Who hasn't dreamed of being invisible? It would give you the ablilty to listen to private conversation, and you would always be the one crowned hide-n-go-seek champ. Aside from those daily niceties, invisibility technology could give us the ability to hide planes, protect coasts from tsunami waves, and even protect buildings from earthquakes. All kinds of different technologies are being developed to make people and objects invisible. But how does one make something invisible?

Humans see only a small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, and we are "see" an object when light bounces off of it into our eyes. To mimic or create invisibility, there are several ways you can can disrupt the process of "seeing" an object.

Let's start with this simplest: camouflage. Animals, soldiers, and hunters use it everyday. Wilderness settings are relatively easy to blend into, but what if you want to blend into a more complicated terrain? You could mimic artist and extreme camouflage-er, Liu Bolin, who paints himself to blend in with his surroundings.

Check out more of Bolin's art here.

But what if you need to blend in at a moment's notice? The folks over at the Tachi Laboratory at the University of Tokyo have developed an invisibility cloak of sorts. The cloak films objects behind you and projects them onto your jacket so you will blend into any background.

Graeme Milton will be giving a lecture about cloaking at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, March 10, in the Aline Wilmot Skaggs Biology building. The lecture is free and open to the public, but you need to request tickets by emailing your first and last name with the number of tickets requested to office@science.utah.edu. See you there!

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Highlights include a battle of the tribute bands, with echoes of The Beatles, Nirvana, and KISS. And "eBay It Forward" allows folks to re-gift items to charity. The gifts, along with the story of why the item was important to you, will be collected at the Gateway, and proceeds will be donated to Family Promise, a program that assists homeless families.

EVE organizers have mapped out alternate transportation to the festival, spots to stay the night, and multiple ways to buy tickets. And Salt Lake City will still ring in 2010 the old-fashioned way -- with a giant fireworks display at Gallivan Center. See you there!

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Digital plant from Daniel Brown's series, "Flowers."

"The Network," dissects traces of information we leave behind after using social networks. Programers developed a section that visualizes information, such as how bloggers are feeling based upon what they say in their blogs. "Code," looks at the digital coding we use to program. Artist Daniel Brown uses mathematics to generate a fluid growth of digital images that mimics plants found in nature. Much like "Ghost Interruptions," the "Interactivity" exhibit allows visitors to interact with different works. One of the featured exhibits is the Opto-Isolator, developed by Golan Levin, which is a robotic eye that follows the viewer's eye motions.

The University of Utah's Marriott Library was constructed and opened in 1968. For the past 4 years the library has undergone an intense renovation. The restoration included the addition of the ARC, which is a robotic management tool for the library's collection. Seismic and other safety upgrades were also made, much like The Leonardo's building is currently undergoing.

One of the highlight of the event was the soap-film wall prototype. Our exhibits team worked hard this past month to make the wall. Viewers learned the science behind the bubble -- light refraction, wave patterns and surface tension -- and stuck their hands in it and blew bubbles. All in all, it was a delightful evening for the 150-or-so attendees!

For "Sensate," the SFMOMA commissioned a new piece by Andrew Kudless. His design, "P_Wall," features two gallery walls covered in smooth plaster hills that represent how human skin expands to fit added pounds. A video on the museum's web site with Andrew shows the entire process from design to the finished product. (We can't embed this video but make sure you watch.)

The exhibit also features photographs by Aziz & Cucher where photographs of human skin are distorted to look like rooms. "Bone Cigarette Table," made in 1977 by John Dickinson, looks exactly as it sounds... a table with leg bones, instead of simply legs. One piece by Marcel Wandersan, looks almost like a human vertebrae until you read that it is a 3-D scan of snot as it is ejected during a sneeze.

So if you happen to be in or near the bay area this fall, be sure to wander through the gallery and check out the askew body parts at "Sensate"!

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Octogenarian Bliss recently overcame a year-long period of blindness, following with cataract surgery, an experience that she compared to "coming out of solitary confinement." Her career in the state stretches back decades, though, and includes several public art pieces at major buildings around town, such as the University of Utah's Cowles Building on Presidents Circle and the State Capitol Building.

Good news for local art fans, too: Black Opal Productions is putting together a documentary about this woman's fascinating life and storied career: "ARC of LIGHT: A Portrait of Anna Campbell Bliss." (We can't embed this particular link, but do watch -- Anna is brilliant.)

A couple of us at The Leonardo had the pleasure of chatting with Anna recently and she reassured us that she has at least a good 10 years left in her -- she has a lot she wants to accomplish and intends to continue her role as a self-proclaimed "misfit locally" in the art scene. We're also looking forward to forging a partnership with her for The Leo building down the road.

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A British scientist and student in science communication came up with an intriguing project to get people talking and thinking about the impact of science in their lives. Dr. Tim Jones' simple concept was to ask people to draw what they think is important about science. He stitched the drawings together (with a nod to the "exquisite corpse" methods of the surrealists, hence his title) and created a video with the participants talking about their drawings.

There are many things that I like about this project -- the thought of getting the public involved in the conversation about science, the art, and the variety AND similarity in response. My favorite part, though, is the 14-year-old's drawing. His free-form links between the various parts of science that affect his life end up being more profound and real to me than, say, the scientist's representation of the scientific method.

I like the basic way that he's gotten folks to consider the impact and importance of science in their lives. I'd love to hear how they prepped their "artists" before drawing and interviewing. The project reaffirms my belief that the simplest things are often the most effective, and frequently the most intriguing.

Jones (@physicus) is taking his project wide and calling for submissions for the next version of The Exquisite Corpse of Science. Join his efforts, and comment or tweet back at us (@the_leonardo) if you do. We'd love to see what you come up with.

We had a great time at the Utah Arts Festival this past weekend. It was great to see old friends of The Leo and meet new ones. If you happened to catch a performance from one of our partners, if you made a star box, or if you just perused the origami wall -- thanks for stopping by!

Visitor after visitor came into our space toting messenger bags with just the right hint of DIY flavor. On forays into the festival at large for food, fresh air and entertainment, I made it a point to track down the source of the bags -- the AIGA "Re:Design" booth on Washington Square.

Check out those bags! That shiny material is vinyl from local, reclaimed billboards. Refashioning the vinyl into messenger bags keeps the vinyl out of a landfill, uses up local "trash," provides a great chance to make something useable and hip, and gives visitors a wearable piece of art.

To everyone else: see you this weekend!

As The Leonardo susses out its exhibit plans, the staff are talking more about how to interest visitors with what happens inside the museum beyond just a static, "typical" museum experience. When we try different applications, workshops and exhibits, one thing we keep coming back to is stop-motion animation.

In a workshop back in February 2008, we did a short stint with some stop-motion animation cameras. These were a HUGE hit with visitors of all ages, to put it mildly, both back then and in a few events since then. And it appears that the art form is making a bit of a mainstream come-back as well. It's been great to uncover little gems, and to see animation become a creative vehicle in ways that the Wallace and Gromit of my childhood didn't quite capture.

This run-away YouTube hit by Oren Lavie is incredibly whimsical. Guaranteed* to melt your insides. (*almost)

Finally, I love this designer's interpretation of a deadline (and it's a bit how I feel at the moment with the Arts Festival installation rapidly approaching!).

Museum hopping in San Francisco can be exhilarating and exhausting. Fortunately, a couple of staff members made it to the city by the bay last weekend to check out a few choice science and art museums. Among other trip highlights was a trip to the California Academy of Sciences sustainability exhibit, a visit to the Cal Academy's famed living rooftop and the chance to play with the butterflies in the rain forest globe.

Another great highlight of the trip was a visit to the SubZERO Festival in San Jose. The festival, run by the folks at Zer01 (who also do a tres cool biennial), was an eclectic collection of street art, low-tech displays, audience interaction, and performance. One thing that caught our eye was a video installation by Eric Dorf, who filmed people's reactions to popular ads and edited them together.

The result is a strangely mesmerizing mosaic of Madison Avenue and mouths. The video we saw at subZERO was slightly modified from this YouTube clip, but you'll get the general idea from this version. We tip our figurative Leo hat to Dorf for his creative mash-up that stopped us in our tracks and kept us engaged, focused and interested with all the distractions of a street fair happening around us!

If you haven't made it to Utah County yet for the BYU Museum of Art Dan Steinhilber exhibition, make it a priority before it closes on June 6! This excellent contemporary art display has a great use of everyday materials "to examine the wonder that can be found all around us," as the BYU MOA website points out.

And it is wondrous: dry cleaning hangers naturally twist in elegant spirals from the ceiling to unintentionally mimic a double helix, a bulk of inflated trash bags assault gallery circulation space and a heat lamp warms and lights the air below it.

Contemporary art curator Jeff Lambson ran across Steinhilber's work when Lambson was with the Hirshhorn Museum (part of the Smithsonian group) in Washington, D.C. The two worked together (along with a small army of assistants) to create the undulating "Untitled (2003/2008): Duck sauce" and "Untitled (2003/2008): Laytex balloons" -- unique pieces made of decidedly non-natural materials that still echo organic forms. The balloon piece began fully inflated, but had already shrunk and tightened a few weeks into the exhibition. Part of the sculpture's wonder is its life cycle -- what will it become as the balloons naturally deflate through the course of the exhibition?

Steinhilber's ingenuity appeals to our DIY side, too. Jeff Lambson explained recently that "Untitled (2008): Trash bags and greenhouse plastic" arrived folded into Steinhilber's suitcase, rather than via a costly gallery shipping service!

Amy Caron's "Waves of Mu" is a great example of what The Leonardo loves -- Caron perfectly translated the science of mirror neurons to a theater performance and art installation at her show here in Salt Lake City a couple of weeks ago.

The show is named for the EEG oscillations that reflect mirror neuron activity, but that doesn't even begin to cover a description. Participants hand over their shoes and crowd together in a small ante room, swilling champagne and chatting before moving into a brain room -- the thalamus is a 1960s-era secretary, enormous chandeliers represent the prefrontal cortex, and snarling, sculpted cats (jaguars? imaginary creations?) are the amygdalas. On my walk through, the thalamus frantically asked me to get the amygdala a gentle pet because a "wave of fear is coming on."

After passing through the brain room, visitors step into a "laboratory" for the rest of the performance. I've likely already given too much away, but it's safe to say that everything -- the projections, the football game, the neuroscientist's lecture, and the outburst -- tie back to the idea that mirror neurons allow us to relate to each other.

Caron uses art and performance to translate complex neuroscientific points for those of us not, ahem, fluent in that language. If you missed Caron's show this time around, you can catch her in Seattle this fall.

"InterPlay: AnARTomy" features two dancers, poetry, a host of sketch artists, and digital animators, and requires nearly a dozen computer systems to compile live video feeds from four other universities. The video feed of the sketchers and performers in other locations --Indianapolis, Indiana; Fairbanks, Alaska; Long Island, New York; and Cardiff, Wales -- are projected and "mixed" on a large screen behind the dancers. InterPlay is the work of Jimmy and Beth Miklavcic.




During the year-long development process, the Miklavcics meet with participants via open-source video conferencing software. Then, the "telematic" performance is woven into a multi-leveled, live performance and cinematic work that incorporates feeds from artists, musicians and technicians at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianpolis (IUPUI),University of Alaska-Fairbanks, Long Island University in New York, and Cardiff University in Wales (full bios of the cast and crew can be found here). The performance is designed specifically for viewing at the University of Utah Intermountain Network and Scientific Computation Center (INSCC), giving Utah audiences the best seats in the country.


An operator during the performance arranges the screens dependent on what the dancers, animators and artists are doing. Digital MC Jimmy Miklavcic manipulates the relationships between the various performances by combining the video streams into the center digital mix of the display -- all to create a dynamic, collaborative performance. "This thing is so intertwined that calling it art and technology isn't correct because they're so symbiotic in a way," Beth and Jimmy Miklavcic tell us.




Beth and Jimmy will be giving a presentation about their previous InterPlay project -- Nel Tempo Di Sogno (2007) -- Thursday, April 16, at 1 p.m. at the University of Utah's Center for High Performance Computing. They'll talk about the scene-by-scene tech requirements to pull off an InterPlay performance.