roger malina presentation to phd students at bogota festival del imagen june 2023

2. Some personal background
• Roger Frank Malina
• Father fromTexas,
grandparents Bohemia
• Mother from Yorkshire
England
• Born In France
• Worked in USA,
England and France
• I am proud to be
“nomadic”

3. FRANK MALINA
Artist, Pioneer in Art and
Technology
Rocket Pioneer, Co Founder
NASA JPL first human made
object above “Karman’
boundary to space

4. When I came home my dad, the scientist engineer,
was painting. That’s what I thought scientists did
• My father was a hybrid nomadic professional
• Degrees in Mechanical Engineering and
Aeronautics
• Worked in a wind tunnel to test new
airplanes
• Invented new rockets –first in space
• Started NASA JPL for space exploration
• Helped found UNESCO
• Became a professional artist in Paris
• Started the Leonardo Art journal
• See Sarabeth Berk: not in my title
• Combining Art, Design and Science is
hybridization to solve difficult problems

5. My researching
• Disciplinary :Physics
• Interdisciplinary:
Physics+Astronomy=
Astrophysics
• Transdisciplinary
Art+Science+ Design+
Technology
• Trans-cultural
• Trans-generational
• And now ?
• Trans-professional

6. *
The “Leonardo” Organisations
International Society for Arts/Science/Technology
Observatoire Leonardo des Arts et Technosciences
• Journal Founded 1967 Paris
• For Scientists, Engineers deeply
engaged in the arts/humanities
• Artists appropriating science
and technology
• scholars studying the
interaction of the arts, sciences
and technology
• Championed writing by artists
about their own work.
• VVesna, J. Gimzewski, Blue Morph

7. STOP
• LOOK • THINK

8. Ann Balsamo
“Designing Culture”

9. Redesign Science and Engineering
• Redesign the scientific
methods
• Sciences of complexity
• New concepts of causality
• Epistemological Inversion
due to big data
• Instruments that can study
our own minds, implicit
biases
• AI making discoveries
independent of human
intervention
• Redesign the social
embedding of science
• H. Nowotny, former
president of the E.R. C.
called for ‘socially robust
science
• Redesigning the PhD
– PhDs in Art and Design
underway
– PhD to train ‘for research’
and “through research”
– Mismatch between long
term research careers and
PhD production

10. The Leonardo “Community of
Practice” Today
• 20,000 people have
published and presented in
Leonardo
• On every continent
• Every “media”. AI etc
• Most areas of science,
engineering, math, medicine
• Neuro-Arts, Neuro
Aesthetics

11. Trans-Professional ?
• Bridging Universities
professions
• to other professions
• Exemplars:
• Art work by doctors,
dentist
• Art by business
people
• Creativity theory 101

12. The most successful professionals
do not work on the weekend
• Robert Root Bernstein
• Study of Nobel Prize
winners
• Less successful ones
worked on the weekend
• 4 E’s Cognition Science
• Embedded, Enacted;
Extended; Embodied
• 1000 brain theory

20. Police are immersed in evolving
technologies
• Body cameras,
drones, AI
• In fifty years will all
police be robots with
AI intelligence ?
• But there are many
problems that need
solving now
• PROJECT 31

22. Problem Solved
• Problems listed
• Through discussions with
ALL police and staff
One common problem:
Police arrive at work irritated,
tired and lack of self control
Teaching police to sleep
better
With brain stimulation caps

27. Emerging Design Method
• Trans-lingual
• Russian, Spanish and French
• eg “Metaphors matter” some ideas are difficult
to express in some languages
• New Leonardo Journal in Mandarin with
Tsinghua University. Beijing
• Topoc: Artificial Wisdom, how artists and
designers go beyond artificial intelligence
• Leonardo has published 500 articles on AI Art

28. Redesigning Human Nature ?
• Mark Maslin: How changing
climate changed human
“nature’
• Human nature is changing
rapidly due to overpopulation
( 8 billion humans), climate
change, technological
revolutions
• How can we use design
methods to intentionally
change human nature
•

29. .
•Perhaps the age of the
individual genius is over
• PhDs are still only awarded to
individuals
•Award phds to teams or small
groups ?
•Start the age of the teams
“exhibiting” genius like
behaviours ?
•Ways of creating
transdisciplinary collaborations
•We need to support
disciplinary, cultural migrants

30. STONE AGE OF DATA
CULTURE
• We have moved from a world of data
scarcity to a world of data plenty
• 1992: Historian Daniel Boorstin:
150 years ago:
Meaning rich and data poor
Today :
Data rich and meaning poor.
Deep engagement with the arts, design,
humanities needed to redesign culture
Data artists using holography, VR, AR
are essential to rethinking how to

32. LEONARDO Space and the Arts

34. Enabling new forms of collaboration between
Science, Engineering, Medicine with Arts, Humanities,
Design
• Malina et al 2015, NSF funded
• application of science,
engineering, medicine toward
the social, economic and
cultural well-being of the
nations and planet
• Believe it is critical to work
with partners in the arts,
design and humanities for their
input and engagement.
• What is evidence this has value ?
,

35. Thought Experiment
• Human Culture
can/will be different
in zero gravity and
outer space
• Human Nature will
become different
• How can we design
by intent not accident

37. What about the ethics of curiosity ?
Extractive industries
enabled the crisis of
climate change
What will AI Extraction
industries do

38. Research Shows that Heterogeneous
Groups are more likely to be
Innovative and Productive
• Not formula, not quota, not a recipe
• The Manizales Manifesto Team was:
• Heterogeneous
• Gender: W: 35%, M: 65%
• Disciplines: Sound design/music:
37%,Graphic design & visual arts:
35%,Design, & other: 28%
• Cultures Colombian 55%, Canadian45%
• Age : Young 58%,Middle Age: 35%,Older:
7%
.
38

39. 39

40. • From the individual “genius”
– to hybrid ‘genius’ teams
• train for transdisciplinary
collaborations
– developing transdisciplinary
apprenticeships at UT Dallas
• Bridging Cultures, Over
planetary distances, new
Glocal
– Big Data Grounded in local
knowledge
• No best practices, many good
practices

41. Leonardo as a Node in a Network
of Networks

43. Judd Bradbury: The Data Narrativist
• Telling stories with
data
• Use tested
techniques in
literature and film
• analyse social media
data to anticipate the
next step in the story
• Eg reports by CEOs
• Stock market
predictions ( reddit)
•

44. Dr Tina Qin: Appying Metaphor
Theory to Data Visualisation
• Bank manager
• Has demonstrated that
you can catch
criminals quicker using
the metaphors of their
culture
• Building a ‘dashboard”
where you can pick the
metaphor to use

46. DO SOMETHING NEW
• Stop, Look, Think, Go
• Come and live in Bogota
• Thank you