Posted in General on Jan 20th, 2008
As hard as it is to believe, the Light in Winter weekend has already drawn to a close, with an impressive finale: a performance by the full Ithaca College Symphony Orchestra, led by conductor Jeffery Meyer. They performed seven movements from a piece by composer Michael Gandolfi that was inspired by a garden in Scotland [...]
Posted in General on Jan 20th, 2008
The audience’s reaction to the “Who Are We?” talk and performance was overwhelming – everyone seemed to agree that it perfectly represented the spirit of “collaboration” between arts and science that Light in Winter is always striving to achieve.
Binghamton University biology professor David Sloan Wilson discussed examples from the animal world that illustrate that [...]
Posted in General on Jan 20th, 2008
Composer Bruce Adolphe’s suite of compositions inspired by the paintings of Paul Gauguin were beautifully performed by a sextet of local musicians on violin, cello, bass, flute, clarinet, and percussion. The pieces were interspersed with commentary by Adolphe – speaking on his own process of inspiration, and most interestingly, quotations from Gauguin’s own journals during [...]
Posted in General on Jan 20th, 2008
Last night, Hugh Masekela told the audience to cheer loudly, but not so loudly that they took the roof off of Bailey Hall. But in the end, it was Masekela and his Chissa All-Stars who ended up ripping the roof right off with their energetic and passionate music.
Masekela himself played the flugelhorn, sang, emoted (using [...]
Posted in General on Jan 19th, 2008
The afternoon at the Statler finished off with a collaborative talk called “What Do Robots Dream of?” Cornell engineering professor Hod Lipson talked about his research on robots and teaching them to “evolve” and function independently. His simulations and footage of actual experiments with robots was fascinating.
In one project he described, a robot had to [...]
Posted in General on Jan 19th, 2008
What do you get when you combine a physics professor, a biology professor, and a comic book writer? As it turns out, a lot of laughter and a very new perspective on familiar superhero stories.
First Roger Stern, an author and comic book writer, described the history of superhero stories and comics over the 20th century, [...]
Posted in General on Jan 19th, 2008
The first program at the Statler Auditorium this morning was a humorous and engaging lecture by Cornell professor Jeffrey Hancock. He took us through the worlds of Facebook, mySpace, Internet dating, and financial fraud to show how people disclose, shape, and manipulate their identities with the help of modern technologies.
Professor Hancock brought a scientist’s perspective [...]
Posted in General on Jan 19th, 2008
Welcome to Light in Winter 2008 and another wonderful weekend of arts and science in Ithaca, NY. If you read any of last year’s blog entries, you may remember me — my name is Adrienne and I am an undergraduate student at Princeton University. But more importantly I’m a lifelong Ithacan and I almost always [...]