Danielle Siembieda: Hello, I'm Danielle Siembieda, Creative
Director for Leonardo, the International Society for Art,
Sciences and Technology. On this screen, I am a fair-skinned
woman with red lipstick, long brown curly hair. My zoom
background is a black and white pixelated abstract photo, and a
logo that says Leonardo CripTech Incubator. I'm here to talk a
little bit about the vibrant ecologies of research. Our
organization has been approaching research for over 50
years in multiple ways that really connect the scientific
research as coming out of institutions, labs, and
curiosity, including citizen science, and then also with
artists who are hybrid, working in spaces that they have been
trained as scientists, engineers, technologists, and
sometimes they are self-trained in that curiosity. We also have
been approaching ways that we can transform ourselves and our
ecology to support the ideas, the research, and the work of
our community, and how can we actually start to build on
including others in our community that we had not
specifically addressed in the past? This year, we've launched
the Leonardo CripTech Incubator, which is a way that we've
supported this ecology, this multimodal approach, with what
we call our full-cycle creative engine, focusing on disabled
artists and artists, specifically who look at
technology, and how can we actually create a support system
around their research so that the impact that they are trying
to achieve or working towards achieve can actually happen in a
way that is funded with financially funded but also
funded with access. And we look at access as a pretty broad
approach, looking at what type of adaptations our organization
and our residencies and our publications should be doing in
order to support the work and the space and the time. And the
needs that disabled identifying artists and scientists are
requiring in order to get their work out there and supported?
And how can we actually look at that full cycle creative engine
and the approach of disability access in our organization, in
our leadership and our institution? And then how can we
can be leaders in the world with other arts and academic
organizations such as ours? How can we start to see this
transformation happen? So this is really a ground up approach,
but looking at the ideas that our community brings forward? We
want to think about, okay, if what is the end idea, or what is
the path they need to get to, to really support what they want.
And that often includes creating time and space residencies,
whether that be at the beginning, middle and or even
after that is part of their incubation phase? Or if they are
looking at publishing, or creating media? How do we
actually support that structure, and the dissemination of that,
and the process that goes along with that Groundworks is an
organization that we are really excited to be working with,
because they're approaching research and publication in a
very different way. A lot of times when artists are working,
they don't look, they are not working in a very linear
approach. There is a lot of ways to look at what research means
and what the data means what the ephemeral means, what those
conversations are in, in between, and being able to use a
platform like Groundworks to be able to identify the artwork at
the center, or the or in the middle or or look at the process
rather than the end result or the object at the end is really
critical to being able to understand how hybrid artists,
artists who work in transdisciplinary spaces work in
practice. We also look at other things like exhibitions whether
they be virtual in person convenings at symposium
festival, or through our laser Salon Program, research, how do
we actually support that particular research method,
academia and education how to create pipelines from from K
through 12, steam programs to university level and community
college and postgraduate and even just self identifying
learners. These particular systems are really critical in
supporting that approach to incubating that particular idea.
And then how do we create other sort of community support
systems around that and this is really important in order for us
to create vibrant ecology.
So research is a lot about exchanging of ideas but as also
allowing people who lead who need and can and should be
invited to the table, including artists in in scientists who are
often represented under representative from disabled
communities and bipoc communities and other LGBT,
LGBTQ I networks that we want to be able to support and lead.
That diversity of ideas language approach is a way that we're
going to be able to see the the inclusion and vibrancy of these
ecologies of research. So, thank you very much and we're excited
to help support this program. Thank you.