could do some good. we did not even talk about price until the day before the show. of course, meridian needs to support itself and support the community. but that was not the first consideration, so that made me very happy. >> his work is printed porcelain. he transfers images onto and spoils the surface a fragile shes of clay. each one, only one-tenth of an inch thick. >> it took about two years to get it down. i would say i lose 30% of the pieces that i made. something happens to them. they cracked, the break during the process. it is very complex. they fall apart. but it is worth it to me. there are photographs i took 1 hours 99 the former soviet union. these are blown up to a gigantic images. they lose resolution. i do not mind that, because my images are about the images, but they're also about the idea, which is why there is text all

over the entire surface. >> marie in moved into the mansion on powell street just five years ago. its galleries are housed in one of the very rare single family residences around union square. for the 100th anniversary of the mansion, meridian hosted a series of special events, including a world premiere reading by lawrence ferlinghetti. >> the birth of an american corporate fascism, the next to last free states radio, the next-to-last independent newspaper raising hell, the next-to-last independent bookstore with a mind of its own, the next to last leftie looking for obama nirvana. [laughter] the first day of the wall street occupation set forth upon this continent a new revolutionary

nation. [applause] >> in addition to its own programming as -- of artist talks, meridian has been a downtown host for san francisco states well-known port trees center. recent luminaries have included david meltzer, steve dixon, and jack hirsch man. >> you can black as out of the press, blog and arrest us, tear gas, mace, and shoot us, as we know very well, you will, but this time we're not turning back. we know you are finished. desperate, near the end. hysterical in your flabbergastlyness. amen. >> after the readings, the crowd headed to a reception upstairs by wandering through

the other gallery rooms in the historic home. the third floor is not usually reserved for just parties, however. it is the stage for live performances. ♪ under the guidance of musical curators, these three, meridian has maintained a strong commitment to new music, compositions that are innovative, experimental, and sometimes challenging. sound art is an artistic and event that usually receives short shrift from most galleries because san francisco is musicians have responded by showing strong support for the programming. ♪

looking into meridian's future, she says she wants to keep doing the same thing that she has been doing since 1989. to enlighten and disturbed. >> i really believe that all the arts have a serious function and that it helps us find out who we are in a much wider sense than we were before we experienced that work of art. ♪ >> the question when i started 11 years ago when i started doing resolution work is can anything be presented on a really low resolution device where it is potentially a

digital image? can anything be presented that way? or will it feel cold and electronic? >> the imagery will change. there will be four different sets. it is a two dimensional image. it is stretched out into three dimensions. the device is part of the experience. you cannot experience the image without the device as being part of what you are seeing. whereas with the tv you end up ignoring it.

i make gallery work more self and budget and public art work where i have to drop this of indulgence and think about how people will respond. and one of the things i was interested in the work and also a little fearful of, it is not until you get to the first and second floor were the work is recognizable as an image. it is an exploration and perception is what it is. what are you seeing when you look at this image? one of the things that happens with really low resolution images like this one is you never get the details, so it is always kind of pulling you in kind of thing. you can keep watching it. i think this work is kind of

experience in a more analytical way. in other words, we look at an image and there is an alice going on. -- and there is an analysis going on. >> sanrio famous for the designs for hello kitty. i thought i would try to make it as cute as possible. that way people might want to read the stories. then people might be open to learn about the deities and the culture.

♪ they reached out to make about five or six years ago because of the book published. they appreciated that my work was clearly driven from my research and investigation. after i contributed my artwork, the museum was really beside themselves. they really took to it. the museum reached out to me to see if i would be interested in my own space inside the museum. i tell them that would be a dream come true. it is the classical, beautiful indian mythology through the lens of modern design and illustration and storytelling. they're all of these great sketch as i did for the maharajah exhibition. i get a lot of feedback on my artwork and books.

they complement. they say how original the work is. i am the first person to say that this is so derived from all of this great artwork and storytelling of the past. the research i put into all of my books and work is a product of how we do things that a-- at pixar. sometimes you will see him depicted monkey-like or as superman. i wanted to honor his monkey coloring. i decided to paint him white with a darker face. it is nice to breathe new life into it in a way that is reverent and honors the past but also lets them breathe and have fun. it is almost a european notion

to bring these symbols and icons from southeast asia. they decorate their deities. it was a god they interacted with every day in a human way. the most important thing has been to create work that is appealing to me. i want to see vishnu to pick did in a modern way. it dawned on me by reinterpreting the deities in a way that is modern and reverent to the history, i am building a bridge for young and old audiences to make friends with the culture and these icons to learn their stories. ♪

>> i am the director of visual arts programming at intersection for the arts. intersection for the arts is based in san francisco and has always been an organization that looks at larger social political issues through the lens of practice, and we are here today at our exhibition of "chico and chang." the original inspiration was drawn from a restaurant chain in new york city. half of their menu is -- what struck me was the graphic

pictures and a man in a hat on a rig truck carrying take that time is containers and in the black sea to representation of a mexican guy wearing a sombrero and caring a somali horn. it struck me that these two large, very subversive complex cultures could be boiled down to such simple representations. chico and chang primarily looks at four topic areas. one of the man was is whose stories are being told and how. one of the artisans in the show has created an amazing body of work working with young adults calling themselves the dreamers. another piece of the exhibition talks about whose stories of exhibition are actually being told. one artist created a magnificent sculpture that sits right in the center of the exhibition.

>> these pieces are the physical manifestation of a narrative of a child in memory. an important family friend give us a dining table, very important, and we are excited about it. my little brother and i were 11, 14. we were realizing that they were kind of hand prints everywhere on the bottom where no one would really see, and it became this kind of a weakening of what child labor is. it was almost like an exercise to show a stranger that feeling we had at that moment. >> the second thing the exhibition covers is how the allocation is defined, a great example on the theme, sculpture called mexicali culture.

another bay area artist who has done residencies in china and also to what, mexico. where immigrant communities really helped define how businesses look of a business' sign age and interior decoration, her sculptural piece kind of mismatches the two communities together, creating this wonderful, fantastical future look at what the present is today. first topic is where we can see where the two communities are intersecting and where they start colliding. teresa fernandez did a sculptural installation, utilizing the ubiquitous blue, white, and read patterns of a rayon bag that many communities used to transport laundry and laundromats to buy groceries and such. she created a little installation kind of mucking up the interior of a household, covering up as many objects that

are familiar to the i and the fabric. fourth area of investigation that the exhibition looks at is the larger concerns of the asian and latin communities intersecting with popular cultur one best example -- when he's exemplified is what you see when you enter into the culture. >> this piece refers to restaurants in tijuana. when you are driving, to speak chinese and you read chinese characters. you see these signs. i was trying to play with the idea of what you see and the direction you read. when you start mixing these different groups of people,

different cultures, i like the idea. you can comment on somebody else's culture or someone else's understanding about culture. >> one of the hopes we have for visitors is that they go away taking a better understanding with the broadest and the breadth of issues impacting both the asian and latin communities here in california and how they spell out into the larger fabric of the communities we live and work in. >> we came to seven straight about 10 years ago. -- 7th street about 10 years

ago. the environment is huge. it is stronger than willpower. surrounding yourself with artists, being in a culture where artists are driving, and where a huge amount of them is a healthy environment. >> you are making it safer. push, push. that is better. when i start thinking, i see it actually -- sometimes, i do not see it, but when i do, it is usually from the inside out. it is like watching something being spawned. you go in, and you begin to work, excavate, play with the dancers, and then things began to emerge. you may have a plan that this is what i want to create.

here are the ideas i want to play with, but then, you go into the room, and there maybe some fertile ideas that are becoming manifest that are more interesting than the idea you had initially set out to plan. so there has to be this openness for spontaneity. also, a sense that regardless of the deadline, that you have tons of time so the you can keep your creativity alive and not cut it off and just go into old habits. it is a lot like listening. really listening to watch what is going to emerge. i like this thing where you put your foot on his back. let's keep it. were your mind is is how you build your life. if you put it in steel or in failure, it works. that works. it is a commitment. for most artists, it is a

vacation and a life that they have committed themselves to. there is this notion that artists continue to do their work because of some kind of the external financial support. if that was taken away, artists would still do their art. it is not like there is a prerequisite for these things to happen or i will not do it. how could that be? it is the relationship that you have committed to. it is the vocation. no matter how difficult it gets, you are going to need to produce your art. whether it is a large scale or very small scale. the need to create is going to happen, and you are going to have to fulfill it because that is your life.

>> what if you could make a memorial that is more about information and you are never fixed and it can go wherever it wants to go? everyone who has donated to it could use it, host it, share it. >> for quite a great deal of team she was hired in 2005, she struggled with finding the correct and appropriate visual expression. >> it was a bench at one point. it was a darkened room at another point. but the theme always was a theme of how do we call people's attention to the issue of speci species extinction. >> many exhibits do make long detailed explanations about species decline and biology of birds and that is very useful

for lots of purposes. but i think it is also important to try to pull at the strings inside people. >> missing is not just about specific extinct or endangered species. it is about absence and a more fundamental level of not knowing what we are losing and we need to link species loss to habitat loss and really focuses much on the habitat. >> of course the overall mission of the academy has to do with two really fundamental and important questions. one of which is the nature of life. how did we get here? the second is the challenge of sustainability. if we are here how are we going to find a way to stay? these questions resonated very strongly with maya. >> on average a species

disappears every 20 minutes. this is the only media work that i have done. i might never do another one because i'm not a media artist per se but i have used the medium because it seemed to be the one that could allow me to convey the sounds and images here. memorials to me are different from artworks. they are artistic, but memorials have a function. >> it is a beautiful scupltural objective made with bronze and lined with red wood from water tanks in clear lake. that is the scupltural form that gives expression to maya's project. if you think about a cone or a bull horn, they are used to get the attention of the crowd, often to communicate an important message.

this project has a very important message and it is about our earth and what we are losing and what we are missing and what we don't even know is gone. >> so, what is missing is starting with an idea of loss, but in a funny way the shape of this cone is, whether you want to call it like the r.c.a. victor dog, it is listen to the earth and what if we could create a portal that could look at the past, the present and the future? >> you can change what is then missing by changing the software, by changing what is projected and missing. so, missing isn't a static installation. it is an installation that is going to grow and change over time. and she has worked to bring all of this information together from laboratory after laboratory including, fortunately, our great fwroup of researche e-- g researchers at the california academy. >> this couldn't have been more site specific to this place and

we think just visually in terms of its scupltural form it really holds its own against the architectural largest and grandeur of the building. it is an unusual compelling object. we think it will draw people out on the terrace, they will see the big cone and say what is that. then as they approach the cone tell hear these very unusual sounds that were obtained from the cornell orinthology lab. >> we have the largest recording of birds, mammals, frogs and insects and a huge library of videos. so this is an absolutely perfect opportunity for us to team up with a world renown, very creative inspirational artist and put the sounds and sights of the animals that we study into a brand-new context, a context that really allows people to appreciate an esthetic way of

the idea that we might live in the world without these sounds or sites. >> in the scientific realm it is shifting baselines. we get used to less and less, diminished expectations of what it was. >> when i came along lobsters six feet long and oysters 12 inches within they days all the oyster beds in new york, manhattan, the harbor would clean the water. so, just getting people to wake up to what was just literally there 200 years ago, 150 years ago. you see the object and say what is that. you come out and hear these intriguing sounds, sounds like i have never heard in my life. and then you step closer and you almost have a very intimate experience. >> we could link to different institutions around the globe, maybe one per continent, maybe two or three in this country, then once they are all

networked, they begin to communicate with one another and share information. in 2010 the website will launch, but it will be what you would call an informational website and then we are going to try to, by 2011, invite people to add a memory. so in a funny way the member rely grows and there is something organic about how this memorial begins to have legs so to speak. so we don't know quite where it will go but i promise to keep on it 10 years. my goal is to raise awareness and then either protect forests from being cut down or reforest in ways that promote biodiversity. >> biodiverse city often argued to be important for the world's human populations because all of the medicinal plants and uses that we can put to it and fiber that it gives us and food that it gives us. while these are vital and important and worth literally

hundreds of billions of dollars, the part that we also have to be able to communicate is the more spiritual sense of how important it is that we get to live side by side with all of these forms that have three billion years of history behind them and how tragic it would be not commercially and not in a utilitarian way but an emotio l emotional, psychological, spiritual way if we watch them one by one disappear. >> this is sort of a merger between art and science and advocacy in a funny way getting people to wake unand realize what is going on -- wake up and realize what is going on. so it is a memborial trying to get us to interpret history and look to the past. they have always been about lacking at the past so we proceed forward and maybe don't commit the same mistakes.

[applause] >> good evening. welcome to the meeting of the commonwealth club and forum, connect your intellect. you can find us online. you can follow the best of our conversations on twitter. i am the author of the "this is your brain on music. " i am a professor of psychology and behavioral neuroscience. i am delighted to introduce you to my friend, one of my famous -- favorite guitarists and