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A relaxed and creative atmosphere swarms around the picnic 2010 event. I myself am mostly here because of the Designers & Artists 4 Genomics Award ceremony.
Listening to very divers design proposals from about 10 nominated candidates, only a few caught my attention. Some proposals seemed much less thought through then others, but all interesting in their own way. From science fiction but still interesting scenarios as bulletproof skin grown from transgenic goats to more down to earth proposals making a visually appealing genetic map comparable to google earth.

One very artistic and one of my favorite approaches was the microbiological opera proposal by Matthijs Munnik. Recording the sound, and specific movements of microbes to create a visually appealing opera. Extending the reach of biotechnology to the theater and performing arts realm.

Also more familiar speakers, previously mentioned on Ornamism, Suzanna Soares, Micheal Matthey and Tuur van Balen where present. Tuur van Balen (digitally present, via skype) wanted to extend a previous project, the synthetic imune system to the realm of food. The Suzanna and Michael team want to stimulate discussion by use of the common GM potato about genetically modified foods and mass population problems in the nearby future.

Sander Veenhof focussed more on an modern botanical approach, making an plant interface, and needed more of an advise about specific floral behavior.

All together a very interesting day at the Picnic, Amsterdam, and hopefully soon we will hear more from these promising proposals.

The winner will be announced on the 24th of november. Watch Ornamism for the results!

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A relaxed and creative atmosphere swarms around the picnic 2010 event. I myself am mostly here because of the Designers & Artists 4 Genomics Award ceremony.
Listening to very divers design proposals from about 10 nominated candidates, only a few caught my attention. Some proposals seemed much less thought through then others, but all interesting in their own way. From science fiction but still interesting scenarios as bulletproof skin grown from transgenic goats to more down to earth proposals making a visually appealing genetic map comparable to google earth.

One very artistic and one of my favorite approaches was the microbiological opera proposal by Matthijs Munnik. Recording the sound, and specific movements of microbes to create a visually appealing opera. Extending the reach of biotechnology to the theater and performing arts realm.

Also more familiar speakers, previously mentioned on Ornamism, Suzanna Soares, Micheal Matthey and Tuur van Balen where present. Tuur van Balen (digitally present, via skype) wanted to extend a previous project, the synthetic imune system to the realm of food. The Suzanna and Michael team want to stimulate discussion by use of the common GM potato about genetically modified foods and mass population problems in the nearby future.

Sander Veenhof focussed more on an modern botanical approach, making an plant interface, and needed more of an advise about specific floral behavior.

All together a very interesting day at the Picnic, Amsterdam, and hopefully soon we will hear more from these promising proposals.

The winner will be announced on the 24th of november. Watch Ornamism for the results!

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“We’re bringing you a brand new award to stimulate emerging designers and artists within the bio-arts in the Netherlands! The Designers & Artists 4 Genomics Award (DA4GA) reconnaissance session throws you in the midst of a vortex where design, art and life sciences come together. Experience a keynote by the award-winning Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, and an energetic project pitch session with some of the newest names in bio-art to watch out for!

We’re bringing you a brand new award to stimulate emerging designers and artists within the bio-arts in the Netherlands! The Designers & Artists 4 Genomics Award (DA4GA) reconnaissance session throws you in the midst of a vortex where design, art and life sciences come together. Experience a keynote by the award-winning Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, and an energetic project pitch session with some of the newest names in bio-art to watch out for!

The Designers & Artists 4 Genomics Award (DA4GA) is an initiative of Waag Society, the Netherlands Genomics Initiative and the Centre for Society and Genomics developed with the objective of encouraging emerging artists and designers to work in the field known as “bio-art”. In collaboration with The Netherlands’ most prestigious Genomics Centres, the artists and designers can vie for € 25,000 towards developing and realising their projects.

PICNIC ‘10 is the site where the matches between the artists/designers and the Dutch genomics centres will be made. During an animated pitch session the DA4GA nominees will present their ideas to the audience, and more importantly, to the Genomics Centres they will eventually collaborate with. This PechaKucha-like part of the program will be expertly moderated by researcher and “bio-philospher” Ellen ter Gast, and Lucas Evers, head of programme at Waag Society. Ellen and Lucas will also act as matchmakers for the closed-door speed date, seeking out the best future collaborative couples of artist/designers and Genomic Centre.

First things first however: We kick off the DA4GA session with a master class by award-winning artist and designer Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, who will tease out where the Industrial and Information Revolutions converge with the Biotech Revolution. Ms. Ginsberg will explore the relationships between art, design and life sciences through projects such as E.Chromi, which looks at design proposals based on pigment-producing E. coli bacteria, and Synthetic Aesthetics, which brings synthetic biologists, designers, artists and social scientists to explore collaborations between synthetic biology, art and design.

Complete Program Schedule:

13.00-13.45:

DA4GA The Reconnaissance Session Masterclass: Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg

13.45-14.00:

Break

14.00-16.00:

DA4GA The Reconnaissance Session Pitches of DA4GA idea proposals, moderated by Ellen ter Gast & Lucas Evers

16.00-16.15:

Break

16.15-17.15:

Closed matchmaking session between artists/designers and the Netherlands’ Genomics Centres

More info:

DA4GA: http://events.waag.org/da4ga/da4ga-english/

DA4GA on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/DA4GA

DA4GA on twitter: http://twitter.com/da4ga

Ellen ter Gast: http://www.rtodto.nl/

Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg: http://www.daisyginsberg.com/

E.chromi project: http://www.echromi.com/

Synthetic Aesthetics: http://www.syntheticaesthetics.org/

Text and images from D&A4G & PICNIC

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A project by Jasper Griepink. Honorable graduate and friend.

’In my art work I was always fascinated by certain parts of science, linking our bodies and physical world together as one, as an endless enfolding and reclining mass. A create and destroy mastering all materials. – In a sense I look for companionship in these factual signs of our actual connection, I am looking for evidence of our home. I am looking for the signs of paradise. The whole we became disunited from’ .

On a cosmic scale, we humans don’t travel much further than plants do; all living in a wondrously melodic atmosphere. Until this point in history we have modeled our more successful economic systems on animal predation. Animals can potentially move on to another resource when they exhaust the one at hand. Since they can move to new food sources, they potentially have unlimited resources. Plants are more fixed. They can not easily move to richer nutrients or leave an area if they foul or deplete it. They must recycle well. All capitalistic models presuppose unlimited exploitable resources and labor pools, yet neither should now be assumed.

In the 1989 issue of Whole Earth Review, American author, public speaker and art historian Terrence McKenna wrote about Veriditas, which is a term for the green side of mind first described by Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) in her 1151 book Scivias.
Veriditas is a focus on nurturing and excavating the now and the here, rather than the hope to hit El Dorado in the future, or of finding all that we desire for on the other side of an ocean.

‘ The tooth-and-claw struggle for existence, with the survivor taking the hindmost, is a model based on naïve observation of animal behavior. Yet it was cheerfully extended into the realm of plants.. and into that of humans.
This to explain the evolutionary interactions thought to cause speciation and diversity in the botanical world. Later, more sophisticated observers found not the War in Nature that Darwinists reported, but rather a situation in which it was not the competitive ability, but the ability to maximize cooperation with other species that most directly contributed to an organism’s ability to function and endure as a member of a biome.
Plants interact with each other trough the tangled mat of roots that connects them all. Like our World Wide Web ‘

to continue on the story of the Mandragora and the world of Greed, please take a look at my Essay.

Like caves of love, overgrown with treasures of moist plants and flowers, the shallow and hard surfaces will be transformed into gardens of experience. Once we find the occasion to deploy the ability we have to quarry in depth, rather than think in distance. (the mindset of the Plant in respect to the mindset of the animal). The Ability to Garden; pay attention to; or love; that which is already around us right now.

For is it not, that Paradise is a Garden.
And are we not; so immanently far
from being keen Gardeners ?

//

I gave my Seedlings Bodies. I gave them a fine set of roots. I teached them how to nurture. I teached them how to speak. They Sprung from my Womb. They are still part of me. But now they are to Hasted to listen; to the stories of their bodies; and the stories of their flower.

nine months.
nine months.
From seed to Blossom.
a bodily devotion the mother makes.
A miraculous humanic plant as a result.
The human fruit.
a Root with a conscious.
An occupation of space

A gift of motion.
A gift of corpus.

//

Devotion. Devotion must be a wise investment. Devotions that are harder to make in a world that is speeding up by the minute, and overflows you with information. It is harder in a world where there is an inability or uneasiness with time as a spacious entity; when something takes time (as if it would steal our space (or matter), we get anxious. ‘ !EFFICIENTCY AND EXPANSION! ‘ is our creed. And we keep on exploiting time rather than excavating it with care and attention; making the space inside time bigger and more enriched.
We are speeded – And Excelerating – We are like Animals; Greedily devouring the planet without limitations.

But the Mandragora is here. And my Seedlings will crown him the Green Knight of Veriditas. The Flowergun user – the soft yet enduring push.
soon.

All images and text from Jasper Griepink.

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Some time ago a friend sent me this image, i thought i was intriguing. I wanted to post it on Ornamism, but i couldn’t find out who made this image. Thanks to the newest post on Next Nature I found the artist. Naoko Ito. Love it!

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