RoundTable Discussion with Artists, Scientists, + Engineers

On the final day of the Lee Boot: Abstracts & Artifacts exhibition, Lee leads a roundtable discussion integrating the arts and sciences to address significant societal challenges. Despite decades and even centuries of the astounding progress science has provided toward extending and improving human life, we now live in a time when science alone has proven insufficient. Preventable hazards such as global warming, vaccine hesitancy, poor educational achievement, and many others emerge from cultural narratives that resist technical solutions and scientific reason. This panel of artists and scientists/engineers has significant experience working together to effect cultural change by integrating the best practices of science with artistic traditions that can expand imagination, locate human meaning, and navigate culture. Featured speakers:

• Lee Boot (artist): Lee Boot is the Director of UMBC’s Imaging Research Center and an affiliate Associate Professor in the Departments of Visual Arts and Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. He is a media artist and researcher who assembles and manages interdisciplinary teams of researchers to improve the capacity of media to serve public interests. This work has largely been in the area of multi-modal data visualization for immersive analytics using mixed methods. He has been the Principal Investigator of research projects funded by the National Institutes of Health and private foundations. He has created commissioned work for the National Academy of Sciences and produced award-winning films that have been screened nationally and internationally.
• Anita Komlodi (scientist): Dr. Anita Komlodi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Information Systems and the Graduate Program Director for the Online Information Systems Master’s Program. Her research areas span the fields of Human-Computer Interaction, Human Information Behavior and Virtual Reality (VR). She studies information behavior in various contexts, such as across languages and designs user interaction with information-intensive applications. Her research in VR has examined collaborative information use behaviors and the usability of VR systems. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, Google, and the European Research Council.
• Tristan King (engineer): Tristan King is an Interactivity Design and Engineering specialist at the Imaging Research Center and is the lead software developer. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Individualized Studies with a focus on Digital Therapeutics Development from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Tristan has worked extensively on Virtual and Augmented reality projects at the Imagining Research Center and in personal endeavors. Prior to his involvement with the IRC, he developed a Financial Education training platform for Baltimore-based startup, Ortus Academy.
• Tahir Hemphill (artist): Tahir is a creative technologist whose work focuses on the role systems play in the generation of form and collaborative knowledge production in community resilience. Hemphill’s work straddles art, technology and research. The frameworks that support these influences are synthesized into his creative pursuits at the Rap Research Lab, where they catalyze critical discourse and influence tech policy through the production of VR, AI, and community data projects. Tahir is the 4th Chair in Education at the Library of Congress, the inaugural 2021 UMBC Faculty Diversity in the Arts Fellow, 2019 Verizon 5G EdTech Challenge winner, 2019 Saul Zaentz Innovation Fund in Film and Media Studies Fellow, 2018 LACMA Art + Technology Lab Grantee, 2016 Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Resident, 2016 Spotify Media Artist-in-Residence, 2015 NEA Art Works Grantee, 2012 Du Bois Institute Fellow at Harvard University and 2012 Creative Capital Awardee.
• Steve Bradley (artist): Bradley’s art and community projects focus on the various aspects of place, including his practice of acoustic ecology to understand the effect of human detritus and noise in the landscape of our habitat. Through the lens of media arts within Bradley’s place-based engagement, he has collected trash from different parts of the world, tagging and mapping the pieces as archaeological artifacts.  He has bound collected trash from specific sites into small bundles that resemble ancient cultures’ fetish objects.  Bradley investigates microplastics and biofilm growing on the materials in urban estuaries by documenting the micro-materials in the context of where the detritus is found.   Bradley’s more recent works are created in collaboration with community scientists, ecologists, and social organizers translating and sharing art and science with residents of the places where his work originates from.  Sonic elements in the environment, the soundscape, provides another major focus of Bradley’s art practice.   His sonic compositions are based on field recording and on-site aural performance.   Using different technologies, such as a bat detector or specialized underwater microphones, he tunes into the micro sounds of different habitats and various ultrasonic sounds that critters emit to attract mates, and potential prey and to identify their territory.
• Eric Schott (scientist): Schott is a molecular geneticist with an interest in the health of estuaries, the life within them, and the people who use them. Through long collaborations with watershed advocates and science educators in Baltimore, he strives to better communicate knowledge of water quality and biodiversity to nonscientists. He believes that science communication should start with shared sensory experience and familiar concepts. For example, everyone imagines something similar when thinking of “fish”, even if it has a different significance to different people.  By collaborating with artists Schott wants to bring more diverse perspectives to defining what a healthy estuary is.
• Ryan Zuber (technical artist): Ryan Zuber is an artist and animator who serves as the Imaging Research Center’s Technical Director.  With a range of expertise in 3D production for both film and real-time applications, Ryan works with interdisciplinary teams of artists, scientists, engineers, and students to address challenges of conceptual, creative, and technical complexity.  He has contributed to projects shown at the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Maryland Historical Society, the National Academy of Sciences building in Washington DC, the Peale Museum, The Wild Center, and the Space Foundation in Colorado Springs, Colorado.  Ryan also worked as a science illustrator at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center where he spent several years producing illustrations for NASA missions such as the Solar Dynamics Observatory, the NPOESS Preparatory Project, and the Global Precipitation Measurement Mission.