan, playing music, hand-drawing comics, and making anime films. She earned a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Waseda University and a Ph.D. in Physiology from National Institute for Physiological Sciences. After post-doctoral work in Toronto, Canada Takako came to Stanford and opened her “Neuromusic” laboratory at Stanford University, in the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics. Her expertise is brainwave investigation into music perception and cognition. Recent projects include neural correlates of temporal anticipation, expressive body movements, beat perception, joint improvisation, hip-hop rhyme processing, music perception for cochlear implant users, and music-supported neurorehabilitation. The CCRMA Neuromusic Lab conducts experiments into musical mind and behavior. How do we predict timing of ongoing music and coordinate with each other? How do we improvise jointly? Its recent work tackle these mysteries in behavioural and brain studies. People's ability to extract beat timing from multiple sounds with asynchronies differ among population. When duet pianists played melodies alternatingly, the brainwave activities (measured by EEG) index the interaction between the creative task load, the attention to partner, and personality empathy trait.
- Jason Kelly Johnson and Nataly Gattegno are the founders of Futureforms, an award-winning art and design studio based in San Francisco since 2009. Johnson and Gattegno have collaborated on a range of projects exploring the intersections of art and design with public space for over 20 years. Recent public art projects have included sculptural shade canopies, art pavilions, fine art objects, furniture and lighting, as well as large scale urban art installations and art master plan consulting. Their commitment to public art stems from an interest in activating the urban realm by giving the public a way to engage, creating places for exchange, places for pause, or simply a point of connection.
- Jared Moore is a PhD student in Computer Science at Stanford University, focusing on social reasoning and alignment. He studies the social abilities of large language models (LLMs), such as whether they can use theory of mind and their tendencies toward deception. Recently, he taught a class, “How to Make a Moral Agent”. He also wrote a satirical novel about AI. He has published in AI and NLP venues as well as in the cognitive sciences. His work has been covered by outlets from the New York Times to Futurism to USA Today. He is a fellow at the Stanford Center for Affective Science and is funded by the Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellowship. Before Stanford, Jared lectured at the University of Washington on the math, philosophy, and ethics of AI. He has also worked at the Allen Institute for AI, Xnor.ai, and Wadhwani AI.
- Harpreet Sareen is an alumn of Fluid Interfaces group. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Interaction and Media Design at Parsons School of Design, New York and Director of the Synthetic Ecosystems Lab that focusses on biological futures and their implications in interaction design. He earned a graduate degree in Media Arts and Sciences from the MIT Media Lab, followed by a research affiliate appointment. Sareen is interested in the cybernetics of organisms and materials. His work is situated at the intersection of Material Science, Biology and Electronics and draws on the complementary abilities of the biological and artificial worlds. Harpreet terms this as 'Convergent Design' to create hybrid substrates and bionic materials that lend themselves for future ecological machinery, sensing systems and interaction design. Sareen has previously lived and worked in the Austria, India, Japan, Singapore and USA. His experience spans corporate research wings, studios, museums to academic centers having previously worked at Google Creative Lab, Microsoft Research, MIT Media Lab, Ars Electronica Museum, National University of Singapore, Keio University and more.
Our design practices have been fundamentally shaped by human-centered perspectives and synthetic materials. However, revisiting the fundamentals that created this anthropocentric context can reshape our technological transformation toward a more ecological view. At the cusp of technologies that can be applied broadly across living and organic systems, there is an opportunity to expand design beyond human behavior to incorporate the behaviors of plants, animals, and organic materials themselves.
In this talk, I will discuss Interaction Design from the vantage point of living organisms and organic matter, exploring how biological processes, material properties, and non-human behaviors can inform new design approaches. Through projects that engage with plant physiology, animal cognition, and the inherent properties of organic materials like algae, fungi, and biomaterials, I will demonstrate how these systems exhibit their own forms of responsiveness and adaptations. Understanding these material and biological processes can inform practices that design with and for non-humans, creating new possibilities for human/non-human/material collaborations in our technological future.
- Alexander Sorenson is an Assistant Professor of German Studies at Binghamton University. His research and teaching interests center upon interdisciplinary themes and issues related to the environmental humanities. His book "The Waiting Water: Order, Sacrifice and Submergence in German Realism" (Cornell University Press, 2024) examines the relationship between water imagery, law, and sacrifice in 19th-century German literature. He is currently working on a new book project, tentatively titled "Ecologies of Transience", which explores the poetic roots of modern environmental consciousness. His publications have appeared in The German Quarterly, Literature & Theology, Forum for Modern Language Studies, German Life & Letters and the Los Angeles Review of Books.
- 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 History of California" appeared in 2025. 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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