Victoria Vesna
Victoria Vesna is a media artist and professor in the Department of Design/Media Arts at the UCLA School of the Arts. She is also director of the recently established UCLA Art/Sci Center and the UC Digital Arts Research Network. Her work can be defined as experimental creative research that resides between disciplines and technologies. She explores how communication technologies affect collective behavior and how perceptions of identity shift in relation to scientific innovation. Her most recent installations–Blue Morph, Mood Swings, and Water Bowls–all aim to raise consciousness around the issues of our relationship to natural systems. Other notable works are Bodies INCorporated, Datamining Bodies, n0time, and Cellular Trans_Actions.
Vesna has exhibited her work nationally and internationally in numerous solo exhibitions and group shows. She has published dozens of articles and lectured widely. She is the recipient of many grants, commissions, and awards, including the Oscar Signorini Award for best net artwork in 1998 and the Cine Golden Eagle for best scientific documentary in 1986. Vesna’s work has received notice in numerous publications, such as Art in America, National Geographic, the Los Angeles Times, Spiegel (Germany), The Irish Times (Ireland), Tema Celeste (Italy), and Veredas (Brazil), and also appears in a number of book chapters on media arts. She holds a PhD from the University of Wales and is the North American editor of AI & Society and author of Database Aesthetics.
James Gimzewski is a professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCLA. Until February 2001, he was a group leader at the IBM Zurich Labs, where he was involved in nanoscale science beginning in 1983. He pioneered research on electrical contact with single atoms and molecules, light emission, and molecular imaging using the STM. His accomplishments include the first STM-manipulation of molecules at room temperature, the realization of molecular abacus using buckyballs, the discovery of single molecule rotors, and the development of nanomechanical sensors, which explore the ultimate limits of sensitivity and measurement. Recently, he discovered a new method to make the world’s most perfect carbon nanotube crystal. His current interests are in the nanoarchitectonics of molecular systems and molecular and biomolecular machines–in particular, those with quantum mechanical possibilities for information processing.
Gimzewski received the 1997 Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology, the 1997 Discover Award for Emerging Fields, the 1998 Wired 25 Award from Wired magazine, and the Institute of Physics Duddell 2001 prize and medal for his work in nanoscale science. He holds two IBM Outstanding Innovation Awards and is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics and a Chartered Physicist. Jim was elected to the Royal Academy of Engineering, and he has joined the scientific boards of Carbon Nanotechnologies, Inc. and Veeco-DI Instruments (a CNSI member company). With over 168 papers published, Professor Gimzewski’s research continues to appear in journals such as Science, Chemical Engineering, and Nature. His work has also appeared in Discover, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Scientific American.