Lecture Previews
How to Use Your Eyes, and How Some Animals Use Their Eyes
Monday at 5:15 p.m.
Breed Hall (Margaret Morrison 103)
As part of the Victor M. Bearg Science and Humanities Scholars Speaker Series, James Elkins will deliver an informal lecture on vision and how it is studied from a humanities perspective.
Elkins’ lecture will include discussion about some types of vision that humans do not have — such as infrared and compound vision — and about how vision is used in art.
Elkins is an art historian and critic who writes about images used artistically and otherwise.
He is currently the E.C. Chadbourne professor in the department of art history, theory, and criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
An Automata-Theoretic Model of Programming Languages
Monday at 3:30 p.m.
Gates Hillman Complex 9115
Uday S. Reddy will deliver a talk about a new model of programming languages inspired by automata-theoretic concepts.
In the model, objects are viewed as automata, described from the outside by their observed behaviors, and internally as state transformations.
Reddy will discuss the model’s connections to previous models and to demonstrate the efficacy of the model by proving test equivalences.
Reddy is a professor of computer science at the University of Birmingham. His research focuses on the areas of programming with state and linear logic, among others.
AB Lectures: The Onion
Monday at 6 p.m.
McConomy Auditorium
Members of the award-winning satirical newspaper The Onion will visit Carnegie Mellon to discuss what makes good satirical writing.
The Onion has been in print since its inception as a University of Wisconsin-Madison student paper in 1988. Its online version has won 21 Webby Awards.
Some of The Onion’s most well-known articles include “Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job,” which covered the election of President Barack Obama, and “Drugs Win Drug War,” originally published in print during The Onion’s time as a student newspaper, which mocked the War on Drugs.
School of Art Spring Lecture Series: Wafaa Bilal
Tuesday at 5 p.m.
Kresge Theatre
Wafaa Bilal, an assistant art professor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, will deliver a lecture about his work.
Bilal’s brother was killed in a drone attack in Al Kufa, Iraq, and he fled the country in 1991.
He came to the United States after spending two years in refugee camps.
Much of Bilal’s art aims to protest and shed light on violence and casualties in Iraq.
Bilal is also known for using his body in his art.
In 2010, Bilal had a map of Iraq, with the number of Iraqi and U.S. casualties, tattooed on his back.
For Bilal’s current project, he had a camera surgically implanted into the back of his head. The camera transmits images to the web 24 hours a day.