SymbioticA Event

Artsactive

 is an international network of projects, organisations and individuals involved in artists collaborations with science and industry research labs. It was created in 2006, and gathers now 14 organizations and 4 experts.

This public presentation will introduce the local arts/science community to the national and international opportunities and models of art/science organisations. Speakers include Denisa Kera (Transgenesis, Czech Republic)  Marta de Menezes (Ectopia, Portugal) Anne Kienhuis (Arts & Genomics Center, Netherlands), Vicki Sowry (Australian Network for Art and Technology)  MC:  Oron Catts (SymbioticA, Australia). 

This seminar is part of the Artsactive think-tank hosted by SymbioticA over three days in July to interrogate the issues impacting upon the success and sustainability of art/science residency programs now and into the future.

This event is FREE.

For more information contact SymbioticA on 6488 7116 or email amanda@symbiotica.uwa.edu.au

SymbioticA, The Centre of Excellence in Biological Arts is a jointly funded initiative between The University of Western Australia and the Western Australian Department of Culture and the Arts.

Speakers:
Denisa Kera programme, National University of Singapore. She received her MA inPhilosophy and Ph.D. in Information Science at Charles University inPrague and lectures on new media, philosophy and art since 1998. Her research focuses on posthumanist philosophy. In 2006 she co-founded C2CĄŠ Circle of Curators & Critics which runs a Prague-based gallery focusing on interdisciplinary projects and a programme for artists` residencies inscience labs. She has extensive experience as a curator of exhibitions related to  art,technology and science, such as "WEB 2.0 generation" at the festivalENTER3 http://www.enter3.org, "Artists in Labs" and "TransGenesis: festival of biotechnology and art"  http://www.transgenesis.cz in 2006 and
2007, game art section at the Entermutimediale festival in 2005.

Anne Kienhuis studied Biological Health Sciences at Maastricht University and obtained a PhD at the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences of Maastricht University, Department of Health Risk Analysis and Toxicology in 2007. During her PhD, she used the toxicogenomics approach to make interspecies and in vitro – in vivo comparisons between gene expression profiles of rats exposed in vivo and rat and human hepatocytes exposed in vitro to several hepatotoxicants. Anne is the Scientific Manager of The Arts & Genomics Centre (TAGC), a multidisciplinary research institute based at Leiden University with the role to stimulate and conduct artistic and scientific research into the interactions between art and genomics.

Marta de Menezes is a Portuguese artist with a degree in Fine Arts by the University in Lisbon, and a MSt in History of Art and Visual Culture by the University of Oxford. She has been exploring the intersection between Art and Biology, working in research laboratories demonstrating that new biological technologies can be used as new art medium. In 1999 de Menezes created her first biological artwork (Nature?) by modifying the wing patterns of live butterflies. Since then, she has used diverse biological techniques including functional MRI of the brain to create portraits where the mind can be visualised (Functional Portraits, 2002); fluorescent DNA probesto create micro-sculptures in human cell nuclei (nucleArt, 2001); sculptures made of proteins (Proteic Portrait,2002), DNA (Innercloud, 2003) or incorporating live neurons (Tree of Knowledge, 2005). Her work has been presented internationally in exhibitions, articles and lectures. She is currently the artistic director of Ectopia, an experimental art laboratory within a biological research institute.

Vicki Sowry has worked in screen production, industry development, new media and television for over 16 years. She has a particular skill and passion for establishing and delivering professional development programs for media practitioners in partnership with industry. As Program Manager of art research science at the Australian Network for Art & Technology (ANAT) she manages a suite of residency programs supporting intensive partnerships between media artists and science institutions in Australia and beyond. She also manages the Synapse website <www.synapse.net.au>, a resource comprising a database of international art/science collaborations and an elist discussion bringing together experts around areas of practice including bioart, robotics, AI and cognition, impairment & augmentation, mapping, urban & outer spaces, climate change and the ethical issues arising from art/science practices. In addition, Vicki is a peer of the Australia Council for the Arts and an assessor for the Australian Film Commission. She has honed her considerable governance skills as a Board Director and/or Chairperson for a broad range of key arts and screen industry bodies.

The Arts & Genomics Centre is based at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Leiden Institute of Chemistry, Gorlaeus Laboratories, University of Leiden, The Netherlands. The Centre creates a platform for international artists, scientific researchers and professionals from business and government organisations in the aim to stimulate, initiate and supervise meetings, discussions, collaborations and exchanges.
The Arts & Genomics Centrebuilds upon results of the New Representational Spaces Programme, which investigates the interactions of arts and genomics and aims to describe and analyse the unique role that the visual arts can have in the critical evaluation and dissemination of the results of genomics research.
The Arts & Genomics Centre thus attempts to expand the public debate on (future) goals, means, possibilities and use of results of genomics, form the specific point of view of bio-genetic art and develop tools for drawing in new audiences.
http://www.artsgenomics.org

The Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT) is Australia's peak body supporting artists working in collaboration with scientists and researchers. For the past decade, ANAT has provided opportunities for artists and scientists to work together, most recently through residency programs delivered in partnership with state and federal government, industry and academia. Currently ANAT has artists in residence at the Affective Computing Lab at MIT, AI Lab at the University of Zurich, the Queensland Brain Institute and the Garvan Institute in Sydney. Participating artists maintain blogs for the duration of their residency, providing a unique insight into their experiences. These can be found at www.anat.org.au
In addition to the residency program, ANAT runs the Synapse website, www.synapse.net.au, a hive of information for researchers and others interested in contemporary art/science practice. The site is home to a database of collaborative projects between artists and scientists from across the world, as well as being the subscription gateway to the Synapse elist, a moderated exchange between international experts and practitioners around leading edge art/science practices.
Collaborations between the arts and sciences have the potential to create new knowledge, ideas and processes beneficial to both fields. Artists and scientists approach creativity, exploration and research in different ways and from different perspectives, leading to new experiences and interpretations of the world around us.
ANAT is assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body, by the South Australian Government, through Arts SA and by the Visual Arts & Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian, State and Territory Governments.

Ectopia is a laboratory hosting artists from different backgrounds interested in exploring the intersection of art and science. It fosters the development of collaborative projects involving artists and researchers. Ectopia provides resident artists access to the research being conducted at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência, a leading Portuguese biological research institute as well as other research institutes in Portugal. During the residency, the artists are exposed to the research through seminars and informal discussions with the scientists, being encouraged to develop collaborative projects. In addition, the researchers are also exposed to the artists and invited to take advantage of those collaborations in their scientific projects.
The projects being developed at ectopia will be made public through regular exhibitions, lectures and publications. In addition, the development of each particular project will be documented, and will be available through the ectopia website.
We welcome expressions of interest from Portuguese and foreign artists interested in developing a residency within ectopia.
http://www.igc.gulbenkian.pt/node/view/83

TransGenesis is a programme supporting Czech artists working with scientists and exhibiting their work during the annual Week of Science and Technology in cooperation with the Czech Academy of Sciences. In 2006 we invited artists from abroad to show and discuss best practice in the ares of art and science collaborations. In 2007, eight Czech artists took residencies in science labs and created works that where shown during ENTER3.org festival and the Mutamorphosis.org conference. The goal of the programme is to explore the territory between gallery and laboratory, artistic representation and technical visualization, between the scientific emphasis on discovering the reality and the artistic insistence on re-creating and transforming it.
http://www.transgenesis.cz