At recent celebratory receptions, more than 200 campus and community members paid tribute to the legacy of the late Harold Cohen, University of California San Diego Department of Visual Arts professor emeritus who passed away last year. Renowned for creating AARON, an artificial intelligence art-making machine, Cohen and his affiliated works are featured in an honorary exhibition entitled “Harold Cohen, Creating Computational Creativity.” It surveys 40 years of the vibrant and large-scale prints that demonstrate Cohen’s innovative process and invites dialogue about the role of the artist and art. The show runs at the University Art Gallery and in the Visual Arts Gallery in the Structural and Materials Engineering (SME) Building through Feb. 17, when it will conclude with a closing symposium, "Art and Artificial Intelligence (AI), After AARON." The symposium will feature leaders in contemporary art and AI from Google, UC Santa Barbara, UC San Diego and the Salk Institute.
The University of California San Diego’s Department of History encompasses major teaching and research fields that span the globe from the United States to Europe, Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. Across these geographic boundaries, the department offers thematic strengths in gender, sexuality, nationalism, race, ethnicity and even the afterlife.
Visitors to the gallery@calit2 on the University of California San Diego campus will be treated to a mind-expanding yet dystopic art show that asks a simple question: If life started today in our plastic debris-filled oceans, what kinds of life forms would emerge out of the contemporary primordial ooze? The exhibition, “An Ecosystem of Excess”, opens February 2 and runs through March 17.
The University of California San Diego’s Division of Arts and Humanities is committed to interdisciplinary collaboration. Consistent with that approach is the Department of History’s Distinguished Professor Paul Pickowicz and Department of Literature Chair Yingjin Zhang, who have coedited the new book, “Filming the Everyday: Independent Documentaries in Twenty-First Century China” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017). The book includes essays about a Chinese film group led by Wu Wenguang, a former artist-in-residence at UC San Diego, who first revealed the struggles of rural people at a time when China’s state-controlled media depicted a thriving, modern country. The book’s debut happens to coincide with Pickowicz’s announcement of his retirement after more than 40 years. He will deliver a parting lecture entitled, “Very Close Encounters: Modern China at the Grassroots,” Jan. 18, 3 to 5 p.m., at the Faculty Club on campus.
The Holocaust Living History Workshop (HLWH) at the University of California San Diego continues its year-long series of educational events with three insightful programs this winter, underscoring this year’s theme, “Holocaust and the Burden of History.” This year’s events approach the Holocaust from various angles to shed light on lesser-known aspects of the atrocities committed, such as the transgenerational transmission of trauma. The series, now in its ninth year of programming, is presented by the UC San Diego Library and the UC San Diego Jewish Studies Program.
The next presentation in UC San Diego’s “Inside Innovation” series features Dr. Catriona Jamieson speaking on “Detection and Therapeutic Targeting of Cancer Stem Cell Evolution.” The free and public presentation will be held 4-6 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 17, in Roth Auditorium at the Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine, 2880 Torrey Pines Scenic Drive. A networking reception will follow.
