Klaus Spiess is an endocrinologist, psychosomaticist and medical anthropologist who now works as an associate professor in the field of art and science at the Medical University of Vienna. His performances and installations (all together with Lucie Strecker) address biopolitical issues in medicine and have been shown at numerous performance and exhibition spaces (Budascoop Kortrijk, Tanzquartier and Belvedere/21er Haus Vienna, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, the BEALL Center for Art + Technology, Irvine, the Onassis Cultural Center Athens, the Bemis Center of Contemporary Arts Omaha and the OK Center, Linz, where he was awarded an Honorary Mention at the Prix Ars Electronica. He has published numerous articles on his transdisciplinary work (Performance Research, Kunstforum International, Springerin, The Lancet and Leonardo, among others).

Lucie Strecker is a performance artist and researcher exploring the relationship between scientific concepts of biological matter, technology and performance art. She is a fellow of the Berlin University of the Arts and holds a senior postdoc position at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Currently she is leading the artistic research project, "The Performative Biofact," funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). Performances and Installations in cooperation with Klaus Spiess have been shown at Budascoop Kortrijk, Tanzquartier and Belvedere/21er Haus, Vienna, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, the BEALL Center for Art + Technology, Irvine, the Onassis Cultural Center Athens and the OK Center, Linz, where the duo has been awarded a Honorary Mention (2015) at the Prix Ars Electronica. She has published articles on trans-disciplinary performances in Performance Research, The Lancet, and Diaphanes Publishers. Learn more about Lucie and her work on luciestrecker.com.

Ending the year with a warm farewell for Art|Sci's Mick Lorusso It's with endearing hearts and fond sentiments that we must bid farewell to one of the Art|Sci Collective's central members, Mick Lorusso. A new path calls Mick to New Mexico, and we wish him all the best on this new journey of his! We can't thank him enough for everything he has contributed to Art|Sci's endeavors at UCLA and beyond, and we'll be forever grateful for his creative presence and contagiously uplifting personality. This won't be the end of our collaboration with Mick, and it's on that exciting note that we punctuate his departure with an ellipsis—we're looking forward to crossing paths again in the near future... Left to right: Art|Sci director Victoria Vesna, creative director Dawn Faelnar, writer Kenneth Azurin, exhibition / program manager Mick Lorusso — Not pictured: contributor Judy Kim

On Thursday, November 17th we present FLUID SYSTEMS, an exhibition featuring members of the Sci|Art Nanolab team and their creative approaches to systems in ecology, medicine, and life sciences. The show kicks off at 5pm in the Art|Sci Gallery at CNSI, followed by the night's Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous in the CNSI presentation room! (above artwork by Dr. Olivia Osborne)

OCTOPUS BRAINSTORMING: Empathy premiere at the Grand Opening of the UCLA Luskin Conference Center. Octopus Brainstorming: Empathy, the next evolution of Octopus Brainstorming: Synesthesia that was performed at SONOS Studio last year, will be making a special debut early next month at the grand opening of UCLA's new Luskin Conference Center. The event will showcase cutting edge UCLA research on robotics, augmented reality and art-science. A collaboration between Victoria Vesna and neuroscientist Mark Cohen along with members of the Art|Sci Collective—Mick Lorusso, Dawn Faelnar, Dan Wilkinson—and Daniel Belquer of Not Impossible Labs, the project was recently funded by the Faculty Grant in Transdisciplinary Research. It is a realtime interactive experiment exploring the synchrony of brainwaves between two people reacting to eye contact, sound and color. Experience Octopus Brainstorming: Empathy at the invite-only grand opening of the new Meyer & Renee Luskin Conference Center at UCLA, which is set to take place on Friday, October 7th!

This summer has been busier than ever for Art|Sci! Victoria Vesna is back in Europe, where she joined Jim Gimzewski at the Kavli prize ceremony in Oslo. After that, they were both off to Linz for a non-stop week at Ars Electronica 2016—not surprising given the topic, Radical Atoms! For the first day of the festival, Victoria joined her colleagues from the world over to participate in the Campus Educators Forum where they discussed education in media arts. The program was organized by Professor Christa Sommerer, head of Interface Cultures, who announced the newly established alliance with the UCLA Art|Sci Center! Yasuko Imura, Machiko Kusahara, Don Ritter, Christa Sommerer, Hiroo Iwata, Victoria Vesna, Jared Donovan, Erkki Huhtamo, Stahl Stenslie, Wand Zhigang As Ars Electronica continued, Victoria—a jury member for the STARTS Prize Interactive Art + category—presented the Interactive Art + Prix winners: “Can you hear me?” by Christoph Wachter (CH) & Mathias Jud (CH); and OpenSurgery, a do-it-yourself surgery robot for domestic laparoscopy by Frank Kolkman (NL)

Students from our Sci|Art NanoLab 2016 summer institute showed their final presentations on August 5, so tune in to watch the action! http://cnsi.ctrl.ucla.edu/streaming/art-sci/nanolab/

We are excited to announce that the Art|Sci Collective has been selected to be a part of the City of Los Angeles' first ever public art biennial—Current:LA! This year's theme: ‪WATER‬. The participatory sculptures / performances / workshops we're producing will kick off on July 19 with a special east-west communicative workshop, BIRD SONG DIAMOND WETLANDS. It is free and open to the public! Here is the complete schedule of our CURRENT:LA public programs: http://www.currentla.org/