2013 SMART Festival
An Archive
SMARTThe 2013 SMART (Science Meets ART) Festival was held on October 25 and 26, 2013. Events were located at the LITE Center in the UL Lafayette Research Park and at the Paul and Lulu Hilliard University Art Museum.
The festival kick-off event, on Friday evening at the LITE Center, was a presentation of Theremin music performed by Robert Skinner and Juliette Ioup of the University of New Orleans. (The theremin, an electronic musical instrument, is played without the musician touching the device. Instead, the performer moves his or her hands near two metal antennas to produce sound.) This was followed by the keynote presentation "The Hidden Universe: The Mysterious Allure of Extra Dimensions" by Professor Lawrence Krauss. Dr. Krauss is a theoretical physicist and cosmologist, who is Foundation Professor of the School of Earth and Space Exploration and director of the Arizona State University's Origins Project. He is the author of several bestselling books, including The Physics of Star Trek and A Universe from Nothing. He has contributed to newspapers such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and has written columns for New Scientist, Scientific American and Slate. Krauss appears regularly on radio and television. There was a reception following Dr. Krauss's lecture.
On Saturday, our day began at the Hilliard University Art Museum for a gallery tour of the exhibition Intimate Science, organized by the Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University. We also listened as faculty discussed their projects with NASA's Earth-as-Art exhibition. There was also an all-day special workshop with Machine Project, a group of artists out of Los Angeles who lead participants in learning to "read minds" and create primitive lie-detectors.
Events continued on Saturday afternoon at the LITE Center. Here we learned what happens behind the scenes in video game design, art and animation design, film effects and 3D conversions as unveiled by LITE and Pixel Magic. There were also multiple opportunities to participate in exploration of the manifest world of Science and Art through hands-on demonstrations and talks on topics ranging from The Universe's dark matter to understanding the science of cooking.
SMART Festival 2013 Steering Committee
- Paula Carson, Assistant Vice President for Institutional Planning and Effectiveness
- James Dent, Assistant Professor, Department of Physics, College of Sciences, UL Lafayette
- Lee Gray (Art Co-Chair), Curator, UL Lafayette Art Museum
- Lance Harris, Director, UL Lafayette Art Museum
- Kam W. Ng, Chief Executive Officer Louisiana Immersive Technologies Enterprise
- Erin Ryan, Communications Director Louisiana Immersive Technologies Enterprise
- Natalia Sidorovskaia (Science Co-Chair), Professor and Chairperson, Department of Physics, College of Sciences, UL Lafayette
SMART Festival 2013 Program
SMART Festival 2013 Sponsors
- CBM Technologies
- Lafayettte Convention and Visitors Commission
- Core Lab
- Aquila
- Fenstermaker
SMART Festival 2013 Friends
- Kam W. Ng
- Lee Gray : Sage Reality Solutions, LLC
- The Rodrique Foundation
- Natalia Sidorovskaia & Carl Richter
SMART Festival 2013 Hosts
- UL Lafayette Ray P. Authement College of Sciences
- Paul and LuLu Hilliard University Art Museum
- LITE center
SMART Festival 2013 Support
This event was supported in part by a grant from the Louisiana Division of the Arts, Office of Cultural Development, Department of Culture, Recreation, and Tourism, in cooperation with the Louisiana State Arts Council as administered by the Acadiana Center for the Arts.