Materia Prima organises two round tables and two workshops on astronomy, art and science
A round table on the study of the universe joined by the Southern European Observator (ESO) from Chile, Omega Astronomic society and the Faculty of Physics of the University of Oviedo
Materia prima, 2016. Image LABoral_Sergio Redruello
LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial has programmed the following activities for April in the framework of the exhibition Materia Prima, included in the programme for developing the European Network of Digital Art and Science:
Mirando al cielo. Observación, datos y visualización
This is a round table that will take place on Thursday, April 7 at 7 pm. at Fundación Municipal de Cultura de Gijón.
Open as it is to poetic interpretations, the observation of the universe has always been a vehicle or artistic expression. Today, the new devices both for capturing and visualising have opened new possibilities that may offer a better understanding of the universe.
Participants: Fernando Comerón, representative of the European Southern Observtory ESO (Chile) and Luigi Toffolatti, tenured professor of the Faculty of Physics at the University of Oviedo. This panel will be moderated by the musician, Ernesto Avelino Sáez. Moreover, it will include the following screenings: Observando el cielo (2007), by Jeanne Liotta, and This is Cosmos (2015), by Anton Vidokle.
SkyPointer. A workshop to manufacture a laser pointer for amateur astronomy
This workshop, conducted by Juan Menéndez and David Vázquez, will take place on Friday, April 8 and Saturday, April 9. In line with the philosophy of open culture and creation of fabLAB Asturias, this workshop will cover the development of an open tool to be used in amateur astronomy that can be manufactured in a FabLab.
El SkyPointer is a laser pointer that, controlled from a computer with the open-code digital planetary stellarium, points in the sky, with a laser beam, any astronomic object. This is a small light tool that allows for fast observation with minimal assembly needs.
The pointer carries out the coordinate calculations of the object and gets the rotations needed for each motor. Moreover, it calculates the errors due to mechanical issues and tolerances in order to achieve the accuracy level needed for observation.
One or several SkyPointers will be mounted in this workshop, together with an introduction to open design, including modelling, electronics and software, that were used to develop this project.
For more information please click on the following link:
http://www.laboralcentrodearte.org/es/educacion/actividades-materia-prima/skypointer
Astronomic data visualisation workshop
This workshop will also take place at LABoral Centro de Arte on Friday 8 and April 9 conducted by the artist and creative technologist Alba G. Coral. It might seem that space observation equipment is only available to leading research teams, but nothing could be further from the truth. The astronomy community generates massive amounts of information that can be used by any researcher or amateur.
This are mainly photographs of various regions and objects in the firmament that have been taken using sensors that are capable of registering not only the energy coming from the celestial bodies in the frequencies of the visible light, but also in frequencies that the eyes cannot detect, such as the X-rays.
This workshop will work with data available at the portal of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) to generate visualisations using the programming language processing.
For more information please click on the following link:
Science and fiction
this round table, that will be held on April 22 at 7 pm., at Fundación Municipal de Cultura de Gijón, is to show how fiction and narrative speculation is a driver for science. The combination of this two traditionally-opposed fields results in a common imaginary that is very useful for the dissemination and popularisation of the scientific world.
The panel will be joined by Regina de Miguel, visual artist from Berlin; Ewen Chardronnet, French curator and artist and Sergio L. Palacios, from the faculty of physics of the University of Oviedo.
It will followed by the screening of Nouvelle Vague Science Fiction (2013), by Regina de Miguel, that focuses on the relationship between the building and the analysis of human ecologies. It consists of a syntactic space to make connections between scientific analysis and perception situations (verisimilitude scales), non-experimental learning deriving from the technological imaginary and degrees of formation of the ideal and critical awareness (new ways of orientation). It is a 20-minute audiovisual work structured in two parts and including a series of photographies.
