News/Research

BCNM Ken Goldberg at Cal Leonardo Art/Science Evening Rendezvous (LASERs)

16 Feb, 2016

BCNM Ken Goldberg at Cal Leonardo Art/Science Evening Rendezvous (LASERs)

Ken Goldberg presented several installations exploring California seismology at last Wednesday's Leonardo Art/Science Evening Rendezvous (LASERs). Wow and Flutter uses a live stream of seismic data from the Hayward Fault to create blooms of color based on real-time changes in the Earth's motion, measured as a vertical velocity continuously updated from the seismometer. The horizontal position of blooms is based on time, their vertical position is based on magnitude of the second derivative, and their size is based on the time between extrema. Ballet Mori, a performance to commemorate the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, also used real-time data to modulate a musical composition to which SF Ballet Principal Dancer Muriel Maffre danced.

The LASERs are a national program of evening gatherings that bring artists and scientists together for informal presentations and conversation with an audience