*It's like they're from another planet and not just Western Australia.
8-22 May 2013
1. SymbioticA
2. Opportunities
3. Conferences, Talks & Symposiums
4. Exhibitions, Theatre & Events
5. Stuff We Like
1.a SymbioticA related activities
Field_Notes – Deep Time
Call for Applications
15th – 22nd September 2013
Field laboratory at the Kilpisjärvi Biological Station 23rd, 24th of September 2013, conference in Helsinki
Field_Notes – Deep Time is a weeklong art&science field laboratory organized by the Finnish Society of Bioart at the Kilpisjärvi Biological Station in Lapland/Finland. Five working groups, hosted by Oron Catts, Antero Kare, Leena Valkeapaa, Tere Vaden, Elisabeth Ellsworth and Jamie Kruse, together with a team of five, will develop, test and evaluate specific interdisciplinary approaches in relation to the "Deep Time" theme. Field_Notes – Deep Time is in search of artistic and scientific responses to the dichotomy between human time-perception and comprehension, and the time of biological, environmental, and geological processes in which we are embedded. The local sub-Arctic nature, ecology, and geology, as well as the scientific environment and infrastructure of the Kilpisjärvi Biological Station will act as a catalyst for the work carried out.
http://bioartsociety.fi/deep_time/
Semipermeable (+): SymbioticA at ISEA 2013
Powerhouse Museum Sydney
8 June-21 August 2013
SymbioticA's latest exhibition curated by Oron Catts looks at the membrane as a site, metaphor and platform for a series of artistic interventions and projects, some commissioned specifically for the show and others selected from the many projects developed at SymbioticA since 2000.
Artists include: Cat Hope, Nigel Helyer, The Tissue Culture and Art Project, Verena Friedrich, Sam Fox, Ben Forster, Guy Ben-Ary & Kirsten Hudson, Donna Franklin, Tagny Duff, Andre Brodyk and Svenja Kratz.
http://www.isea2013.org/events/semipermiable-plus/
Congratulations LU Yang
An international jury has selected LU Yang for her proposal “Bio-Mechanical Installation” which she will use as the foundation for a month-long exploratory research visit to SymbioticA in June 2013. The residency award, in collaboration with TASML/DSL will see Yang "Combining natural flesh and machine to produce (a) bio-machine".
http://tasml.parsons.edu/?p=1224
LU Yang website:
http://luyang.asia/?page_id=239
Conference: New Materialisms IV – Movement, Aesthetics, Ontology
16-17 May 2013
Oron Catts is a speaker at New Materialisms IV, held in Turku, Finland.
http://movementaestheticsontology.wordpress.com/
The Puzzle of Neolifism, the Strange Materiality of Regenerative and Synthetically Biological Things Public talk with Oron Catts
Date: 30 May 2013
Time: 6 to 7pm
Venue: Murdoch Lecture Theatre, Arts Building, University of Western Australia
Parking: P3, Hackett Entrance 1
Cost: Free, but RSVP essential
Bookings: http://bit.ly/Y9MTN4
In 1906 Jacques Loeb suggested making a living system from dead matter as a way to debunk the vitalists’ ideas and claimed to have demonstrated ‘abiogenesis’. In 2010 Craig Venter announced that he created “the first self-replicating cell we’ve had on the planet whose parent is a computer”, the “Mycoplasma laboratorium” which is commonly known as Synthia. In a sense Venter claimed to bring Loeb’s dream closer to reality. What’s relevant to our story is that one of the main images Venter (or his marketing team) chose for the outing of Synthia was of two round cultures that looked like a blue eyed gaze; a metaphysical image representing the missing eyes of the Golem. These are the first bits of a jigsaw puzzle that will be laid in this talk. Through the notion of Neolifism, this puzzle will explore and Re/De-Contextualise the strange materiality of things and assertions of regenerative and synthetic biology. Other parts of the puzzle include a World War II crash site of a Junkers 88 bomber at the far north of Lapland, the first lab where the Tissue Culture & Art Project started to grow semi-living sculptures, frozen arks and de-extinctions, Alexis Carrel, industrial farms, Charles Lindbergh, worry dolls, rabbits’ eyes, ear-mouse, gas chambers, active biomaterials, in-vitro meat and leather, incubators, freak-shows, museums, ghost organs, drones, crude matter, mud and a small piece of Plexiglas that holds this puzzle together.
IF A SYSTEM FAILS IN A FOREST
13-23 June
107 Projects
Redfern Sydney Australia
Part of ISEA 2013 Featuring recent work by 2013 Biological Arts Master Loren Kronemeyer.
http://www.isea2013.org/events/107-projects/
SymbioticA's Agency in Movement Symposium
Friday 21st June 2013 9am-5pm
The University of Western Australia G06 Moot Court
Free registration (RSVP essential to [email protected])
The Agency in Movement symposium employs a variety of disciplines to explore the complex relations between movement and vitality.
Motion is observed by attaching a frame of reference to a “body” and measuring its change in position relative to another reference frame. Therefore, movement is relative, means ever changing and is perceived as visceral and “alive”. The Symposium will include invited speakers from diverse disciplines (art, performance, biology, biophysics, biomechanics, and philosophy) who will explore and interrogate the conceptual and technical relations between life (biological or artificial), movement and perceptions of "vitality”, with the hope that some interesting meeting points and/or negations will emerge.
The symposium stems from an Australian Research Council project exploring the use of skeletal muscle tissue which is grown, stimulated and activated in a techno-scientific surrogate “body”. This moving twitching (semi) living material evokes, makes unease, and asks, in sensorial and theoretical means about issues of aliveness and agency. The project is concerned with onto-ethico-epistemological (Barad 2010) questions about life and the affect created through the phenomenon of movement.
Speakers include: Monika Bakke, Andrew Pelling, Elizabeth Stephens, Jonas Rubenson, Stuart Hodgetts, Chris Salter, Jennifer Johung, Oron Catts, Miranda Grounds and Ionat Zurr http://www.symbiotica.uwa.edu.au/activities/symposiums
Adaptation exhibition available to tour nationally 2013-14
SymbioticA's Art and Ecology project Adaptation, exhibited first in Mandurah last year is now available to tour in Australia via Art on the Move. Interested venues and groups should check:
http://bit.ly/XAl23l
Adaptation's first stop is Katanning (WA) in May.
1.b SymbioticA seminar series
Implications of the way we live
Date: 17 May 2013
Time: 3:00pm
Location: SymbioticA
Speaker: Professor Jorg Imberger
By way of introduction I will review the legacy of the last 100 years of "progress. Anthropogenic emissions have triggering new carbon emission loops. destruction of habitats is leading to species instabilities with potential impacts on food production, globalization & increasing wealth inequality is leading to economic instabilities, changing food to a commodity is leading to mental and physical health issues and the massive increase in our capacity to destroy has shrunk the time scales of destruction to much less that the time scales required for healing. So what are we to do? I shall explore 10 simple suggestions:
- Re-establish continuity between generations
- Seek harmony rather than conflict
- Learn to how live on a finite planet
- Re-establish food as part of life
- Introduce carbon/water neutral living
- Curb wealth inequity
- Foster mental and physical well being; curb advertising
- Subdue technology, re-introduce "Creative Loafing"
- Foster local diversity of job opportunity
- Preserve the sources of cultural diversity
Jorg Imberger is the Chairman of the Centre for Water Research and The University’s Professor of Environmental Engineering. Jorg is a winner of two prestigious international awards; the Onassis Prize in the category “Man and the Environment” and the Stockholm Water Prize. Jorg’s expertise has also been recognised in a considerable range of Australian research awards. Jorg established the Centre for Water Research in 1982. Prior to the Centre’s foundation Jorg held a Gledden Fellowship and a Science Fellowship at the University of California. Jorg’s initial objective in establishing the Centre for Water Research was to assess the impact of pollution in the world’s water bodies. The Centre has achieved this major objective through the development of a world leading range of specialised instrumentation. The Centre’s operations now combine three major research objectives: understanding and managing the environment; the development, evaluation and commercialisation of scientific instruments; and support for the water and coastal engineering industries. The combination of these spheres of activity has enabled the Centre to have a worldwide impact.
Before and After: Cosmetic Surgery and Embodying the Moral Self in South Korean Makeover Culture
Date: 24 May 2013
Time: 3:00
Location: SymbioticA
Speaker: Associate Professor Jo Elfving-Hwang
In contemporary South Korean society, appearances matter. The sheer scale of the practice as well as the types of plastic surgeries suggests that South Korea, like many other post-industrial nations of the world, is now part of a wider global makeover culture that is driven by the constant need to improve and maintain one’s physical appearance. In South Korea, the discourses that seek to justify the practice go beyond pointing to positive psychological effects of a successful surgery, and present it as an object of investment where the ‘right’ appearance is increasingly seen to correspond to social capital. The career-related rewards for engaging with successful cosmetic surgical results are certainly far from hypothetical. Yet in the context of South Korean popular media discourses, these discourses are not simply grounded in Western individualism, but are also necessitated by the affective, intersubjective gaze of a social group (whether it be the family or other group that the subject identifies with) which promotes a view that the individual subject’s body is also representative of the collective body of that group. Reflecting this, the narrative logic deployed in popular media and in TV makeover programmes assert that cosmetic surgery is not evidence of vanity, but quite the contrary, a positive proof of willingness to invest in self in consideration of others. Within this context, somatic subjectivity obtained through engagement with surgery is seen as an expression of moral self, rather than suggesting lack thereof.
Through an analysis of the narrative logic deployed in a South Korean cosmetic surgery makeover programme Let Me In, this paper will analyse how popular discourses of cosmetic surgery present beauty as an index of social inclusion through pathologising non-standard appearance as evidence of moral deficiency . Cosmetic surgery, on the other hand, is presented as a solution to the discursively created problem of social exclusion that allows surgically enhanced beauty to emerge not as a sign of vanity but as evidence of desirable moral attitude, which is quite literally embodied/imbedded in the images of the subject’s healed, postoperative body. I conclude by suggesting that these cultural discourses of cosmetic surgery, which seek to normalise artificially enhanced bodies, cannot be taken simply as signs of ‘Westernisation’, but as a symptom of a much wider process of shifts in emerging epistemological discourses of how self is understood in relation to the other in contemporary South Korean society.
Jo Elfving-Hwang is an Associate Professor of Korean at UWA Asian Studies. Previous to her current appointment she was Junior Professor of Korean Culture and Society and Director of Korean Studies at Frankfurt University. Jo has also taught Korean literature at the School of East Asian Studies (the University of Sheffield). In 2007 she was a Korea Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies (University of Leeds), and has also worked as an academic developer and researcher (learner autonomy and EBL) at Sheffield Hallam University.
Jo's research and teaching interests include representations of femininity and masculinity in contemporary South Korean literature and popular culture; trauma, disaster narratives and national identity in literature, as well as aesthetic surgery practices and cosmetic cultures in South Korea.
1.c SymbioticA Residents
Farewell Nora Vaage! Nora has been with us since February and it has been an absolute pleasure! SymbioticA wishes her all the best with her future research and we look forward to seeing her at ISEA in 2013.
Welcome back Loren Kronemeyer! Loren completed her MSc (Biological Art) at UWA/SymbioticA in 2012.
Nora Vaage
February-May 2013
http://www.uib.no/persons/Nora.Vaage
Ben Forster
March- June 2013
http://emptybook.net/
Loren Kronemeyer
April-December 2013
http://rubicana.info/
For more info: www.symbiotica.uwa.edu.au/residents
2.a Careers + Education + Advisories
FROM THE LABORATORY TO THE STUDIO: INTERDISCIPLINARY PRACTICES IN BIO ART
May 21-June 21
School of Visual Arts New York
4 undergraduate studio credits; USD$2400 From anatomical studies to landscape painting to the biomorphism of surrealism, the biological realm historically provided a significant resource for numerous artists. More recently, bio art has become a term referring to intersecting domains of the biological sciences and their incorporation into the plastic arts. Of particular importance in bio art is to summon awareness of the ways in which biomedical sciences alter social, ethical and cultural values in society.
http://www.sva.edu/special-programs/summer-residency-programs/bio-art
AusArt Fellowship for the Fine Arts
The American Friends of the National Gallery of Australia Inc., in conjunction with the American Australian Association, is offering a scholarship for an Australian graduate or post graduate student of the Fine Arts or Curatorial Studies wishing to further their studies in the United States.
The AusArt Fellowship is for up to US$30,000 a year. Applications for the AusArt Fellowship close on April 30th 2013. Guidelines and application form are available at - http://www.americanaustralian.org/education/AusArt/
CITY OF FREMANTLE ARTS GRANTS
The City of Fremantle is calling on artists of all styles and mediums to apply for a share of the City’s $50,000 Arts Grants program.
The program supports the development and delivery of arts projects to enliven Fremantle and provide benefits for the local community and visitors. Funding is available for arts projects and/or activities in any art form or practice that takes place in Fremantle, including suburban areas Applications forms for grants/selection criteria are available at: http://www.fremantle.wa.gov.au/communityservices/Community_development_funding
The closing date for the second round is 31 July 2013.
More information at http://arts.sa.gov.au/grants/unexpected-city-inaugural-2013-funding/
2.b Opportunities
CALL FOR PAPERS
The Posthuman: Differences, Embodiments, Performativity September 11th - 14th 2013, University of Roma 3, Rome, Italy The specific focus of the Conference “The Posthuman: Differences, Embodiments, and Performativity” will be the posthuman, both in its genealogies, as well as its theoretical, artistic and materialistic differences and possibilities. In order to guarantee a systematic treatment of the topic, we will particularly focus on the following themes:
1. The Posthuman; 2. Philosophical Issues concerning the Posthuman; 3. New Media Art, Graphic Arts and Comics, Design, Bioarts, Body Art, Performance and the Posthuman; 4. Ethics, Bioethics, and the Moral Status of the Posthuman; 5. Emerging Technologies, Posthuman Informatics and the Posthuman; 6. Materialism and Posthuman Existence; 7. Posthuman Education
http://rome.beyondhumanism.eu/?page_id=22
Abstracts due: May 15th 2013
CALL FOR SESSIONS
2013 AAANZ
December 8th-10th 2013 Melbourne Australia ‘Inter-discipline’ calls into sharp focus the past, present and futures of Art, its practices and its histories. Are we, as some have argued, all ‘interdisciplinary’ or do we have sharply defined conditions of disciplinary practices? We encourage critical perspectives that engage with the term ‘inter-discipline’, its histories, practices, threats and future. Informal expressions of interest (250 words) in hosting a panel at AAANZ 2013 should be addressed to [email protected] no later than Friday, May 17th.
PROXIMITY FESTIVAL Call Out 2013
PERTH INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ARTS
Sept-Oct 2013
In 2013 Proximity Festival will transform the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA) as artists from all disciplines are invited to create new intimate artworks tailor-made for an audience of one. Curated by James Berlyn and Sarah Rowbottam with provocateur Kelli Mccluskey, Proximity Festival is the first platform of its kind in Australia. Twelve artists will be curated into the 2013 program and participate in a two-week mentored LAB prior to the performance season in October/ November. Emerging and established artists from all disciplines are invited to submit proposals that re-purpose galleries and seek out alternative uses of hidden or negative spaces. No limitations are placed on the artistic creation of the ideas; but one rule remains – the audience and artist must be alone, in a space together.
http://proximityfestival.com/apply/
Due: 17 May 2013
CALL FOR PAPERS
The Pleasures and Politics of Popular Erotic Fiction (Edited Collection) The publication of EL James’ Fifty Shades of Grey in 2011 marks a particularly visible moment in what appears to be a proliferation of erotic fiction, written by and for women, since the end of the twentieth century. More than just an instance of a particular genre of fiction, Fifty Shades has spawned considerable discussion of the significance of ‘women’s popular erotic fiction’ generally.
http://bit.ly/Yc5Z1Q
EOIs & Abstracts due: 24 May 2013
CALL FOR PROJECTS/PROPOSALS
GROWN YOUR OWN
Calling all synthetic biologists, bio-artists, bio-designers, amateur biotechnologists and bio-hackers. Science Gallery Dublin is seeking proposals for projects for our upcoming flagship exhibition GROW YOUR OWN GROW YOUR OWN is a curated, open call exhibition tackling provocative questions raised by synthetic biology, and is supported by a Society Award from the Wellcome Trust. Curated by Professor Paul Freemont (Imperial College), Professor Anthony Dunne (Royal College of Art), Cathal Garvey, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, and Professor Michael John Gorman (Science Gallery), GROW YOUR OWN... offers audiences a participative experience to explore the possibilities and potential implications of synthetic biology, through an exhibition, events and workshops.
http://sciencegallery.com/growyourown
Call closes May 26th 2013
CALL FOR PAPERS
Society for Comics Studies 8th Annual Conference: Comics and the Natural Sciences November 15-17, 2013 Erlangen Comics and the natural sciences: at first glance, this thematic pairing brings to mind such stock characters as the mad professor or the diabolical inventor, either performing slapstick comedy or cultivating horrific beings and shapes in the laboratory. Sure enough, from Gyro Gearloose and Faust to Dr. Mabuse, these topical figurations of scientific research and power/knowledge form a central part of the narrative genres that have also, and specifically, flourished in comics.
http://elinas.fau.de/workshops/comics.html (in German)
Due: May 20 2013
CALL FOR ARTWORKS
Autonomies
Institute for Flexible Cultures and Technologies - Napon
3-22 October 2013
Machine intelligence has been a part of the human imaginarium for more than a century, and the approach to the subject matter is inevitably marked by sci-fi utopian/dystopian scenarios with automatised societies of our near future. The efforts to make machines more independent from the environment, with the possibility of independent action in relation to man, have produced an increase in efficiency, human emancipation from alienating serial production (manufacturing, or later fordist), technological unemployment, and entirely new areas of ecological risks.
http://napon.org/1374exhibition-form/
Deadline: June 1 2013
CALL FOR PROPOSALS
re-new 2013
The Big Picture – the confluence of art, science and technology Copenhagen, Denmark October 29-November 1, 2013 Since 2007 re-new has presented electronic and digital artworks that explore and challenge technology and artistic practice, while fostering exchange between academics and artists. In addition to its internationally recognized media arts festivals, re-new has organized leading conferences in the field, including CMMR 2008 and 2009 and IMAC 2011 and 2012. These events have received over 2000 artwork submissions and 800 academic submissions, and reached a total audience of 12,000. Beginning in 2013 re-new will join the media arts festival with its own academic platform. Our goal is to stimulate critical dialog, collaboration and networking between leading scholars, technologists and artists. re-new 2013 will make possible hybrid presentation formats where the confluence of art, science and technology is discussed in its full complexity http://re-new.org/ Proposals due: June 15 2013
OPEN CALL
Art and biodiversity: sustainable art?
Interest in ecology and sustainable development is unprecedented, as is to the increasing concern overshadowing society's well-being. With the news of massive deforestation and the scarcity of water resources, we are continually reminded of how animal and vegetable species are endangered. It's clear that the need to respect the environment is shared by all but that natural resources are being exhausted through conflict of interest and contradictory action. As a result living and endangered organisms are affected by a kind of universal heritage value, as if representing the memory of an uncertain future.
http://www.cultura21.net/topics/arts/art-and-biodiversity-sustainable-art
Call deadline June 15 2013
ARTSOURCE BASEL RESIDENCY
Applications are open for the Artsource Basel Residency. Now in its 24th year, this is our long-standing residency exchange program with the Christoph Merian Foundation in Switzerland. It provides a unique opportunity for an experienced Western Australian artist to spend six months in a studio apartment in the Switzerland, from July to December 2014. Applicants must have maintained a professional artistic practice for at least 10 years. The residency includes a $27,500 grant from the Department of Culture and the Arts. For eligibility criteria and application forms, please contact [email protected] (Wednesdays to Fridays). Applications close 5pm, 30 June 2013.
ARTSOURCE ARTSPACE RESIDENCY
Applications are open for the Artsource Artspace Residency, which runs October to December 2014. Artsource has partnered with Artspace Visual Arts Centre since 1995 to offer this great residency opportunity to WA artists. This three month residency in Sydney gives artists a chance to develop new work and enhance networks. It is supported with a $7,400 grant from the Department of Culture and the Arts. For eligibility criteria, guidelines and application forms, please contact [email protected] (Wednesdays to Fridays). Applications close 5pm, 30 June 2013.
CALL FOR PAPERS
Evental Aesthetics is an independent, interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to philosophical perspectives on art and aesthetics.
We welcome both full-length articles (4,000-10,000 words, excluding endnotes) and Collisions (1,000-2,500 words). Collisions are brief (but well-written and thoughtful) responses to aesthetic experiences that raise philosophical questions for discussion, but that do not necessarily enact the discussion in full. Each issue will have two parts, one dedicated to a specific theme, and the other (“unthemed”) devoted to aesthetic, philosophical questions of any kind.
http://bit.ly/mSviz3
Deadlines: July 15 & August 31
CALL FOR PAPERS
Mapping Your Law/Lore
December 5-6
The Sebel, Mandurah, Western Australia
The original vision that led to the formation of ACRAWSA in 2002 was “to bring together scholars who shared an interest in the study of whiteness and race in order to develop an association whereby our work could be showcased and presented as there was and remains no formal race and whiteness field of study within Australian Universities.” Professor Aileen Moreton-Robinson This conference aims to once again bring together scholars who share an interest in the study of critical whiteness and race to showcase and present their work. Much of the early work by scholars of whiteness studies in Australia was in relation to legal issues such as Native Title and Indigenous Sovereignty, a theme that is reflected at this year’s conference. The conference also acknowledges the place of lore in creation of our present and future, thus extending beyond a singularly legal theme. Both law and lore are used to guide direction and understanding of the world around us. Law and lore are the cartography, the maps, on life’s journey for understanding what is expected and assumed; for aspirations, values and how life is lived.
Abstracts: July 5, 2013 to [email protected]
CALL FOR PAPERS
SLSA 2013
October 3-6, 2013
This year’s annual meeting of the Society for Literature, Science and the Arts, on the theme of the PostNatural, will be held at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, from October 3-6, 2013.
We are currently calling for papers for a panel and/or roundtable on “Reconfiguring Sensation: Sensory Prostheses and the Postnatural Sensorium.”
We are interested in papers that consider questions such as:
-How are sensory prostheses and technologies of sensory substitution (e.g. TVSS) reconfiguring the sensorium?
-What can art-science collaborations, including digital installations, teach us about rewiring the senses or expanding our modalities?
-The rise of neuro-tech in public exhibitions and displays, is it only sensationalism or thrill-seeking, or are there more serious implications for the public understanding of the relation between cognition, perception and sensation?
-Given the availability of biometric data collection for everyday exercise (e.g. FitBit, Nike+, smartphone apps), what are the implications for somatosensation and our somatic imaginary?
-What is 'natural' about our sense modalities anyway? Do we, as Aristotle claimed, have only five senses?
-How have the senses been historically mediated through technologies that help us map our neurophysiological understanding of the body?
-What effective aesthetic examples are there of mashups, remixes, reconfigurations, of senses and affects?
-For those with sensory disability or impairment, how can technologies of sensory prosthesis make aesthetic experience available?
-What happens 'after' touchscreens? How do other aspects of the body me come implicated or addressed in the human-computer interface (HCI)?
Speakers interested in this roundtable/panel should contact (at the earliest possible opportunity):
Mark Paterson
Department of Communication
University of Pittsburgh
Email: [email protected]
Elizabeth Stephens
Centre for the History of European Discourses University of Queensland
Email: [email protected]
Further general Information about SLSA 2013 can be found at http://www.litsci.org/slsa13/
CALL FOR PAPERS
Biopolitics of science and medicine symposium Monash University, Caulfield campus, 29th November 2013
Conveners: Alan Petersen (Monash University) and Emma Kowal (University of Melbourne) Biomedicine and science continue to act on modern life in unexpected and uneven ways. Social scientists and humanities scholars play an important role in tracking and anticipating the effects of rapid technological change on social life, and the ways that biomedicine and the life sciences are shaped by social, political and material forces. This symposium aims to explore the entanglements and intersections between biomedicine and science, the state, citizenship, the body, personhood, and life itself. It will bring together anthropologists, sociologists, historians, philosophers, STS scholars and others who are engaged in research on biomedicine or the life sciences across different institutions and disciplines. We aim to include a mix of established scholars, early career researchers and PhD students. Registration is free. Note that the symposium will directly follow the 2013 TASA (The Australian Sociology Association) conference to be held at Monash Caulfield.
Abstracts to [email protected] by July 15th, 2013
OPEN CALL FOR ENTRIES
VIDA 15.0 Art and Artificial Life International Awards VIDA 15.0 supports excellence in artistic research into artificial life. Projects that win a VIDA Award must be capable of expressing the complex organization of life systems and the hybrid nature of life. The VIDA jury will evaluate artistic projects that meet these criteria and, more importantly, will select those projects that challenge our current understanding and definition of life.
To submit your project for consideration, please read the COMPETITION RULES carefully and complete the ONLINE REGISTRATION FORM posted on the Vida website:
http://vida.fundaciontelefonica.com/en/call_entries-vida15/
Entries close: July 31st
ESSAY PRIZE CALL
TOPIC: NEW MEDIA ART, ELECTRONIC AUDIOVISUAL ART, MULTIMEDIA ART, VIDEO ART, CYBERART, BIOART, DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES and any creative symbiosis between art, science and technology.
MADATAC, in its aspiration to spread the bibliography in Spanish concerning the practice, study and research of new media narratives and tools of the new audiovisual digital art in all its forms, not forgetting the contributions of the past, calls for a prize of essay eligible for all authors, regardless of their nationality, provided that the manuscript is written in Spanish or English language and fits the theme of the prize, be original, unpublished and has not previously been awarded in any other competition, or corresponds to a deceased author before submitting the work for the award. Collections of articles will not be accepted.
For more info: [email protected]
Call closes 2 Sept 2013
CALL FOR PAPERS
Animal Worlds in Modern Fiction
Guest Editor: David Herman
The Editors of MFS seek essays that explore how 20th- or 21st-century fictional texts engage with nonhuman animals and their ways of encountering the world. Especially welcome are essays that, focusing in detail on one or two case studies, use these texts to reflect on broader conceptual, methodological, or interpretive challenges and opportunities presented by fictional engagements with nonhuman worlds.
https://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/mfs/special_issues/
Queries should be directed to David Herman (herman.145 [at] gmail.com) Deadline for Submissions: October 1, 2013
3. Conferences, Talks, Workshops & Symposiums
Funny Kinds of Love: The Ethics and Affects of Human-Animal Relationships
9 May - 10 May 2013 UC Berkeley
Representations and expressions of love between humans and non-human animals suffuse contemporary U.S. culture. There is the love-at-a-distance of the feral cat rescuer, the often- deadly love of the cattle rancher, and the everyday love of the poop-scooping dog owner. There is the loving precision of the wildlife biologist tracking elk populations, the loving compassion of the veterinary laboratory technician, and the loving violence of the dog fighter. And then there is the love expressed by animal advocate Jessica Dolce in light of the reality of overcrowded shelters and underfunded sanctuaries: “putting them to sleep, in your arms, can be the greatest act of love you can give to your pet.” These are undoubtedly funny kinds of love.
http://bit.ly/13K93FX
Artspoken
Stuart Elliot, Dale Allcock, Trevor Bly, Shannon Williamson & Lacey McKinney Fremantle Arts Centre Wednesday 15 May, 6.30pm Free event
FAC curator Ric Spencer guides you through special behind-the-scenes visits and artists talks and stimulates discussion in a relaxed, casual atmosphere. Meet the curators of our current exhibitions and peek into the studios of our artists in residence.
Join local sculptor, writer and lecturer Stuart Elliott as he discusses Peter Dailey’s work and Syndicate member Dale Alcock talks about his association with Apparition: The Syndicate II. Plus catch a behind the scenes look inside the studios of our current Artists in Residence including Trevor Bly (WA), Shannon Williamson (WA) and Lacey McKinney (USA).
Real Fiction Lecture Series
Final lecture: Monday 27th May - 6.30pm, Lichthof 2 Futures, Design meets Science
Speakers: Anab Jain & Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg May 2013 Institute of Design - University of Applied Arts Vienna, Austria Engineering biology sits at the heart of the next technological revolution: genetics, molecular biology, synthetic biology. We have been manipulating nature for hundreds of years, will it be different? What would the everyday ‘microbial’ world look like? and who is imagining it? DIY bio-hackers are already attempting to democratise the technology and the debate around its use - can the design imagination also participate? Bring it into the everyday and add to the discussion? In the last series we asked if imagination and imaginative processes ‘through Design’ can infect reality and be a contributor to substantial processes of change? Perhaps this is where it is needed most?
http://studiolabproject.eu/event/real-fiction
Call for Participation
Melliferopolis Workshop:
Understanding the Essence of Flowers - Exploring Pollen June 12th to 14th 2013, from 09:00 to 17:00 (more detailed program will be published later) Harakka Island, Helsinki, Finland There is an intrinsic link between bees and flowers. In evolution they arose at the same time, bees feeding on nectar and pollen; the flowers relying on the pollinators for reproduction. Bees visiting flowers and harvesting their essence is a choreography that nature performs each year. In these encounters, the flowers disclose their secret to the bees, who take it home in the form of scent and taste. In this three-day workshop, we explore the environment of the Melliferopolis bees living on Harakka Island, in front of Helsinki, Finland.
First, we concentrate on the scientific aspects of the bees' surrounding in the chemistry laboratory built on the island in 1929 for military purposes. In a second part, we focus on the poetic aspects of plants and pollinators, their relation and communication with each other. Inspired by these dynamics, we engage with the visual aspects of pollen, inviting drawing, painting and collage to reveal stories and metaphores behind this natural phenomenon of pollination.
To participate in the workshop no preliminary knowledge is necessary.
Please write a short statement of motivation/intention (200 words) before the 20th of May and send it to: [email protected] A maximum of 15 workshop participants will be accepted, 10 places are reserved for students of Aalto University and 5 for other interested people.
The Science of Stelarc Symposium
19-20 June 2013
Curtin University Western Australia
For decades Stelarc has worked to transcend the limits of the human body. Discussions about Stelarc’s work often concentrate on the relationship between the body and technology, but this symposium wishes to concentrate discussion on the ways in which Stelarc’s work is a manifestation of science, and how his investigations enrich our understanding of ourselves and the world. For the purposes of the symposium we are defining science as the systematic study (by experiment and observation) of the natural world and its phenomena, conducted with the intention of better understanding how the world works. Technology is the practical application of that knowledge.
http://humanities.curtin.edu.au/schools/DA/conference_stelarc.cfm
Australian Animals Studies Group Conference 2013 Life in the Anthropocene
The University of Sydney, 8-10 July 2013
This 5th Conference of the Australian Animal Studies Group will bring together voices from a wide range of disciplines and beyond the academy to examine how new knowledge of human–animal relations requires novel starting points, critical tools and cross-disciplinary connections. Tarsh Bates, who is currently undertaking her Biological Arts PhD at SymbioticA will present: HumanThrush Entanglements: Homo Sapiens as a Multi-species Ecology on Tuesday 9th July.
http://aasgconference.com/
SUMMER SCHOOL on Biomaterials and Regenerative Medicine
July 8th-12th, 2013 Riva del Garda, Trentino Region, ITALY
From Biological Design to the Validation of Tissue Engineering Procedures and Scaffolds with a satellite One-Day Workshop on Tissue Engineering The School and the Workshop are organized by the Department of Industrial Engineering, the BIOtech Interdepartment Research Center of the University of Trento and the European Institute of Excellence on Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine. The aims are to illustrate and discuss principles, design, fabrication and most recent applications of materials to Regenerative Medicine and in particular to Tissue Engineering. The school is addressed to PhD students and Post-Docs with a background in Engineering, Physics, Chemistry, Biology or Medicine. The maximum number of participants is provisionally set to 45. Preference will be given to applicants submitting communications to the Workshop.
https://www.bmm-program.nl/SITE/PUBLIC/GO/article.aspx?id=707
New Perspectives in Homelessness Research: An Interdisciplinary Workshop
Date: 15th July
Venue: University of Melbourne
Recent contributions from cultural studies, human geography, history, sociology, and critical theory indicate that there is a need to open new interdisciplinary directions in the field of homelessness research.
This workshop provides an opportunity to share new research directions and perspectives on understanding, representing, and theorising homelessness. Welcoming participants from across disciplines, this workshop brings together scholars working to understand the complex and multifaceted phenomenon of homelessness: its relationship to wider social processes; the changing nature and meaning of homelessness over time; the place that “the homeless” occupy in the way that modern societies imagine themselves; as well as the lived subjectivities of those who experience homelessness.
The convenors welcome contributions contributing to theoretical development in the field of homelessness research.
More information can be found at: http://crnballarat.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/workshop-FINAL.pdf
4. Exhibitions, Theatre & Events
ALIVE: NEW DESIGN FRONTIERS
Until 1 Sept 2013, Espace Fondation EDF, Paris This world is happening right now. Today, designers and artists have begun to either embrace or rebel against this bioengineered world and as a result, new design directions are beginning to emerge. The exhibition En Vie – Alive, presents a new design landscape, where fragments of a possible programmable ‘synthetic’ future are confronted with ‘natural’ alternative design perspectives. The quest for a different kind of ecological design models underpins the selection of projects, which range from potential sustainable solutions, to poetic interpretations and extreme provocations.
http://thisisalive.com/
You, Me & the other Person
Katharine Dowson, Eleanor Crook & Pascale Pollier GV ART London Until Saturday 18 May 2013 GV Art's current exhibition Me, You or the Other Person meditates on the representation of the human body. The concept of the figure is interpreted, dissected and revealed by three contemporary female sculptors http://bit.ly/14R2p4d
CUT/PASTE/GROW: Science at Play Bioart in Brooklyn
Until May 11, 2013 Gallery Hours: Saturdays & Sundays, 12–6 PM
Life is restless. Bioartists—the emerging group of practitioners who manipulate living tissues, DNA, and bacteria—must embrace this restlessness. The lab is a garden, and the bioartist is the gardener for the new millennium, where breeding advances naturally into gene splicing.
CUT/PASTE/GROW provides a space to ask fundamental new questions about aesthetics and our assumptions about life and death. What, for example, makes a beautiful blueprint for a beautiful form—what makes a beautiful gene?
http://observatoryroom.org/2013/02/24/cutpastegrow-show-opening/
The Art of Sound
Holmes à Court Gallery at Vasse Felix (Western Australia)
9 June – 15 September
Presented in partnership with the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA) The Art of Sound focuses on the NFSA’s sound collection. NFSA curators compiled a ‘sound palette’ for the project – a package of 50 Australian sound recordings that represent the breadth and diversity of the sound collection. This palette includes songs, speeches, experimental works, spoken word, orchestral compositions and environmental recordings.
The palette was then shared with Holmes à Court Gallery at Vasse Felix, whose curators explored both the sounds of the palette and the gallery’s own collections to create unique combinations, linking sound recordings to selected artworks that they felt complemented or ‘matched’ each other.
http://www.nfsa.gov.au/artofsound/
THE PORTRAIT ANATOMISED
by Susan Aldworth
National Portrait Gallery, London – Room 38a Until 1 September 2013
Admission Free
Three people whose sense of identity is challenged by a common neurological condition will have their portraits on show at the National Portrait Gallery, London from March - September 2013. Elisabeth, Fiona and Max are all living successfully with epilepsy. Their life-size portraits have been created by internationally renowned artist Susan Aldworth, whose work explores the relationship between mind and body. “What is the subjective experience of having a fit like? How does epilepsy affect your life?” These are questions Aldworth put to her sitters.
Sentience 2013 Exhibition
18-24 May 2013 Kurb Gallery Perth Australia
Launched in 2011, this annual event features work by a variety of international and Australian artists across a range of mediums. Sentience is a thought-provoking and ultimately rewarding display of art exploring the feeling, perception and individuality of animals other than humans. Sentience is an initiative of Animal Rights Advocates Inc.
This exhibition features current SymbioticA artist in residence Loren Kronemeyer.
http://sentience.org.au/
Data, Truth and Beauty
Exhibition 24 - 29 May 2013
GV Art London
The Broad Vision project (University of Westminster) presents an art/science exhibition at GV Art that explores the integrity and aesthetics of information. Artworks and artefacts include data bending, bacterial portraiture, self-illuminating sculpture and dream inducing installations. All accompanied by an interdisciplinary events programme of workshops (25 May) and a symposium (28 May) http://bit.ly/ZMkE7W
BIOMEDIATIONS: ART, LIFE, MEDIA
One-day symposium at Goldsmiths, University of London
Date: Tuesday 14 May 2013
Venue: Goldsmiths, New Cross, MRB Screen 1 ‘Life’ signifies many things. To begin with, it is a philosophical abstraction referring to our meaningful existence in the world. But ‘life’ also refers to biological processes taking place at environmental, social and cellular levels, as well as technical experiments with media, computer systems and biological models. Life as such doesn’t therefore exist: it is always mediated by language, culture, technology and biology. It is these multiple mediations of life that form the theme of this symposium Biomediations: Art, Life, Media.
http://www.gold.ac.uk/media-communications/calendar/?id=6375
5. Stuff we like
Synthetic Biology as Art: Making Competent Cells:
http://waag.org/en/blog/synthetic-biology-art-making-competent-cells
I Am Stereoblind, but the 3DS Lets Me See the World as Others See It:
http://kotaku.com/i-am-stereoblind-but-the-3ds-lets-me-see-the-world-as-484508038
Flesh Love: Photographs of Vacuum-Wrapped Tokyo Couples:
http://www.featureshoot.com/2012/08/flesh-love-photographs-of-vacuum-wrapped-tokyo-couples/
Bees pay a steep price for that whole "perpetuating the species" thing:
http://bit.ly/11ZOXHx
High-speed camera system catches close-ups of snowflakes in mid-air:
http://bit.ly/1108vdg
The Salmon of Capistrano:
http://salmonofcapistrano.com/
SYMBIOTICA ON FACEBOOK: http://on.fb.me/Moty3D SYMBIOTICA ON TWITTER: http://bit.ly/Kx05lO
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SymbioticA, the Centre of Excellence in Biological Arts, School of Anatomy, Physiology and Human Biology
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www.symbiotica.uwa.edu.au
SymbioticA was founded in 2000
