The Leonardo After Hours: Energy Revolution event in Logan last week was a huge success with a ton of audience participation. Thanks to our presenters and our host, The Italian Place, which supplied nourishment (energy!) for the crowd. Take a look at our recap video, with interviews with all three presenters:

If you said yes to any of those three, then the March 4 Ignite Salt Lake is for you. The most lovable group of enthusiasts you'll ever meet gathers several times a year to woo and wow a local crowd with 5-minute presentations. The catch? Each of 20 slides auto-rotates after five seconds. Stay on your toes or risk embarrassment and heckling.

The beauty of Ignite events (a global franchise from O'Reilly Media) is that the topic is up to you — the only requirement is to cover something you're passionate about. Past Ignite Salt Lake presentations have covered building an internet radio station, interface design, why cats make lousy business consultants, and, of course, zombie defense for n00bs.

Jeff Muhs, executive director at Utah State University Energy Lab, will discuss new initiatives from his lab, such as creating biofuels from algae and automated electric transportation, which will make energy mobile. Other presenters include Kevin Shurtleff, who is a member of the USTAR Technology Outreach team, and Lynsey Talbot, who is a student energy researcher at Utah State University.

This was not just a typically cloudy or foggy day, but rather the effects of a thermal inversion. This naturally-occurring event happens when the atmosphere’s temperature gradient is “inverted” from its usual state. Anyone who has climbed a mountain in the summertime knows that at higher elevations the air is usually cooler. During an inversion, however, cooler and denser air is trapped at the earth’s surface beneath a high pressure layer of warmer air. The mountains bordering our valley keep this trapped cold air walled in, and because the cooler air is denser it remains in the valley, accumulating water vapor and pollutants. Here is a diagram of what is going on during an inversion.

As Utah’s biotechnology resource coordinator, Kasey works with students and teachers at high schools with biotech programs to provide them with the equipment and information they need. Kasey traces his interest in the field to middle school when he decided to take honors science so he could learn dissection. As a member of Utah Valley University's first graduating class of biotechnology students, Kasey balanced school work with lab jobs at Salt Lake Community College and the Jordan Applied Technology Center. Since then, he has helped open two labs at Itineris Early College High School and five others at SLCC.

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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Martin Hansen discovered Hansen Cave in 1887 as he was tracking a cougar up Timpanogos Mountain. In the fall of 1921, George Heber Hansen and Wayne E. Hansen were hunting deer when they spotted a hole in the ground. The two returned a few days later with their grandfather, Martin Hansen. Martin Hansen, who's credited with actually discovering Timpanogos Cave, was also the first person to enter Middle Cave.

When Middle Cave and Timpanogos Cave were discovered government protection was in place, which has helped keep them in fairly good condition. Hansen Cave, however, is not a protected site and has been a target of vandalism over the years. Like the vast majority of caves, the caves in American Fork formed in Carbonate (i.e. Limestone, Dolomite). Over millions of years, carbonic acid, a weak acid, formed by water and carbon dioxide reacting with each other, slowly dissolves the carbonate, creating the caves.

To most people Green River is just a pit stop on a journey elsewhere but just passing through Green River is a mistake. Green River is home to the John Wesley Powell River History Museum and the Vetere family, who have been growing melons in Green River for almost 100 years. The Veteres grow a variety of melons, including Casaba, Israeli, Crenshaw, Canary, orange and green honeydew, and, of course, watermelon.

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.

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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The Leonardo is thrilled to be up for two Artys from the City Weekly this year -- the first is to vote for BODY WORLDS 3 as the best traveling exhibit of 2008, and the second is to vote for The Leonardo-sponsored play, "di Esperienza," as best original play.

In case you need a recap, here's our BODY WORLDS site, complete with a run-down of the exhibit, the programs and events we ran concurrent with the exhibit, and all your favorite imagery from the world-class exhibit.

"di Esperienza" was commissioned by The Leonardo and produced by Plan B Theatre Company this spring. In the play, three of Leonardo da Vinci's famous artworks confront him at the end of his life. Matthew Ivan Bennett wrote the piece, and here's a little more information about his work from Salt Lake Magazine:

Vote before August 24, and we'll share the good news of our awards (fingers crossed!) with you!

Bonneville Speed Week -- a collection of the craziest, fastest, most surreal races in the state -- starts this weekend. You've seen the Salt Flats in movies and photo shoots, but this lunar world takes on an entirely different milieu when covered with hundreds of DIY dragsters, a bevy of multi-colored umbrellas and the friendly faces of Speed Week's followers.

The Salt Flats are home to several land speed records, made possible by Utah's high desert altitude, and the extremely flat surface that is inhospitable to plant life and other barriers to a racer's ultimate goal. The Salt Flats are no secret (memorialized by an article in The New York Times here, a star turn in "The World's Fastest Indian," and regular features and photos in regional news media), but that makes them no less fascinating.

One of the best things about Speed Week is the DIY culture among racers. The majority of enthusiasts work solo or in small groups to perfect their home-grown cars, dragsters, motorcycles and other vehicles. Trial and error, a dauntless enthusiasm for the Flats, and near-obsessive tendencies combine for one amazing weekend of race after race.

This video from the 2007 races gets really good around the 2:00 mark (it's not ours, so please pardon anything strange -- like, say, the intro song lyrics). It gives a true sense of the DIY culture and life-long ambitions of racers to participate in Speed Week.

But this is the one that held me captivated at my desk -- a handlebars-eye-view of a motorcycle hitting 229 mph on a five-mile course. Once it gets going, you can watch the miles fly by and see the spectators distantly to the left of the course. And be sure to listen to the accompanying audio for the whine of the gears as the drive accelerates through the course.

So if you head out this weekend, be sure to strike up a conversation or five with the racers -- it's been my experience that they'll gladly geek out with you about their projects. You might even pick up a few tricks for the drive back to civilization. Just don't forget your sunblock.

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!

Muhs, who was at one point an energy and science policy advisor to the U.S. Senate, recently testified before Congress about the plausbility of using algae to capture and recycle carbon-dioxide emissions and create oil in the process. Muhs is also a USTAR researcher.

In theory, algae farms can be anywhere there is enough sunlight for the plants, and part of Muhs' research is optimizing sunlight absorption and thus increasing the amount of fuel produced. Other biofuel researchers are exploring creative placements for algae ponds -- next to wastewater treatment plants (the, ahem, natural organics in the wastewater can be part of the algae "food"), in shallow desert pools in the sunny southwestern United States, or next to coal plants where algae could convert waste carbon dioxide to biofuel.

You may remember the Continental Airlines test flight this January with half a tank of conventional jet fuel and half a tank of algae- and jatropha-produced biofuel. Continental joined Air New Zealand and Japan Airlines, among others, in testing biofuels as an alternative to conventional jet fuel. Even though large-scale algae fuel production is likely still several years away, the promise of this biofuel has caught the attention of the airlines, Congress and R/D communities throughout the country.

So, please, join us Wednesday, June 3, at the Salt Lake City Public Library for a discussion about how the hated pond scum of yesteryear could become the future of fuel. (To register for Lunch with Leo, visit its web page. The event is open to the public, and the $25 fee pays for your meal.)

We love the 337 Project around here (if you haven't bookmarked their site, do and check them often!), and we also love to see 337 artists branch out to other art forms in the community.

That's why I'll be checking out "unravel, REVEALED" this Friday night. I can't say that I'm entirely sure what the performance will be or look like, but 24 hours straight of dance? That has to be interesting!

It looks like the performance kicks off around 9:30 p.m. You can stop by right at the beginning, at any point during the night or next day, or for the closing portion on Saturday at 8:30 p.m. -- 1700 South between 1200 and 1300 East. See you there.

Update: This was great. Visitors sat or stood near the parking strip grass, facing this scene:

The program attributed the piece to a community-wide collaboration (and I believe them -- it takes a lot of support staff and caffeine to pull off an overnight dance performance). I can't vouch for all 24 hours of the performance (saw some on Friday night and again on Saturday afternoon), but it was very cool to see this type of art happening around town.

I just wanted to point out the great crowds in downtown Salt Lake City lately:

This was the scene outside the Capital Theater on 200 South last week. It's been great to have crowds roaming the downtown streets for "Wicked" -- we hope it keeps up after the production leaves town. (A thriving downtown will ultimately make for a healthy Leonardo!)

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.