Garth Jennings is a British writer, director, producer, actor, artist and author. Garth began his directing career in music videos, followed by the feature films, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Son of Rambow. He moved on to writing and directing Animation with 2016’s Sing, and now Sing 2,  opening December 22nd.  He’s the author and artist of several children’s books, and recently had an exhibition of fine art prints at the Idem gallery in Paris.

This episode of FLOAT with guest Chloé Zhao was recorded live from the stage of the David Geffen Theater at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles, inaugurating their program, THE ART AND SCIENCE OF CINEMA. Chloé recently won two Academy Awards for her film Nomadland. Her early films, Songs my Brothers Taught Me and The Rider won several international awards, powered by her signature blend of narrative and documentary film. She most recently directed Marvel’s Eternals.

Dr. Kalina Christoff is a Professor of Psychology at the University of British Columbia where she runs the Cognitive Neuroscience of Thought Laboratory. She has studied various forms of spontaneous thought including mind-wandering and day-dreaming, as well as goal-directed modes of thought like creative problem solving and meditation. Her research uses functional neuroimaging to look into what’s going on in the brain while people think.   

Walter Murch is a film editor, a director, writer, and sound designer. For his work on Apocalypse Now he won the Academy Award for Best Sound and was also nominated for Best Film Editing. He won two more Oscars for editing and sound mixing The English Patient. Walter is recognized as a true innovator and master of sound design in film, and his book In The Blink of An Eye has become a classic on the craft of film editing.

Lykke Li is a singer, songwriter, and dancer. She was born in Sweden to artistic parents, her mother a photographer and her father a musician. The family traveled extensively, living abroad in Portugal, Morocco, Nepal and India. Lykke released her first album, Youth Novels in 2008 and another three; Wounded Rhymes, I Never Learn and So Sad So Sexy by 2018. She’s currently at work on a five-dimensional art project expected to be released in 2022. Lykke lives in Los Angeles with her son.

Gus Van Sant was born in Louisville, Kentucky and received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1975.  Gus has an international reputation as a filmmaker, painter, photographer, and musician.  Beginning with short films in 1979 Gus has directed 52 films. He’s been twice nominated for an Oscar and won the Palme D’or and Best Director Awards at the Cannes Film Festival.  In 2021 he turned to the stage, writing and composing Andy, a musical about Andy Warhol.

Marco Iacoboni is a Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, and the Director of the Transcranial Magnetic Stimuli lab at UCLA’s Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center. Marco is a neurologist by training, who is originally from Rome, Italy. His work has focused on the neural basis of empathy, and on the so-called mirror neuron system in humans. He is the author of the book Mirroring People: The New Science of How We Connect With Others.

Tavares Strachan was born in Nassau, Bahamas, and now lives and works between New York City and Nassau. He received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA in Sculpture from Yale University. Tavares’s art, reflecting the politics of invisibility and limitation, locates itself in a boundless exploration of space and the physical world. His multi-media installations investigate the cultural dynamics of science, technology, mythology and history.

Anil Seth is a Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex. He is Co-Director of the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science and is Editor-in-chief of the journal Neuroscience of Consciousness. His research has focused on interoception, emotion, self, and consciousness, and how the brain perceives both the outside and inside worlds through a process of hypothesis generation. His new book, Being You: The New Science of Consciousness, is available now.

Nancy Baker Cahill is a new media artist who examines power, selfhood, and embodied consciousness through drawing and shared immersive space. She is the Founder of 4th Wall, a free Augmented Reality art platform exploring resistance and inclusive creative expression. Her AR site specific installations have been exhibited around the world.  She was a 2021 resident at Oxy Arts’ ‘Encoding Futures,’ focused on virtual monuments, and was recently awarded the Williams College Bicentennial Medal of...

Rodrigo Garcia is an award-winning writer and director of the feature films Nine Lives, Albert Nobbs and Things You Can Tell Just By Looking at Her. He directed many seminal TV series including Six Feet Under, The Sopranos and In Treatment. He is an Executive Producer of the upcoming Netflix series based on Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. He recently published the memoir, A Farewell to Gabo and Mercedes, about his parents Gabriel García Márquez and Mercedes Barcha.

Joe Walker was born in the UK and originally trained as a classical music composer. He switched to film editing, working for several years editing British films, television and documentaries. He now lives and works in L.A. where he has collaborated extensively with two directors, Steve McQueen and Denis Villeneuve. In the past 7 years Joe has been nominated for two Oscars and three BAFTAs for his work on 12 Years a Slave, Arrival and Blade Runner 2049. He most recently collaborated with...

In this episode we speak with Dr. Antonio Damasio, who is perhaps one of the most influential neuroscientists of the last hundred years. His work has emphasized the role of emotion in cognition, the deep connection between brain and body, and the roots of consciousness in biological systems for maintaining life. The mystery of consciousness is the subject of his latest book, Feeling and Knowing: Making Minds Conscious. Antonio Damasio is the Director of the Brain and Creativity Institute at USC.

Kasi is an award-winning director, writer and actress who has been a staple in Hollywood for nearly three decades, most recently with her Oscar nominated film Harriet. Her acclaimed 1997 feature directorial debut Eve’s Bayou was recently inducted into the National Film Registry. Kasi wrote the libretto for Fire Shut Up in My Bones, which will open the Metropolitan Opera Season on September 27th and she’s currently directing the Whitney Houston story, I Wanna Dance with Somebody.

In this episode of FLOAT we talk with Sam Harris. Sam is a public thinker, a neuroscientist, an author, a philosopher, and a podcaster. He hosts the incredibly popular Making Sense podcast, and he also has a successful meditation app called Waking Up. In addition to studying philosophy at Stanford and neuroscience at UCLA he has trained with some of the world’s foremost meditation teachers, making him a rare expert in both scientific and experiential approaches to investigating consciousness.

In this episode, we speak with Richard Lemarchand. Richard is an accomplished video game designer and an Associate Professor in the USC School of Cinematic Arts. He was a lead game designer at Naughty Dog, where he helped to create the Uncharted series. He also created the game series Gex and Soul Reaver at Crystal Dynamics. Richard was instrumental in the creation of the IndieCade Games Festival and has a new book entitled A Playful Production Process: For Game Designers and Everyone.

Acclaimed filmmaker Mary Sweeney and neuroscientist Jonas Kaplan explore the creative place where art and science meet. FLOAT is a series of conversations with filmmakers, fine artists, musicians, technologists, and neuroscientists, investigating the common inspirations, motivations, and processes among creative minds from diverse fields. Hosted by two USC professors, FLOAT takes you on a journey to explore what makes scientists and artists more alike than different.