gallery@calit2: Readings and Artist Discussion

Guest Speaker: Sheldon Brown, Calit2 Artist in Residence with Geoff Ryman, CRCA Writer in Residence, and sci-fi author Kim Stanley Robinson Date: December 2nd, 2008 Time: 5:30pm-8:00pm Location: Calit2 Auditorium, Atkinson Hall, UC San Diego [webcast] Host: Sheldon Brown

DESCRIPTION/ABSTRACT: In connection with the current exhibition the gallery@calit2, featuring Sheldon Brown's Scalable City, this event will feature a talk by Brown, and readings from two science-fiction authors, one of whom has written a short story set in the Scalable City. The readings, artist talk and ensuing discussion, as well as a coffee-and-dessert reception, are co-sponsored by the UCSD division of Calit2 and the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts (CRCA). SPEAKER BIO: Sheldon Brown is an artist who works in new forms of culture that arise out of the developments of computing technology. He is Director of the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts ( CRCA ) at UC San Diego, where he is also a Professor of Visual Arts and Artist-in-Residence at Calit2. The artist’s work examines the relationships between mediated and physical experiences. This work often exists across a range of public realms. His work plays with overlapping and reconfiguring private and public spaces, with new forms of mediation, proliferating co-existing public realms with geographies and social organizations of increasing diversity. Brown has been commissioned for public artworks in Seattle, San Francisco, San Diego and Mexico City, and has received grants from AT&T New Experiments in Art and Technology, the NEA, the Rockefeller Foundation, IBM, Intel, Sun, Vicon and others. Geoff Ryman is a writer of science fiction, fantasy and surrealistic or "slipstream" fiction. He is a Visiting Professor in UCSD's Department of Literature this quarter, and has been asked to take on a Writer-in-Residence role for CRCA and Calit2. Ryman's short stories and novels have won 14 awards.  He earned degrees in English and History at UCLA, but the Canadian author has spent most of his career in the UK. Ryman ran the UK government's first web design team from 1994, and he headed the team that worked on the first official British Monarchy and 10 Downing Street websites.  His own hypertext novel, uploaded in stages from 1996 to 1998, is called 253 and is about 253 people on a London Underground tube train. It won the Philip K Dick Memorial Award for best novel not published in hardback, and can still be found in all it's hand-coded, 1995 HTML glory at www.ryman-novel.com. Kim Stanley Robinson is an American science fiction writer, whose work explores ecological and sociological themes. His own lifelong fascination with Mars led to the award-winning Mars trilogy, and he will be the guest of honors for the World Science Fiction Convention in 2010 in Melbourne, Australia.  Robinson grew up in Southern California and received a B.A. from UC San Diego in 1974 in Literature, and later a Ph.D. in English from UC San Diego in 1982. MORE INFORMATION: Reception: coffee and dessert.