Digital #MediaArt(s) Numérique(s)

ISEA is one of the world’s most prominent international arts and technology events, bringing together scholarly, artistic, and scientific domains in an interdisciplinary discussion and showcase of creative productions applying new technologies in art, interactivity, and electronic and digital media.

ISEA2017 invites to reflect on the contributions that art, design, and technology provide as alternatives for social development based on respect for natural biodiversity and having pacific coexistence of the communities. ISEA2017 welcomes submissions in three broad categories: academic (papers, posters, panels, and roundtables), creative (artworks, installations, performances, and design cases) and learning (residence, workshops, tutorials, artist or designer talks, and institutional presentations).

Eduardo Kac is a pioneer of bio art. The School of the Art Institute professor has pushed boundaries—and buttons—throughout his career. He is best known for his series of "transgenic" works, art that blends natural and created elements in highly unexpected ways. These works include a green fluorescent rabbit, a synthetic gene built on a Morse code translation of a sentence from the Book of Genesis, and a genetically engineered petunia that contains Kac's DNA. Join curator Hamza Walker and Kac for a conversation on his radical art practice and the many questions it poses for our genomic time.

The annual Richard Gray Visual Art Series recognizes a significant gift from founding CHF board member and distinguished art dealer Richard Gray. Thanks to the generosity of Lorraine and Jay Jaffe, Eduardo Kac will also visit a Chicago-area classroom and lead an interactive experience with the students.

Video produced by Pentimenti Productions.

This program was recorded on November 9, 2013 as part of the 24th Chicago Humanities Festival, ANIMAL: http://chf.to/2013Animal

(Art)ScienceBLR is a public laboratory at the Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology for artists and designers to engage with scientific practices. Residencies, exhibitions, workshops, talks...

We look at the artistic, social and political implications of technologies from computing to biotechnologies. Our work exists at the intersection of art-science and pedagogy, creating spaces of dialogue and interaction between artists, designers and scientists.

Since our inception in 2009 we have focused on using DIY techniques to build low-cost laboratory equipment, so as to offer more accessible forms of engagement with the life-sciences.

We also run a community electronics and BioLab which encourages students and the community to make/hack and prototype.

With two decades of artistic practice exploring an understanding of the natural world through the medium of computational technologies, boredomresearch have become intimately aware of the sensitivity and vulnerability of complex systems, including those which support human life on earth.

boredomresearch have been expanding their interest in bio-inspired systems in a project Robots in Distress which considers our strategies for coping in a world increasingly destabilised by human activity. In collaboration with the Artificial Life Lab (Karl Franzens University, Graz Austria), who are employing bio-inspired robots to provide solutions operating in human polluted environments, in 2016 boredomresearch started building robots made from the same plastic waste that pollutes many marine environments. Their work with biologists and engineers offers a different perspective which challenges a broader concern over a tendency towards increasingly complex solutions to answer the challenges of environmental crisis. This has led the artists to extend cutting edge research in artificial neural networks augmented by artificial hormone production to create autonomous agents with the potential for despondency. As emotional robotics becomes a reality does it also reveal a vulnerability? As we incorporate the robustness of swarm robotics into our technological armory should we also be mindful that the most archetypal swarm of all, the honey bee, is an organism in crisis. In this presentation boredomresearch foster a new vision for technological innovation, one that recognises the fragility of the environment that sustains it.

The Tissue Culture & Art Project (TC&A) was set to explore the use of tissue technologies as a medium for artistic expression. We are investigating our relationships with the different gradients of life through the construction/growth of a new class of object/being - that of the Semi-Living. These are parts of complex organisms which are sustained alive outside of the body and coerced to grow in predetermined shapes. These evocative objects are a tangible example that brings into question deep rooted perceptions of life and identity, concept of self, and the position of the human in regard to other living beings and the environment. We are interested in the new discourses and new ethics/epistemologies that surround issues of partial life and the contestable future scenarios they are offering us.

http://tcaproject.org