STEAMroller

Operation STEAMroller is an interdisciplinary symposium celebrating the intersection of science, technology, engineering, art, mathematics, and the humanities. The centerpiece of the symposium was an interactive multimedia exhibition by Jean-Francois Podevin on display through October 12 on level 3 of the William H. Hannon Library.

Sponsors
Associate Provost, Research Advancement and Compliance College of Communication and Fine Arts
Eric Strauss and the Center for Urban Resilience (CURes)
Frank R. Seaver College of Science & Engineering
School of Education
William H. Hannon Library

About State of the Art and Mind
Artist statement, by Jean-François Podevin: On the level of “execution” Composite Memories combines a full spectrum of techniques of image making: drawing, sketching, photography, digital imaging, displayed in devices that allow all forms of meaningful configurations.
On the level of “content,” it deals with affection, time and memory, relationship to the “self,” to the “other,” to the "world," touching among the disciplines of linguistics, ontology, and hermeneutics, and cognitive science.
Through its unlimited juxtapositions of imagery it highlights contradictions between the imaginary and the real. It swings a pendulum between the intimate depths of personal beliefs and the general consensus of rational thinking, in order to observe without judgment the profound ambivalence of human nature.

About Jean-François Podevin
Podevin is a conceptual artist who grew up in France and now lives in California. His fascination with time, memory and the human psyche can be viewed on his Web site at www.jfpodevin.com. As an illustrator and a designer Podevin’s work spans over 25 years and includes clients such as the Time Magazine, The Washington Post, NewYork Times, Coca Cola, Geffen Records, and Scientific American, which you can view on www.podevin.com.

About Colin Gardner
Working at the intersection of film-philosophy, interdisciplinary media theory and Deleuze Studies, Colin Gardner earned his M.A. in History from St. John’s College, Cambridge and Ph.D. in Cinema Studies at UCLA before becoming Professor of Critical Theory and Integrative Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he teaches in the Departments of Art, Film & Media Studies, Comparative Literature, and the History of Art and Architecture.

A prolific author, Gardner published works include two books in Manchester University Press’s “British Film Makers” series: a critical study of the blacklisted American film director, Joseph Losey (2004), and a monograph on the Czech-born British filmmaker and critic, Karel Reisz (2006). Most recently Dr. Gardner has expanded his research into the area of Media Geography

Gardner's public lectures include discussions of Stan Douglas’s video work at Cal Arts and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Diana Thater’s “Knots + Surfaces” projected DVD installation at New York’s Dia Center for Arts’ Robert Lehman Lecture Series (published in 2006); “Decentered Spectatorship: Constructing a Hybrid Scopic Space in Recent Art Film and Video,” at Louisville’s Speed Art Museum; and analyses of cinema and the brain for Warren Neidich’s “The Mutated Observer: Neurological Structures, Perception and Visual Culture” at UC Riverside’s California Museum of Photography and his interdisciplinary panel on “Movies, Buildings and Brains” at UCLA.