Artist as Innovator: Visions of a Floating City
Great artists shape new realities by challenging conventional world views and pushing society to see possibility in unlikely places. That paradigm springs to life on top of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where Argentinian-born artist Tomás Saraceno debuts his new utopian installation, Cloud Cities, a towering constellation of interconnected pods that draws its inspiration from the geometry of bubbles, the flight of balloons, the patterns of the cosmos and the intricacies of spider webs. Navigate your way through the structure’s maze of mirrors and webs before joining the artist and renowned scientists and architects for a conversation that brings the intersection of science and art to the foreground, and explores radical new habitats for 21st-century living.
Presented in collaboration with The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Image courtesy Tomás Saraceno
Moderator
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Julie Burstein
Julie Burstein is a Peabody Award-winning radio producer, best-selling author, and public speaker who has spent her working life in conversation with highly creative people. More »
Participants
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Tomás Saraceno
Installation Artist Tomás Saraceno’s work defies traditional notions of space, time, gravity, consciousness and perception through architectural, social and communitarian means that are utopian and participatory. His installations blend the boundary between sky and the earth, creating the sensation of flight. More » -
Peter Jäger
Arachnologist Renowned arachnologist Peter Jäger has discovered more than 200 species of spiders in the last decade, including a rare species in Malaysia that he named Heteropoda davidbowie after the legendary British rocker to raise awareness of endangered spiders and their threatened tropical habitats. More » -
Mario Livio
Astrophysicist Mario Livio is an internationally known astrophysicist, a best-selling author and a popular lecturer. His popular book The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, the World’s Most Astonishing Number won the Peano Prize for 2003, and the International Pythagoras Prize for 2004, as the best popular book on mathematics. More » -
Christopher McKay
Astrobiologist Chris McKay is a research scientist with the NASA Ames Research Center. His current research focuses on the evolution of the solar system and the origin of life. More » -
Mark Wigley
Architect Mark Wigley is a leading architectural theorist and critic and the dean of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. More »
