SYMPOSIUM: Technologies of Romance

To mark publication of Technologies of Romance – Part II (the new book by Paul O’Kane), the Science Museum, eeodo artists’ publishers, and Central Saint Martins College, UAL, welcome you to attend a free, day-long symposium at the Science Museum. A diverse and dynamic range of artists, lecturers, historians, students and curators from various institutions will exchange ideas and contribute artworks, performances, videos and academic papers on the symposium’s title and theme, exploring the intersection of art and science. The event will conclude with a plenary session followed by drinks and book signing, then at 6.45 pm the museum opens its ‘LATES’ session, with drinks, DJs etc. which all our participants and audience are also welcome to attend. Please register for free at our eventbrite page if you would like to attend. 

Whipple Museum - Festival of Ideas events

Can Machines Think?

Wednesday 18 October, 17:30pm - 18:30pm. Adults. Please arrive on time.

Can machines think? Philosopher and cognitive scientist Marta Halina will explore what is unique about the human mind and whether we can build machines that match or exceed our abilities.

Fakes, Mistakes and Mystery

Thursday 19th October, 17.00 - 20.00. Adults. Drop in.
Unravel the network of lies behind a series of forgeries at this interactive evening for adults and young people. Grab a glass of wine, learn how to spot a fake and uncover clues that identify criminal dealers and forgers. As in the art world, the business of creating a forgery of a historical scientific instrument is a lucrative one - who is responsible?

Curators and researchers at the Whipple have been exposing forgeries since the 1950s. At 6pm, join curator Dr. Joshua Nall to hear how research recently exposed fakes in our collection before uncovering more links in a network of forgers and dealers.


Astronomy and Empire: Curator Talk

Friday 20 October, 13.00 - 14.00. Ages 15+. Please arrive on time.

Join Curator Dr. Joshua Nall as he speaks about our newest special exhibition, Astronomy and Empire, the first exhibition to inhabit our newly refurbished Special Exhibition Gallery. Gain an understanding of the realities and practicalities of science in the field as well as an insight into how field science was employed as a method to legitimise key aspects of British colonisation.


Imposter!!

Monday 23rd October, 11.00 - 16.00. Families, drop in.
Join detectives at the Whipple for this family hunt for fakes and forgeries in the museum galleries. Skilfully crafted instruments made by sneaky criminals have recently exposed by our top investigators - can you spot them? Learn how to spot an imposter and have a go at making your own criminal forgery to take home!

Cambridge BRAINFest - 23-25 June

Cambridge BRAINFest is a public free festival of brain research that will bring together >130 neuroscientists from across Cambridge to present ground breaking research in 30 interactive exhibits covering themes of Development', 'Brain & Body', 'Pain & Pleasure', 'Imagination & Perception' and 'Learning & Forgetting', spanning research from molecule to man. In addition, we will have Q&A sessions with experts at Café Scientifique, BRAINArt (featuring local schools), secret cinema, build-a-brain workshops, an historical self guided neurotrail and interactive neurotheatre, an evening 'Variety Showcase' (with public lectures covering the dyslexic brain, the degenerating brain and the obese brain interspersed with the story of Parkinson's disease through dance and living with dementia through poetry) and an evening of 'Brains & Mental Health' (a question time styled panel discussion, hosted by Professor Sir Simon Wessely, featuring an expert panel). The theme of the evening will focus on how mental illnesses are disorders of the brain, the ongoing research that will help us better understand and treat these disorders and how we can bridge the existing gap between neuroscience research and current practice in the health service. Please see programme flyer attached.

We hope that Cambridge BRAINFest will not only provide opportunities for mutual learning between scientists and members of the public, but also facilitate the transition of research findings into real life applications within a diverse range of public policy areas including health, education and law.

Join the conversation on @CamNeuro #CambridgeBRAINfest and on Facebook

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Programme of events | Open to the public, FREE |
Bookings now open! (for evening events)
No booking required for the Cambridge Corn Exchange daytime events

Friday 23rd June 2017

19:00-21:00 Cambridge BRAINFest Variety Showcase

Babbage Lecture Theatre, University of Cambridge

Booking now open!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Saturday 24th June 2017

10:00-15:30 Thematic Showcase, Corn Exchange main auditorium

10:30-15:30 Café Scientifique @ Cambridge BRAINFest, St John's room

10:00-15:30 BRAINArt @ Cambridge BRAINFest, Corn Exchange foyer

10:00-15:30 Secret Cinema @ Cambridge BRAINFest, The King's room

19:00-21:00 Brains & Mental Health @ Cambridge BRAINFest

Babbage Lecture Theatre, University of Cambridge

Booking now open!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sunday 25th June 2017

10:00-16:00 Thematic Showcase, Corn Exchange main auditorium

10:00-16:00 Café Scientifique @ Cambridge BRAINFest, St John's room

10:00-16:00 BRAINArt @ Cambridge BRAINFest, Corn Exchange foyer

10:00-16:00 Secret Cinema @ Cambridge BRAINFest, The King's room

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Additional notes

BRAINArt is an exhibition of brain associated art by local children. In the lead up to Cambridge BRAINFest, we visited 1400 students, talked about the brain and 'hopefully' inspired the students to create brain art. A selection of their artwork will be on display throughout the festival in the foyer of the Cambridge Corn Exchange.

Secret Cinema - The King's Room at the Corn Exchange will be transformed into the Cambridge BRAINFest secret cinema. Festival goers will be able to take a break from the showcase exhibit downstairs and view a collection of films from across the Cambridge Neuroscience community. The secret cinema will run for the duration of the festival and details will be provided in the programme and on information screens throughout the festival.

Cambridge Neurotrail is a walking self guided map of Cambridge with neuroscience points of historical interest. We can provide copies of this to you and your guides/ambassadors.

Hopefully this has been useful to you but please let me know if you need any more details.

Workshop - Magic Lanterns and Science

Programme:

9:30-10:15 - Coffee on arrival

10:15-10:30 - Introductory Comments. Sally Shuttleworth (University of Oxford) and Geoff Belknap (Leicester University), Constructing Scientific Communities Project.

10:30-12:00 - Panel 1: Approaches to Science and the Magic Lantern · Iwan Morus (University of Aberystwyth), 'Seeing the Light: Fact and Artefact in Victorian Lantern Culture' · Sarah Dellmann (Utrecht University), 'Images of Science and Scientists: Lantern Slides of Excursions from Utrecht University, NL (c. 1900-1950)' · Emily Hayes (Exeter University), 'Fashioned by physics: the 'scope and methods' of Halford Mackinder's geographical imagination'

12:00-1:00 - Lunch

1:00-2:30 - Panel 2: Magic Lanterns and Museums/Curation · Charlotte New and Meagan Smith (Royal Institution), 'Shedding light on yesterday: Highlighting the slide collections of the RI and relevant preservation' · Frank Gray (Screen archive South-east, Brighton), 'Working with Archive Collections: Development, Access and Historical Context'

2:30-3:00 - Coffee break

3:00-4:30 - Panel 3: Materiality of the lantern · Phillip Roberts (York University), 'Science and Media in the Industrial Revolution: Instrument Makers and the Magic Lantern Trade' · Kelly Wilder (De Montfort University), 'From Lantern Slides to Powerpoint: Photography and the Materiality of Projection' · Deac Rossell (Goldsmiths University), 'Changing Places: Tracking Magic Lantern Culture from Physics to Chemistry to Cinema'

4:30-4:45 - Closing Remarks. Joe Kember and Richard Crangle (Exeter University), Million Pictures Project.

6:15-7:15 - Drinks Reception

7:30-9:00 - Evening lantern show for the general public: · Jeremy Brooker, A Light on Albemarle Street: John Tyndall and the Magic Lantern

Further details here.

Event - "Maps without borders: Stories of civic science in action"

London, 18th February

This storytelling exhibition showcases powerful aerial maps created by citizens using kites, balloons, and point-and-shoot cameras. We explore how people around the world are harnessing the power of Do-It-Yourself techniques to address local environmental, social and political matters. Sitting around a proverbial campfire, we will tell four stories of women and men, unsung heroes in the U.S. and the Middle East, who have crafted tools and gathered evidence that has reconfigured the perception of space, place, and issues that shape their lives. Their maps take us on the journeys that reveal who created them: their challenges, struggles, and successes in achieving change in their communities. These maps lie at the intersection of technology, science, the environment, and social justice; they reveal the power of engagement and how people are creating alternative narratives of place and transformation. Free event. Wheelchair accessible.

More information and RSVP.

Scientists and their diaries - workshop at the Royal Society

Friday 27 January, 12:00-17:30

The Royal Society, in association with the Constructing Scientific Communities project, is hosting a one-day workshop on the topic of 'scientists and their diaries'. The full programme for the day is here. Attendance (including sandwich lunch and afternoon tea) is free, but booking is essential - please email library@royalsociety.org to reserve a place.

The workshop will be followed by a public evening event, 'Why we write', with Professor Sunetra Gupta - workshop attendees are very welcome to stay on for this.

Cambridge Shorts 2016 - DISH LIFE

What do scientists really think about their stem cells ?

Dish Life is a melting pot of stem cell science, sociology and creative filmmaking.

Cambridge Shorts brings you an unseen world. Where stem cells and scientists talk to each other. The life in the dish, revealed. We may know why scientists do research into regenerative medicine, we may know what stem cells are, but we don't know how the scientists feel about working with them. What is in the process of culturing cells. Stem cells are more like unruly pets. They can be happy or sad. And so are the scientists.....

Pre-book on EventBrite ( £2 on door). Watch the trailer and follow our news !

Co-created by Dr. Loriana Vitillo (Wellcome Trust/MRC Cambridge Stem Cell Institute) and Karen Jent (Reproductive Sociology). Written and Directed by Chloë Thomas (chloejocasta@gmail.com). A project funded by Cambridge Shorts 2016, University of Cambridge.

Free event - Ways of Knowing the Polar Regions: Past, present and future

The Arctic and Antarctic have long claimed a strong hold on the western imagination, but climate change has given these regions new prominence and meaning.

Why have these places held such a strong attraction for western explorers and storytellers? Has Polar science been well represented in climate change coverage in professional journalism and social media? What have we learned from controversies, whether about natural science, or the interests of the people and places most affected by change? How much do we know about future scenarios for these sensitive regions, and how should we tell those stories today in a way that might change the future for the better? Is the future the next frontier for explorers and storytellers?

This free public event will explore these themes with contributions from climate modeller Tamsin Edwards (Open University), oceanographer Mark Brandon (Open University), Cambridge Polar Museum curator Charlotte Connelly, poet Nick Drake (author of Arctic-themed poem cycle 'The Farewell Glacier') and writer Tony White (Science Museum writer in residence and author of the Science Museum published climate change novel Shackleton's Man Goes South). Broadcaster and writer Dallas Campbell (presenter of BBC's Bang Goes the Theory and City in the Sky) will introduce and chair the event. It is co-organised by the University of Cambridge Polar Museum and The Mediating Change Group, which is based jointly at the Open University Geography Department and the University of Sheffield School of Architecture

Date: Thursday 15th September
Further details and booking: here

SciPo 2016 - Oxford, 11th June

"Where poetry meets science creative sparks fly, so come along and hear ideas catch fire at SciPo – a day of talks, panel discussions and readings with the distinguished Welsh poet, Tony Curtis, Director of Medicine Unboxed, Samir Guglani, multi-award-winning poet Lesley Saunders and St Hilda’s own resident science poet – Sarah Watkinson." Further details here.

Event - Public Health and Private Pain: A Night of Medical History and Drama

Thursday 5 May at 7pm, Museum of the History of Science, Broad Street, Oxford

Enter the Museum for a unique evening of performance and drama. Drawing from a rich variety of medical plays and historical material, the event will illuminate, provoke, and dramatize developments which have shaped ideas of the body from the 18th century to the present day. Join academics from across the University of Oxford, professional actors from the Pegasus Theatre and staff of the Museum of the History of Science as they show how these developments have been mapped not just by medical writing but by theatre, which has a long history of engaging with science and medicine.

Scenes and readings will include:

• Shelagh Stephenson, An Experiment with an Air-pump (1998)
• George Bernard Shaw, The Doctor’s Dilemma (1906)
• Henrik Ibsen, Ghosts (1881)
• A selection from the WWI poetry collection at Oxford by Sassoon and Owen
• An historical anti-vaccination song
• Joe Penhall, Blue/Orange (2000)

To book your free ticket, please register on Eventbrite here.

A dramatic experiment: science on stage

6:30 pm - 8:00 pm on Monday 11 May 2015

at The Royal Society, 6 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1

A Royal Shakespeare Company event, in partnership with the Royal Society


Why does the story of a scientist, or topic of science itself, make for a
compelling theatrical production?

Join us for an evening uncovering science-inspired theatre.

Our panel will discuss why science stories continue to attract and intrigue
writers and directors, and the claim that such plays oversimplify
scientific theory in the pursuit of an accessible and dramatic narrative.

Hear from Tom Morton-Smith, writer of the critically acclaimed RSC
production Oppenheimer, Professor John D. Barrow FRS, a cosmologist and
playwright, Dr Kirsten Shepherd-Barr, a scholar of science in the theatre,
and Professor Marcus du Sautoy OBE, broadcaster, writer and science
communicator

Chaired by Erica Whyman OBE, Deputy Artistic Director at the Royal
Shakespeare Company.

Tickets for this event can be purchased from the Royal Shakespeare Company

A limited number of tickets may also be available for purchase on the door

Doors open at 6pm

Details here.

UPDATE (20/5/15): Read an article by Kirsten about these issues here; and apparently video from the event is also available here.

The Total Archive - Dreams of Universal Knowledge from the Encyclopaedia to Big Data

19 March 2015 - 20 March 2015, CRASSH

Boris Jardine (University of Cambridge)
Matthew Drage (University of Cambridge)
Ruth Horry (University of Cambridge)

The complete system of knowledge is a standard trope of science fiction, a techno-utopian dream and an aesthetic ideal. It is Solomon’s House, the Encyclopaedia and the Museum. It is also an ideology – of Enlightenment, High Modernism and absolute governance.

Far from ending the dream of a total archive, twentieth-century positivist rationality brought it ever closer. From Paul Otlet’s Mundaneum to Mass-Observation, from the Unity of Science movement to Isaac Asimov’s Encyclopedia Galactica, from the Whole Earth Catalog to Wikipedia, the dream of universal knowledge dies hard. These projects triumphantly burst their own bounds, generating more archival material, more information, than can ever be processed. When it encounters well defined areas – the sportsfield or the model organism – the total archive tracks every movement of every player, of recording every gene and mutation. Increasingly this approach is inverted: databases are linked; quantities are demanded where only qualities existed before. The Human Genome Project is the most famous, but now there are countless databases demanding ever more varied input. Here the question of what is excluded becomes central.

The total archive is a political tool. It encompasses population statistics, GDP, indices of the Standard of Living and the international ideology of UNESCO, the WHO, the free market and, most recently, Big Data. The information-gathering practices of statecraft are the total archive par excellence, carrying the potential to transfer power into the open fields of economics and law – or divest it into the hands of criminals, researchers and activists.

Questions of the total archive they engage key issues in the philosophy of classification, the poetics of the universal, the ideology of surveillance and the technologies of information retrieval. What are the social structures and political dynamics required to sustain total archives, and what are the temporalities implied by such projects? In order to confront the ideology and increasing reality of interconnected data-sets and communication technologies we need a robust conceptual framework – one that does not sacrifice historical nuance for the ability to speculate. This conference brings together scholars from a wide range of fields to discuss the aesthetics and political reality of the total archive

Registration now open here.

Call for submissions - Enlightened Perspectives: An Exhibition Working through Science and Art

In the light of National Science Week, Churchill College is putting on an exhibition which explores the relationship between Science and Art. The theme is intentionally vague - is a scientific instrument a piece of art? What about your electron micrographs? Could science be understood from what we would normally regard as just a painting or drawing? We are looking for pieces which put art and science into dialogue with one another: what can this relationship reveal? If this is something you think about, or want to explore more, then please send photographs of your work here.

Information on the inaugural exhibition from last year can be found here. Please specify dimensions and medium. We are open to anything; photographs, paintings, drawings, sculpture, models, films, notebooks, works in progress… this is an opportunity to have your work shown during National Science Week! We don’t want to tell you where the similarities are, but encourage you to show what you think putting Art and Science together can reveal.

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: March 1st; Exhibition Date: Monday 9th March.

Workshop - Performing Laboratories

The Cambridge Interdisciplinary Performance Network and Civic Matter Faculty Research Group are holding an afternoon workshop entitled Performing Laboratories next Monday, 19th January. The event brings together speakers from Performance Studies, Visual Arts, Medicine, History, and Anthropology and includes keynote papers from Mike Pearson and Roger Kneebone, together with a panel on laboratories in Africa.

Contributors share an interest in science and performance. From the performance of landscape in contemporary archaeological excavation and  site-specific theatre, to taking seriously the operating theatre as a performative space by re-enacting 1970s surgical practices; from the well-marketed reality-TV thrills of contemporary emerging virus science, to the quiet stage of an abandoned research station in the rainforest, and its reanimation by aged protagonists, the participants will engage in a conversation about the contact zones of science and theatre, and the possibilities and pitfalls of performance, staging and re-enactment in the history and anthropology of science.

Further details, including the schedule of events, are available here.

CFP - Underwater Worlds

Underwater Worlds: Aquatic Visions in Art, Science and Literature

An interdisciplinary conference at the University of Oxford, 15-16 September 2015

See call for papers here.

Fiction Meets Science - report

See here for a report by Amy Chambers from the recent 'Fiction Meets Science' event.

Reports from 'Teaching Literature and Science' - BSLS Symposium, 8 November 2014

Fantastic reports from the recent BSLS Symposium from Michael Whitworth here, here, and here; and from Greg Tate here. More on twitter on the #teachlitsci hashtag. Sorry to have missed it!

Cambridge Literary Festival - November 30th

The Cambridge Literary Festival - Winter is approaching on 30th November. Book tickets here now for events including (HPS's own) Helen Macdonald and Dave Goulson on 'Of Hawks and Meadows'.

Variable Stars - Talk on Caroline Herschel at Institute of Astronomy

Christina Koning, author of the novel Variable Stars about the life and work of astronomer Caroline Herschel, will give a public talk at 7.15pm on 12th November at the Institute of Astronomy, Madingley Road. This is part of the usual programme of Public Open Evenings, and if weather permits will be followed by an opportunity for star-gazing.

Arab Science Fiction: From Imagination to Innovation