02 — Public conversations at CRASSH
Cambridge LASER
The Cambridge LASER (Leonardo Art and Science Evening Rendezvous) questions the separation and propagation of art and science as distinct categories of knowing and being.
About
Where art and science meet
By asking questions such as, What is creativity? When does a work ‘exist’? What is an experiment? it explores where scientific and artistic attitudes, inquiries and methods overlap, and how they differ and complement each other. Can this understanding shape our technological, urban and environmental futures for us to have an ecologically and socially sustainable life and wellbeing?
LASER at CRASSH →Selected events
A taster of the series
Our launch event took place on October 1st 2020 with leading women artists and scientists, jointly hosted with Harriet Loffler (Curator of the New Hall Art Collection).
The Known World on March 25th 2021 was the first in a series curating how the arts (focusing on music) and sciences perceive, collect, and use data, and infer, imagine, and experience what data means, and how we as publics engage with this.
LASER on Non/Human Animals on June 17th 2021 brought together Satish Kumar from the Resurgence Trust with an immunologist, artists and a neuroscientist to explore a one-health system and the impact of our relations to the natural world upon each other.
On 19 May 2022 Rhythmicity brought Ian Cross (CMS Cambridge), Chris Chafe (CCSMA Stanford), and Jessica Grahn (WO Brain and Mind Institute) together to explore how our neural and biological oscillations engage us and facilitate our interactions with each other and our environment, their links to mental and physical health, and how technology is affecting these rhythms of connection.
Our most recent LASER, Writing as Rhythm on 30 April 2026, brought to the fore how writing is an embodied performance, visually, textually, and rhythmically inscribing the voice, which when ‘reading’ can be felt within the body. Once we tap on screens, producing predetermined lifeless fonts and grammars, this connection and the cultural evolution of writing comes to a still, with consequences that need to be better understood.
This gives a taster of the Cambridge LASER and we invite you to check our LASER Cambridge CRASSH page for information about upcoming events. We welcome people to get in touch and co-curate events with us.
Visit LASER Cambridge →