Explore "The Invisible Universe" at the Spring Science and Art Cabaret

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The popularity of the fall 2009 Science and Art Cabaret, sponsored by the University at Buffalo and Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, sent a clear message to its organizers that the Buffalo community has a thirst to explore science and art together … over a drink or two.

So a second Science and Art Cabaret has been scheduled for April 7 from 7-9 p.m. in the Ninth Ward in Babeville's Asbury Hall, 341 Delaware Ave.

Admission is free and open to the public; a cash bar will be available.

Organizer, cosmologist and UB physics professor Will Kinney describes the science and art cabaret as "an entertaining mash-up of cutting-edge science and technology with art and performance."

In other words, he says, ""Order a drink at the bar and hear top university researchers discuss their work in context with creative minds from the arts and humanities. We pick a topic and look at it from all angles."

The spring topic is "Invisible Worlds," and a panel of UB's scientists, artists, and a representative from the Buffalo Museum of Science will be weighing in.

"The Invisible World is around us and in us," says Kinney. "We are surrounded by invisible currents of electromagnetism and gravity, bathed in invisible radiation from earth and from space. We are borne in a sea of mysterious Dark Matter and Dark Energy, whose presence has been found only by its shadowy signature on the bending of space and time.

"Probing the microscopic reveals amazing beauty, from the nanoscopic structures that comprise the machinery of life, to the world of fundamental particles and the structure of matter itself, art has long been tasked with revealing the invisible world of nature, mind and spirit, while music explores the invisible world of harmony and rhythm. The April 2010 Science & Art Cabaret will take on the quantitative and the aesthetic of the invisible with its own unique style."

The Buffalo Science and Art Cabaret is part of the Café Scientifique movement that has swept the U.S. and Europe (for more information about the movement, see http://www.cafescientifique.org/north%20america-links.htm and http://www.sciencecafes.org/), and offers Buffalo artists and scientists a place to connect, created by UB's physicists and visual artists who have collaborated on such successes as the UB Physics and Arts Summer Institute and the permanent "Physics and Arts Exhibition" at UB.

In addition to Kinney, the panel for the Spring Science and Art Cabaret features Douglas Borzynksi the education collections manager at the Buffalo Museum of Science, and Doreen Wackeroth, UB associate professor of physics and particle physicist, and Gary Nickard, UB clinical assistant professor of visual studies. Music will be provided by David Gutierrez of the Irving Klaws, performing on an early electronic musical instrument called the theremin, which makes an eerie sound heard in movies like Spellbound and The Day the Earth Stood Still. For more information contact Nickard at 645-0529 or Kinney at 645-5360.