Science & Cocktails: Intelligence, Stupidity, Outer-Space, and the Mysteries of the Puzzle

David Krakauer is the President and William H. Miller Professor of Complex Systems at the Santa Fe Institute. His research explores the evolution of intelligence and stupidity on Earth. This includes studying the evolution of genetic, neural, linguistic, social, and cultural mechanisms supporting memory and information processing, and exploring their shared properties.He served as the founding Director of the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, the Co-Director of the Center for Complexity and Collective Computation, and Professor of Mathematical Genetics all at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Krakauer has been a visiting fellow at the Genomics Frontiers Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, a Sage Fellow at the Sage Center for the Study of the Mind at the University of Santa Barbara, a long-term Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and visiting Professor of Evolution at Princeton University. He was included in Wired Magazine’s 2012 Smart List as one of fifty people “who will change the world,” and Entrepreneur Magazine’s 2016 list of visionary leaders advancing global research and business.

Carmen Jaci is a French-Canadian experimental music producer currently based in the Netherlands. Using hybrid sounds that merge acoustic instruments with synthesizers and vocal recordings, she constructs a sound world where electronic and classical music overlap. Over the years, she has crafted a personal and unique language which largely revolves around the ideas of discontinuity and formal deconstruction. Her writing rapidly alternates between contrasting spaces and sonic elements, drawing influence from popular and classical artists such as Foodman, Igor Stravinsky and Grimes. As described by Musicworks magazine: “Although the music moves through countless changes from one ultrashort fragment to the next in a state of near weightlessness, it doesn’t sound disjointed. On the contrary, there is a clear line that holds the composition together.” Likewise, her work retains a subtly humorous tone as well as a highly polished sound production that almost reminds us of pop music.