Innovations Forum
Bioart Seoul 2016 Conference
Conference Abstract
The conference proposes to host a collection of talks in order to let a coherence emerge around the topic of so-called “wet media”. The term “media” referring here to the material that is used to create whether this be the Duchampian heroism of a thoughtful title or the mass screens of a times square reflecting a certain nothingness while blinding in their brightness, and the term “wet” being much less tangible and more directed at issues viscosity in regard to gender animality, artefact, and the sensuality of today's bioart tech initiatives. Combined, the two terms form the substance of the conference and through this the presenters point out current technological climates of emerging technologies that may include bacteria as artistic medium, infection transmission scenarios, evolutionary and genetic processes, raw big data applications, virtual as well as scientific and historical media, and virtual reality encounters, which -like the conference- go beyond the beyond into boundless of visualisation of meaningful interaction between man, machine, and micro-organism.
Information
Venue: Sogang University, Seoul South Korea
Date: 6 November 2015, 10am to 6pm
Program
Introductions
10: 00-10: 10: Welcome Prof. Jusub Kim, Department Head Art and Technology
10: 10-10: 30 Introduction BioArt Seoul, Prof. Sunghoon Kim, SNU
Morning Session
10:30-11:10 Anna Dumitriu, (GBR)
11:10-11:50 Boredom Research (GBR)
11:50-12:30 Alex May (GBR)
12:30-12:45 Questions Session
12:45-14:00 Lunch Break
14: 00-14:40 Wayne de Fremery (KOR)
14:40-15:20 Sonja Bauemel (AUS)
15:20-15:35 Questions Session
15:35-15:55 Catherine Young (PHP)
15:55-16:15 Roberta Trentin (ITL)
16:15-16:35 Pascale Barret (FRN)
16:35-16:50 Questions Session
TALK ABSTRACTS
The Challenges of BioArt
Anna Dumitriu (GBR)
Artist Anna Dumitriu will discuss her artistic collaboration with the Modernising Medical Microbiology Project, a team of scientists based at the University of Oxford who use cutting edge new methods for studying the genetic relationships of bacteria. She will talk about the challenges and benefits of working with bacteria as an artistic medium and how she engages wide audiences in issues that will affect the future health of all of us through her art installations and workshops, which have been exhibited around the world. Dumitriu will also introduce her recent book "Trust me, I'm an Artist: Towards an Ethics of Art and Science Collaboration", which investigates novel ethical issues arising through artists working in laboratory settings, and talk about the wider challenges of artists working with emerging technologies.
Title: Exploring a Scientific Notion of Truth
Boredomresearch (GBR)
Boredomresearch will share their excitement for expressing what cannot be seen in scientific data Creating landscapes illuminated by infection transmission scenarios and revealing the intriguing beauty of slumber in a real-time artwork driven by the firing neurons of dreaming mice - boredomresearch use animation and light to explore the digital realm beyond the bounds of visualisation. Their artworks are informed by scientific methods and data but remain distinctly poetic in nature. boredomresearch will present insights from collaborating with a mathematical modeller and a neuroscientist to challenge established boundaries and addressed a growing need for meaningful interaction across disciplines.
Sequence
Alex May (GBR)
"Sequence" is an ongoing series of digital artworks exploring the process, applications, and raw big data of Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS). Using the 2.8 million base pairs sequenced from a bacterium from lead artist Anna Dumitriu's body, the artworks range from a dress, stained with bacteria and antibiotics that is projection mapped with the raw light output of a MiSeq sequencer, to virtual reality encounters with vast sculptural forms made from the reconstructed genome. Alex will discuss the complex technical and artistic challenges he and Anna have faced during the project and introduce the artwork produced so far.
Wayne de Fremery (KOR)
Cross-disciplinary research: balancing imagination and the extraordinary with factual technical knowledg
Sonja Bäumel (AUS/NLD)
The talk introduces investigations of an ongoing interdisciplinary research and creative process in the unexpected diversity of the human ecosystem, in its 'social network' and in our changing perspective on the human body. We have ten times more bacterial cells than human cells in and on us. If ninety percent of cells that constitute our body are not human but bacterial, how do we have to re-imagine the human and where could this new knowledge lead? The interest lies in what influences scientific knowledge in regards to the way we historically perceived and interpreted the human body, with the objective of transferring such understanding within contemporary time and project it further into the future, striving to unravel in which way our comprehension of the biological body affects our current society and the related cultural context.
Living SciFi: BioArt and Our Futures
Catherine Young (PHP)
Why tinker with living systems? Beyond growing bacteria, bioart gives us vibrant microcosms where we can push the boundaries of what it means to be alive. By experimenting with biological processes, we can debate on the concept of life and what it means for our societies. Bioart can be viewed as visual science fiction, where we can architect our futures using living systems as their crayons. It can be used to design useful things and to discuss ethical questions. This talk details the functions of bioart and suggests ways to engage with it—whether or not one has access to laboratories.
Agar: our new canvas, my new home
Leaving by the Sea
Pascale Barret (BEL)
Pascale Barret’s research is based on tangible and virtual, scientific and historical media in order to address issues that have to do with identity. She combines and distorts processes of creation with the consciousness that technology tends to transform our perception of the self and of the others. As much as the artist feels concerned about local and global picture, she tackles slippery issues of gender, animality, artefact, sensuality, agglomerate and abstraction. Inspired by eco-feminists & sciences philosophers (Starhawk, Haraway, Stengers), she proposes to consider the "wet" media with a feminine, intuitive and regenerative state of mind. "Staying with the trouble" enables us to transform the nature/culture distinction as a vantage point to "leaving by Sea".
BIOGRAPHIES
boredomreserach (GBR) boredomresearch is a collaboration between British artists Vicky Isley and Paul Smith, internationally renown for creating artworks which explore extended time frames. boredomresearch have a deep and long lasting fascination in the mechanics of the natural world which they explore using contemporary technology. boredomresearch’s work opens channels for meaningful dialogue and engagement between public and scientific domains. For example their work Real Snail Mail (the world’s first webmail service to use real snails) challenging our cultural obsession with speed, received worldwide attention, including: BBC, TIME Magazine, New Scientist and Discovery Channel Canada.
Sonja Baeumel (AUS) works to mediate between art and science, fashion and science, design and science, between clothes and body, between fiction and facts. Her background is fashion design and design though her projects are not bound by a defined field or category. She allows herself to freely explore the subjects she treats, to not narrow her possibilities and therefore allowing (unexpected) results to occur. Sonja studied Fashion Design at the Fashion Institute of Vienna, Austria and holds a Bachelor in Arts from the University of Arts of Linz, Austria as well as a Masters in Conceptual Design in Context from the Design Academy Eindhoven in the Netherlands.
Wayne De Fremery (USA/KOR) is an assistant professor at Sogang University and the author of a growing number of publications about the sociology of twentieth-century Korean literary texts. Books and journals designed by Wayne have appeared from a variety of publishers, including the Korea Institute at Harvard. Wayne is also at work on various digital and artistic projects with collaborators at Sogang, UC Berkeley, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, Hyundai MnSoft, Microsoft Research, and Google.
Anna Dumitiru (GBR) has worked at the forefront of art and science collaborative practice, with a focus on microbiology and healthcare. Her installations, interventions and performances use a range of biological, digital, and traditional media including live bacteria, robotics, and textiles. Her work has been shown at The Picasso Museum (Barcelona), The Science Gallery (Dublin), The Museum of Contemporary Art (Taipei), and The Victoria & Albert Museum (London), and is held in several major collections, including the Science Museum (London) and Eden Project (Cornwall, UK). She is Artist in Residence on the Modernising Medical Microbiology Project at The University of Oxford.
Alex May (GBR) is a British artist exploring a wide range of digital technologies, most notably video projection onto physical objects (building on the technique known as video mapping or projection mapping by using his own bespoke software), also interactive installations, generative works, full-size humanoid robots, performance, and video art.
Catherine Young (PHP) is a Filipino-Chinese artist, designer, researcher, and writer whose work explores alternative futures through interactive storytelling and sensory experiences. She uses her interdisciplinary practice to create high impact projects and exhibitions that evoke conversation about our collective futures from a wide range of audiences.
Pascale Barret (BEL) is a Brussels based visual & performing artist. She plays with tangible and virtual media, science and history to address issues of identity. She combines and distorts practices with the growing awareness that technology tends to transform our perception of self and Others. Since 2003, installations, performances, virtual and interactive creations have been the primary expressions of her solo and collaborative work, in flesh as well as on line.
Roberta Trentin (ITL) was born and raised in Albenga, Italy but she currently lives and works in New York City. Roberta earned her master's degree in Agriculture Science and Technologies from the University of Florence. Following her move to the United States, Roberta obtained a certification in Photography at the International Center of Photography. Her work ranges from the abstract to performance for the camera, and her personal voice and professional background in the sciences influence her art. Roberta's work consistently explores the concept of growth, through self portraits, family portraits and experimental images. Her experimental process is worth deepening while staying alert to her desire for elegance and precision. Roberta has completed a Director Fellowship at the International Center of Photography, and her work has been featured in numerous exhibitions at the ICP Gallery.
Bioart Seoul 2016 Conference
WET MEDIA
current technological climates of emerging technologies as infection scenarios in transmission
Conference Abstract
The conference proposes to host a collection of talks in order to let a coherence emerge around the topic of so-called “wet media”. The term “media” referring here to the material that is used to create whether this be the Duchampian heroism of a thoughtful title or the mass screens of a times square reflecting a certain nothingness while blinding in their brightness, and the term “wet” being much less tangible and more directed at issues viscosity in regard to gender animality, artefact, and the sensuality of today's bioart tech initiatives. Combined, the two terms form the substance of the conference and through this the presenters point out current technological climates of emerging technologies that may include bacteria as artistic medium, infection transmission scenarios, evolutionary and genetic processes, raw big data applications, virtual as well as scientific and historical media, and virtual reality encounters, which -like the conference- go beyond the beyond into boundless of visualisation of meaningful interaction between man, machine, and micro-organism.
Information
Venue: Sogang University, Seoul South Korea
Date: 6 November 2015, 10am to 6pm
Program
Introductions
10: 00-10: 10: Welcome Prof. Jusub Kim, Department Head Art and Technology
10: 10-10: 30 Introduction BioArt Seoul, Prof. Sunghoon Kim, SNU
Morning Session
10:30-11:10 Anna Dumitriu, (GBR)
11:10-11:50 Boredom Research (GBR)
11:50-12:30 Alex May (GBR)
12:30-12:45 Questions Session
12:45-14:00 Lunch Break
Afternoon Session
14: 00-14:40 Wayne de Fremery (KOR)
15:20-15:35 Questions Session
15:35-15:55 Catherine Young (PHP)
15:55-16:15 Roberta Trentin (ITL)
16:15-16:35 Pascale Barret (FRN)
16:35-16:50 Questions Session
16:50-17: 00 Closing Wayne de Fremery and Arthur Clay
___________TALK ABSTRACTS
The Challenges of BioArt
Anna Dumitriu (GBR)
Artist Anna Dumitriu will discuss her artistic collaboration with the Modernising Medical Microbiology Project, a team of scientists based at the University of Oxford who use cutting edge new methods for studying the genetic relationships of bacteria. She will talk about the challenges and benefits of working with bacteria as an artistic medium and how she engages wide audiences in issues that will affect the future health of all of us through her art installations and workshops, which have been exhibited around the world. Dumitriu will also introduce her recent book "Trust me, I'm an Artist: Towards an Ethics of Art and Science Collaboration", which investigates novel ethical issues arising through artists working in laboratory settings, and talk about the wider challenges of artists working with emerging technologies.
Title: Exploring a Scientific Notion of Truth
Boredomresearch (GBR)
Boredomresearch will share their excitement for expressing what cannot be seen in scientific data Creating landscapes illuminated by infection transmission scenarios and revealing the intriguing beauty of slumber in a real-time artwork driven by the firing neurons of dreaming mice - boredomresearch use animation and light to explore the digital realm beyond the bounds of visualisation. Their artworks are informed by scientific methods and data but remain distinctly poetic in nature. boredomresearch will present insights from collaborating with a mathematical modeller and a neuroscientist to challenge established boundaries and addressed a growing need for meaningful interaction across disciplines.
Sequence
Alex May (GBR)
"Sequence" is an ongoing series of digital artworks exploring the process, applications, and raw big data of Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS). Using the 2.8 million base pairs sequenced from a bacterium from lead artist Anna Dumitriu's body, the artworks range from a dress, stained with bacteria and antibiotics that is projection mapped with the raw light output of a MiSeq sequencer, to virtual reality encounters with vast sculptural forms made from the reconstructed genome. Alex will discuss the complex technical and artistic challenges he and Anna have faced during the project and introduce the artwork produced so far.
Bibliography, Biology, and Creative Textual Taxonomies
Wayne de Fremery (KOR)
Evolutionary and
genetic metaphors have shaped bibliographic theory and practice in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This talk will explore these metaphors and
how they affected the ways that culture was transmitted and preserved. It will
also address how bibliography might adapt to our current technological climate
by reimagining itself as an expressive humanistic practice in the service of
discovery, interpretation, and wonder.
Cross-disciplinary research: balancing imagination and the extraordinary with factual technical knowledg
Sonja Bäumel (AUS/NLD)
The talk introduces investigations of an ongoing interdisciplinary research and creative process in the unexpected diversity of the human ecosystem, in its 'social network' and in our changing perspective on the human body. We have ten times more bacterial cells than human cells in and on us. If ninety percent of cells that constitute our body are not human but bacterial, how do we have to re-imagine the human and where could this new knowledge lead? The interest lies in what influences scientific knowledge in regards to the way we historically perceived and interpreted the human body, with the objective of transferring such understanding within contemporary time and project it further into the future, striving to unravel in which way our comprehension of the biological body affects our current society and the related cultural context.
Living SciFi: BioArt and Our Futures
Catherine Young (PHP)
Why tinker with living systems? Beyond growing bacteria, bioart gives us vibrant microcosms where we can push the boundaries of what it means to be alive. By experimenting with biological processes, we can debate on the concept of life and what it means for our societies. Bioart can be viewed as visual science fiction, where we can architect our futures using living systems as their crayons. It can be used to design useful things and to discuss ethical questions. This talk details the functions of bioart and suggests ways to engage with it—whether or not one has access to laboratories.
Agar: our new canvas, my new home
Roberta Trentin (ITL)
The presentations introduces how the artist's scientific background became her current artistic inspiration. In the ongoing photo series Bios/ βίος, the artists proposes a new way of looking at the mediums used. The translucent features that Agar possesses, not only transforms the concept of canvas , but also offers a new ephemeral layer for the artist to engage with. In Bios/ βίος agar becomes a surface of convergence between the concepts performed and those shown.
The presentations introduces how the artist's scientific background became her current artistic inspiration. In the ongoing photo series Bios/ βίος, the artists proposes a new way of looking at the mediums used. The translucent features that Agar possesses, not only transforms the concept of canvas , but also offers a new ephemeral layer for the artist to engage with. In Bios/ βίος agar becomes a surface of convergence between the concepts performed and those shown.
Pascale Barret (BEL)
Pascale Barret’s research is based on tangible and virtual, scientific and historical media in order to address issues that have to do with identity. She combines and distorts processes of creation with the consciousness that technology tends to transform our perception of the self and of the others. As much as the artist feels concerned about local and global picture, she tackles slippery issues of gender, animality, artefact, sensuality, agglomerate and abstraction. Inspired by eco-feminists & sciences philosophers (Starhawk, Haraway, Stengers), she proposes to consider the "wet" media with a feminine, intuitive and regenerative state of mind. "Staying with the trouble" enables us to transform the nature/culture distinction as a vantage point to "leaving by Sea".
BIOGRAPHIES
boredomreserach (GBR) boredomresearch is a collaboration between British artists Vicky Isley and Paul Smith, internationally renown for creating artworks which explore extended time frames. boredomresearch have a deep and long lasting fascination in the mechanics of the natural world which they explore using contemporary technology. boredomresearch’s work opens channels for meaningful dialogue and engagement between public and scientific domains. For example their work Real Snail Mail (the world’s first webmail service to use real snails) challenging our cultural obsession with speed, received worldwide attention, including: BBC, TIME Magazine, New Scientist and Discovery Channel Canada.
Sonja Baeumel (AUS) works to mediate between art and science, fashion and science, design and science, between clothes and body, between fiction and facts. Her background is fashion design and design though her projects are not bound by a defined field or category. She allows herself to freely explore the subjects she treats, to not narrow her possibilities and therefore allowing (unexpected) results to occur. Sonja studied Fashion Design at the Fashion Institute of Vienna, Austria and holds a Bachelor in Arts from the University of Arts of Linz, Austria as well as a Masters in Conceptual Design in Context from the Design Academy Eindhoven in the Netherlands.
Wayne De Fremery (USA/KOR) is an assistant professor at Sogang University and the author of a growing number of publications about the sociology of twentieth-century Korean literary texts. Books and journals designed by Wayne have appeared from a variety of publishers, including the Korea Institute at Harvard. Wayne is also at work on various digital and artistic projects with collaborators at Sogang, UC Berkeley, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, Hyundai MnSoft, Microsoft Research, and Google.
Anna Dumitiru (GBR) has worked at the forefront of art and science collaborative practice, with a focus on microbiology and healthcare. Her installations, interventions and performances use a range of biological, digital, and traditional media including live bacteria, robotics, and textiles. Her work has been shown at The Picasso Museum (Barcelona), The Science Gallery (Dublin), The Museum of Contemporary Art (Taipei), and The Victoria & Albert Museum (London), and is held in several major collections, including the Science Museum (London) and Eden Project (Cornwall, UK). She is Artist in Residence on the Modernising Medical Microbiology Project at The University of Oxford.
Alex May (GBR) is a British artist exploring a wide range of digital technologies, most notably video projection onto physical objects (building on the technique known as video mapping or projection mapping by using his own bespoke software), also interactive installations, generative works, full-size humanoid robots, performance, and video art.
Catherine Young (PHP) is a Filipino-Chinese artist, designer, researcher, and writer whose work explores alternative futures through interactive storytelling and sensory experiences. She uses her interdisciplinary practice to create high impact projects and exhibitions that evoke conversation about our collective futures from a wide range of audiences.
Pascale Barret (BEL) is a Brussels based visual & performing artist. She plays with tangible and virtual media, science and history to address issues of identity. She combines and distorts practices with the growing awareness that technology tends to transform our perception of self and Others. Since 2003, installations, performances, virtual and interactive creations have been the primary expressions of her solo and collaborative work, in flesh as well as on line.
Roberta Trentin (ITL) was born and raised in Albenga, Italy but she currently lives and works in New York City. Roberta earned her master's degree in Agriculture Science and Technologies from the University of Florence. Following her move to the United States, Roberta obtained a certification in Photography at the International Center of Photography. Her work ranges from the abstract to performance for the camera, and her personal voice and professional background in the sciences influence her art. Roberta's work consistently explores the concept of growth, through self portraits, family portraits and experimental images. Her experimental process is worth deepening while staying alert to her desire for elegance and precision. Roberta has completed a Director Fellowship at the International Center of Photography, and her work has been featured in numerous exhibitions at the ICP Gallery.