"New SCIL artist-in-residence uses technology to create work that communicates and teaches complex scientific concepts

Have you ever wondered what the world looks like through the eyes of a fly?

Have you ever pondered how a face, by changing expression ever so slightly, can convey an entirely new emotion?

Have you ever looked at a movie or a piece of art and noticed how your eyes move across the image?

These and many other questions regarding the human brain, visual perception and human expression are among the topics SCIL artist-in-residence Pam Davis Kivelson is investigating in her new post at Stanford.

An accomplished artist, Davis Kivelson's work has been exhibited locally at the DeSasset Museum, the Tech Museum and the Exploratorium. Her exhibit at the Krannert Art Museum in Illinois just ended. Davis Kivelson was recently named director of the Perceptual Sciences, Art and Technology Program at SCIL, which will focus on the use of art as an important mechanism for developing innovative approaches to learning. A key focus of her work is to act as a catalyst engaging the academic community in visualizing and conceptualizing knowledge in new ways, and to use these innovative approaches in the development of new teaching methods.

The goal of the new program is to establish a model for interactions between artists, scientists and individuals working in educational technology. These new ways of working might include video or installations that can be loaned to different institutions both to communicate research and to provide aesthetic experiences.

" As an artist at Stanford who works on aesthetic experiments in collaboration with various scientists, especially psychologists and neuroscientists, I am enjoying exploring the performance aspect of an aesthetic experience," says Davis Kivelson. "I am particularly interested in how to make people more aware of their involvement with faces, art and art objects. I'd like to offer a portrait class to look at the role of empathy, emotion, and expression in face."

In addition to her research and collaboration with faculty members in the sciences and humanities, Davis Kivelson is developing several new installations. Starting in February of 2005, a selection of her drawings, photographs and works on paper, including the Michael Angelo series, will be on exhibit in Wallenberg Hall. The work will include video, and is from Davis Kivelson's 'Threshold of Perception" and "Before Recognition" exhibits.

As an artist and a teacher working on a National Endowment for the Arts project in rural North Carolina, Davis Kivelson started the first art program for all students in the county. She has since taught at colleges in New York, and served as director for ten years of the Center for Science and Art at UCLA.   She has developed a niche as an artist in the exploration of how the brain processes visual information, and how art strikes the viewer.

A recent review that ran in the Champaign, Illinois-based News Gazette reflects some of Davis Kivelson's unique approach:

The reviewer wrote about the exhibit, "Sounds dry and academic but the pieces are fun, especially for kids...Like the gaze-tracker, which follows the movement of the eyes of the museum visitor as he or she looks at a reproduction of a painting...A computer monitor with a hidden camera records the eye movements and a "movie" of the art work as seen by the viewer is projected soon thereafter on a screen nearby."

The Gaze tracker is part of a Stanford Humanities Lab project with senior research scientist Bob Dougherty (Psychology), Professor Kalanit Grill-Spector (Psychology), and Professor Haun Saussy (Comparative Literature and Asian Studies). The Gaze Tracker is the centerpiece of a new project funded by Media X that involves the collaboration of Dougherty and Professor Brian Wandell (Psychology), and Davis Kivelson.

Dougherty is also working with Davis Kivelson on a project called The Purple Room - a closed space within which investigators will study responses to night vision, twilight vision and vision under unusual illuminants, including purple.

Davis Kivelson's project, "Before Recognition; Experiments in Art and Science at the Threshold of Perception," was designed to allow the interactive exploration of relationships between knowledge, experience and perception.

Currently, Davis Kivelson's work is on exhibit in Los Angeles at Cambersprojects.   She has a number of upcoming exhibits in California and a Michigan project on women in science. The artist has a particular interest in attracting and retaining women and girls to mathematics and the physical sciences through art. She is artist in residence to the American Institute of Mathematics in Palo Alto, where she is working on a portrait project involving digital media and scientists.

To view Davis Kivelson's work visit: www.neur-on.com

See her posters at: www.pdksciart.com .

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