AL and AL exhibition at FACT
Originally uploaded by andymiah
AL and AL exhibition at FACT
Viewing entries in
Art & Design
AL and AL exhibition at FACT
Today, I attended FACT's seminar for artists and professionals, based around their Human Futures exhibition. The conversations were broadly about the practice of art processes and how we should proceed with artistic undertakings. One of the most interesting conversations I had was with Olivier Goulet who indicated he was very interested in my view. He immediaely reminded me of Alfredo, of Irene and Alfredo. I want to hook them up together, for Irene to sell his clothes in her 'sustainable clothing' shop in Barcelona.
We talked a lot about his work and I was very interested in how his clothing made from synthetic human skin were received by audiences. He explained that the removal of the word 'human' from publicity led to quite different responses, all of which were really fascinating. The clothes he makes are beautiful; incredibly stylish, trendy and wearable. He's performing tomorrow night and we'll hope to see him, but here's SkinBag: http://www.skinbag.net/
my kind of event, why aren't i going!?
SciBarCamp
Table of contents
SciBarCamp is a gathering of scientists, artists, and technologists for a weekend of talks and discussions. It will take place at Hart House at the University of Toronto on the weekend of March 15-16, with an opening reception on the evening of March 14. The goal is to create connections between science, entrepreneurs and local businesses, and arts and culture. The themes are:
- The edge of science (eg, synthetic biology, quantum gravity, cognitive science)
- The edge of technology (eg, mobile web, ambient computing, nanotechnology, web 2.0)
- Science 2.0 (open access, changing models of publication and collaboration, scientific software)
- Scientific literacy and public engagement (eg, one laptop per child project, policy and science, technology as legislation, enfranchising the poor, the young, the old)
- The interactions of science, art and culture: Scientists and artists as partners in the continuing evolution of the culture.
In the tradition of BarCamps, otherwise known as "unconferences", (see BarCamp.org for more information), the program is decided by the participants at the beginning of the meeting, in the opening reception. Presentations and discussion topics can be proposed here or on the opening night. SciBarCamp will require active participation; while not everybody will present or lead a discussion, everybody will be expected to contribute substantially - this will help make it a really creative event.
The talks will be informal and interactive; to encourage this, speakers who wish to give PowerPoint presentations will have ten minutes to present, while those without will have twenty minutes. Around half of the time will be dedicated to small group discussions on topics suggested by the participants. The social events and meals will make it easy to meet people from different fields and industries. Our venue, Hart House, is a congenial space with plenty of informal areas to work or talk, and there will be free wireless access throughout.
Our goals are:
- Igniting new projects, collaborations, business opportunities, and further events.
- Intellectual stimulation and good conversation.
- Integrating science into Toronto's cultural, entrepreneurial, and intellectual activities.
- Prototyping a model that can be easily duplicated elsewhere.
Attendance is free, but there is only space for around 100 people, so please register by sending an email to Jen Dodd (dodd.jen@gmail.com) with your name and contact details. Please include a link to your blog or your organization's webpage that we can display with your name on the participants list at www.SciBarCamp.org.
Sponsorship
Thanks to our sponsors so far!
- Hart House
- Microsoft
- Mindtouch
- Scimatic Software
We're looking for sponsorship for SciBarCamp. If you're interested in sponsoring, please contact Jen Dodd (dodd.jen@gmail.com, +1 (519) 572 2275).
Last night was the launch of the Human Futures exhibit SK-interfaces at FACT. It was really extraordinary and nice to see some friends come over for the event. The highlight was the performance of http://www.yannmarussich.ch 'Blue Remix'. Photos are in my Flickr photoset. this image is of his assistant and I was moved by the care and attention this man gave to the whole process. Made me wish i could take better photographs.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVSPw1XrRK0]
ORLAN at Goldsmiths Tuesday 5 February 2008 6.15pm THE THEATRE Department of Drama
The Department of Drama's Performance Research Forum and the Digital Studios' (Department of Computing) Thursday Club are delighted to co-host this special event, aTALK by one of the most original and provocative woman artists working today in what she calls CARNAL ART.
"Unlike 'Body Art', from which I set it apart, Carnal Art does not desire pain as a means of redemption, or to attain purification. Carnal Art does not wish to achieve a final 'plastic' result, but rather seeks to modify the body, and engage in public debate=E2=80=A6=E2=80=A6=E2=80=A6Carnal Ar= t is not against cosmetic surgery but, rather against the conventions carried by it and their subsequent inscription, within female flesh in particular, but also male. Carnal Art is feminist, that is necessary. It is interested not onl= y in cosmetic surgery, but also advanced techniques in medicine and biology that question the status of the body and the ethical questions posed by them" ORLAN
All welcome. Entrance free. Latecomers will not be admitted.
To book this event, call 020 7919 7422
<http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/drama/orlan.php>
New exhibition and conference starting the FACT programme. Looks good!
"Designer hymens, a composite coat made of blended skin cultures by legendary French artist ORLAN, a brain infused with glowing moss and non-animal ‘leather’ growing in the galleries, FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) presents a ground-breaking UK exhibition exploring the idea of skin as a place where art, science, philosophy and social culture meet.sk-interfaces opens 01 February until 31 March 2008.
Curated by Jens Hauser, sk-interfaces launches FACT’s Human Futures programme in Liverpool’s year as European Capital of Culture and as an interdisciplinary exhibition will feature works from 15 international artists, including 2007’s Golden Nica winners at Ars Electronica.
“What used to be understood as a surface that represents the limit of the self and between the inside and the outside can today be seen as an unstable border. sk-interfaces is ideally placed within the cultural programme of Liverpool 08: Artists are exploring trans-species relationships, xenotransplantation, satellite bodies, endogene design, telepresence, permeable architecture and the ever pushed limits of art itself,” says curator Jens Hauser.
Formerly known for her surgery-performances in which she refigured her face and created new images referring to non-Western cultures, ORLAN presents her new work Harlequin Coat, a patchwork life-size mantle, which contains fusing in vitro skin cells from various cultures and species. This prototype of a biotechnological coat is made to symbolise cultural cross breeding.
The Tissue Culture and Art Project’s Victimless Leather investigates the possibility of producing ‘leather’ without killing an animal. Three miniature stitch-less garments are tissue-cultured live in the gallery. Artists Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr are behind the award-winning lab project SymbioticA (Golden Nica in Hybrid Art 2007 Prix Ars Electronica), the Australian–based research facility dedicated to artistic enquiry.
French duo Art Orienté objet has created biopsied, cultured, hybridized and tattooed skin made from their own epidermis and pig derma to create living biotechnological self-portraits. Marion Laval-Jeantet and Benoît Mangin’s work is intended to be grafted onto collectors themselves so they can physically wear and absorb an artists’ piece.
American artist Julia Reodica’s hymNext Designer Hymen Series confronts the values of purity and gender roles using the artist’s own vaginal tissue and animal muscle cells to create designer hymens. The sculptures pose as products to be marketed and are intended as objects of novelty for ‘re-virginisation’ thus addressing the issue of how different cultures value female virginity and the associated pressures.
Zbigniew Oksiuta from Poland will come to Liverpool to create a new version of his project Breeding Spaces in which a large 3D sphere of gelatin is grown in situ. The artist proposes the possibilities of designing biological spatial structures that can serve as a new kind of habitat and presents a new form of spatial coexistence between man and nature.
sk-interfaces will also feature further commissioned and existing projects from international artists such as Eduardo Kac, Jun Takita, Wim Delvoye, Olivier Goulet, Zane Berzina and Neal White among others.
Mike Stubbs, Director and CEO of FACT says, “FACT opens its 08 programme committed to pushing at the boundaries of how and what creative technologies and art can be. Touching on some of the biggest issues of our day FACT invites debate and conversation around life sciences and our changing relationships with our bodies and technology"."
It's perplexing how i can be invited all over the world to speak about this subject and, on my own doorstep, not a peep. There's a moral here somewhere, and it's a good one. Anyway, visit Human Futures @ FACT, then get down to London next week for Ethical Futures @ RSA where I am speaking to the title 'Justifying Human Enhancement: The Accumulation of Biocultural Capital [straight after which I'm taking a motorcycle taxi to make my train. life is complicated]
T H E P A S T I N T H E P R E S E N THistory as Practice in Art, Design and Architecture
An International Interdisciplinary Conference Glasgow, 27th-29th October 2007 THE GLASGOW SCHOOL OF ART - DEPT. OF HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL STUDIES
* What is the role of historical research and critical reflection in art, design and architectural practice? * How is historical research and critical reflection in art, design and architecture informed by debates around leisure and commodification, pleasure and sensation, technology and mobility? * How is historical research in art, design and architecture manifest in independent practice, study beyond the academy, cultural criticism and journalism?
This three-day conference will to bring together a broad range of participants, including scholars, artists, designers, architects, museologists, curators, archivists and collectors, to debate the ways in which styles and genres from the past, both visual and written, have been reinvigorated in the present for celebratory, nostalgic, or critical ends.
Keynote speakers Professor Richard Dyer (King’s College London) has published widely on visual culture and film studies, specifically issues of race and gender in visual culture. His most recent work is Pastiche (Routledge, 2006).
Professor Pat Kirkham (Bard Graduate School) has published widely on gender and design culture, as well as the history of design. She is best known for her work on William Morris, Charles and Ray Eames, and most recently on Saul and Elaine Bass.
Session speakers In addition, the conference involves a range of speakers from around the world, many of who will be speaking in Glasgow for the first time. Speakers have come from Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, France, Germany, Holland, Hong Kong, Japan, Poland, New Zealand, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, United States; as well as England, Wales, N. Ireland and Scotland.
The papers represent a broad range of subjects, from tourist landmarks in Delhi and the ‘rewilding’ of Africa to production design in Hollywood period films and the use of Turkish history in contemporary advanced textiles.
A draft conference timetable is available online at: http://www.gsa.ac.uk/pastinthepresent
Delegate places are still available. Registration details and forms are available on our website.
For enquiries please contact: pastinthepresent [AT] gsa.ac.uk
Last night, we saw the new Matthew Barney film, which included his wife, Bjork. Having seen the Cremaster films, Barney's style remains distinct and similar.
It's a joy to watch, though there were the inevitable audience members leaving half-way through. Having spent some time in Japan this year, it was nice to spot some of the cultural nuances.
Geographies and landscapes seem such strong themes in Barney's films and I read his next journey is down the Nile. I'll also be there in January.
Discussions afterwards were about the distinctions between artists, inventors and designers.
Trailer: http://www.apple.com/trailers/independent/drawingrestraint9/trailer/
Marilène's work is being utilized for our book 'The Medicalization of Cyberspace'. her new exhibition begins later this month. I'm down at the Royal College of Art on the 8th Oct, hoping to get a sneak preview afterwards.... Marilène Oliver - Le Grand Jeu EXHIBITION 10 October – 10 November 2007
BEAUX ARTS GALLERY 22 CORK STREET LONDON W1S 3NA Tel: 020 7437 5799 www.beauxartslondon.co.uk info [AT] beauxartslondon.co.uk Opening hours: Monday to Friday, 10am – 5.30pm, Saturday 10am-1.30pm
"I love her work because it does what art is supposed to do; open the way to another world." Jeanette Winterson
Since her first exhibition in 2003, Marilène has tirelessly continued to carve a unique place for herself in the art world, somewhere in between the disciplines of sculpture, printmaking, digital media and anatomy. Oliver uses digital copies of the human body (afforded by digital medical imaging technologies such as MRI and CT) in order to create figurative sculpture that provoke questions about the perception and identity of the human body in an increasingly digitized world.
For Le Grand Jeu Oliver worked with one sole anonymised CT dataset of a full female body called MELANIX, which she downloaded from a radiology website. Oliver chose to use an anonymised dataset so that she could project herself and her ideas onto and into it. In doing so she spawned a number of new large scale artworks.
Dervishes shows off Oliver’s new found skill of elaborate body carving. Oliver digitally sliced the body 36 times around a vertical axis, which runs from head to toe. Printed onto transparent material, each dervish has a different point of axis (front, back, centre, right and left) thus revealing a variety of views and encounters with the subject. Suspended from the ceiling, five ghostly life-size figures hang, inviting the viewers to walk among them. There is a solemn, dark beauty about these figures which seem to share a sense of intimacy with the viewer spinning independently as they catch the drafts of the passing viewers.
Oliver uses the same radiological tool to create Heart Axis / Womb Axis, but to entirely different effect. This time, the axis’ are horizontal, slicing across the body, one through the heart and the other through the womb encouraging an emotional interpretation of the work. Printed onto polycarcarbonate sheets with specialist colour-changing inks, the presentation draws on the language of gymnastics to suggest movement as the figures arch with the weight of the material they are created from.
In Grand Finale, Oliver uses the MELANIX dataset, to produce hundreds of maquettes. Each different in both construction and colour, they hang as chandeliers, suspended in acrobatic positions, twisting and turning to give the impression of a carefully choreographed and spectacular finale of a ballet or musical.
The exhibition also features Leonardo’s Great Lady which is a 3-dimensional adaptation of an original drawing by Da Vinci; an extraordinary rendition of Otzi the 5,000 year old mummy found buried underneath the alps; a 3-D laser scan and rapid prototyping work entitled Shot Surface and a collapsed figure made of MRI scans engraved onto acrylic called the Exhausted Figure.
Olivers is an artistic brain with the creative spark needed to produce inspiring and thought-provoking works of art. Yet, without contradiction or any apparent conflict, hers is also a scientific brain with logical thought processes and rational conclusions. For this reason, her work attracts a wide range of admirers from the art-collectors to doctors, medical specialists to philosophers and sociologists. Despite this academic appeal and capacity for endless intellectual debate; her art is primarily aesthetic and for this reason remains accessible to all who see to be enjoyed on many different levels.
There will be a catalogue to accompany the exhibition which includes an essay by Amelia Jones, writer and Professor in History of Art, University of Manchester.
Just a photograph from New York in 2002. The right kind of sentiment.
"A one-day symposium about creative visual practices at the frontiersof biomedicine organised by the Medical Museion at the University of Copenhagen in partnership with The Schools of Visual Arts, The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts."
http://www.ku.dk/Satsning/BioCampus/artandbiomedicine/index.asp
Last week, we stumbled on this wonderful environment, which is currently on exhibition in Liverpool, by the Metropolitan Cathedral. I have only been in and out of the city, but am spending most of my time in FACT, which, among other things has free wifi. Kudos! Not many spaces in UK cities are offering this yet, so it's some forward thinking on their part.