28th May – 26th June, SIGN will be exhibiting work from Adrian Woods, Walewijn den Boer, Floris Kaayk, Maarten vanden Eynde, Idiots, Eric Parren and Mathijs Munnik. They will also take part of the ‘Nacht van de kunst en wetenschap, on the 4th of June.
“What is the difference between life and death?
I’ve been asking myself that question for years. I can’t get a clear answer; neither from biologists, nor from philosophers or other scientists. As long as I can’t get a satisfactory answer, to me there is no difference. ‘In living human beings there is the spirit and not in the dead’ isn’t satisfactory to me, because there is no proof of the existence of the spirit it doesn’t exist as far as I’m concerned. The fact that mankind wants an answer to this question and consequently thinks to find the answer in all kinds of religions, is understandable but – in this day and age- also a bit naïve. Why do we want to make something up? Don’t we spend enough time consciously wandering the face of the planet?
Matter is constantly moving, both in ‘living’ and in ‘dead’ creatures. All substances constantly undergo chemical reactions, causing them to change continually, which makes it impossible to discern between life and death. There simply is no difference between life and death. All creatures are primarily concerned with survival.
Science develops techniques that are more and more able to observe details of organisms in the human body, for instance electron microscopes that a magnify a million times, endoscopes for diagnostic surgery, scanning devises using magnetic fields (MRI).
Drugs are being manufactured to suppress depression. The mapping of our genes is nearing completion and various forms of gene therapy are being executed.
Outside our bodies there are different kinds of radiation, vibrations, miniscule floating particles, many of which are undetectable and all these things influence our organisms.
I therefore see myself as a materialist.
I realise that humans have only been on this planet for 400.000 years, just a fraction of the whole. A human life therefore also only lasts a fraction compared to the whole. Humans as a species will undoubtedly eventually disappear.
This makes everything so relative, that it allows me to put everything in perspective.
I often laugh when I see how heavily and seriously everything evolves around the existence of humankind. Everything seems to have to stand aside for the continued existence of humankind. The urge to survive is so big that we are grossly overcompensating. But when the ‘living’ organism disappears from the face of the earth, the earth will just keep on turning.
Maybe the planet will be cleansed.
We should not forget that oxygen developed from seaweeds, probably 2 billion years ago, through photosynthesis. The ozone layer enabled life to develop, but that is just a coincidence. Just because a single-cell organism developed that could multiply, organisms could develop that were able to stay one step ahead of decomposition through oxygen, which is a highly destructive substance. Human beings, for instance, are capable of keeping this up for some 80 years.
I still very much enjoy life as a human and I intend to keep it up for years to come, but my body is still a collection of organisms interacting as in a chemical progress, as parts of the whole, even after my ‘death’.
This knowledge has enabled me to put everything in perspective and enjoy up the good things in life, which doesn’t prevent me from living the life of a responsible world citizen, with its inevitable problems.
In short: I feel that I am a materialist with a strong sense of perspective: a relativizing materialist.
I visualize this way of thinking by enabling organisms – in the form of creatures or parts thereof such as blood, had, bones, brain – to live on in mostly glass containers. Sometimes under the influence of chemicals or in combination with corrosive metals or radiating stones and sometimes with other organisms. The objects change under the influence of time, light, motion, and temperature.
They are in fact ‘living’ sculptures!
I can now also show this change by linking the organisms to a computer, transforming the fluctuating electric pulses into ever changing images and a musical note changing pitch (e.g. Painting and Singing Finger, 2004)
Martin uit den Bogaard, May, 2004″
Martin uit den Bogaard will be opening his exhibition at the Verbeke foundation on 12.05.2011.
Tekst and images from Martin uit den Bogaard.
James Auger & Jimmy Loizeau (UK)
Lecture / Workshop
James Auger & Jimmy Loizeau are artists and critical designers that develop objects and processes by which they question current and upcoming relations between society and technology. Their Carnivorous Domestic Entertainment Robots putexisting notions on the role of robots and their relations with living creatures in a radically different context. ~ In their workshop participants work towards design proposals for alternative ways in which robots may enter the household.
www.auger-loizeau.com
Sascha Pohflepp (DE / UK)
Lecture / Workshop
Sascha is an artist and designer who is interested in past and future technologies, notions of art, business and idealism, and how they inform which worlds come true and which worlds are discarded. He participates in the Synthetic Aesthetics project that brings together synthetic biologists, designers, artists and social scientists to explore collaborations between synthetic biology, art and design. ~ In his workshop participants will do long-term narrative exploration on how the human future continues the past through new technologies.
www.pohflepp.com
Sheref Mansy (USA/ skype session)
is leading a laboratory for synthetic and biology at the University ofTrento. He researches the making, growth and multiplication of protocells: life-like systems without DNA that may emerge spontaneously under the right chemical circumstances. He works with Sascha Pohflepp in the Synthetic Aesthetics project. www.smansy.org
Arne Hendriks (NL)
Lecture / Workshop
The Incredible Shrinking Man project suggests to downsize the human species to better fit the earth. It brings together evolutionary insights, Space colonisation research, fossil findings, speculative design, literature and film. Hendriks presents his research and its bio-historical, scientific and conceptual components. ~ In his hands-on workshop participants map out the spatial and cultural effects of shrinking by redesigning space, food, and objects.
www.the-incredible-shrinking-man.net
Christina Stadlbauer (AT) / The Human and Apian Foraging Network
Lecture / Workshop
Stadlbauer is a scientist, artist and urban bee keeper, developing new mutually beneficial combinations of culture, technology and nature. She is part of the Herbologies / Foraging Network that combines the cultural traditions and knowledge around edible and medicinal plants with the possibilities of online networks and open-source methods. Her talk is an exploration on behaviour and strategies of bees and men driven by the quest for urban edibles. ~ In the workshop Bee-o-Logical Housing participants investigate hands-on *out of the box* bee-hive-design.apiary.be www.herbologies-foraging.net
Nadine Bongaerts en Eva Brinkman, TU Delft iGEM Team (NL)
Lecture / Workshop
iGEM is a yearly competition run by the MIT, for synthetic biology using BioBricks: standardized DNA components that can give living cells new behaviors. The TU-Delft team won the iGEM competition in2010. They present their work with iGEM and BioBricks. ~ In their workshop participants get to learn the basics of working with BioBricks by designing a bacteria that produces keratin – aversatile organic substance that is fully biodegradable and that can replace plastics in a lot of applications.
2010.igem.org
INFORMATION
SYMPOSIUM 12 MARCH , 09.30h – 18.00h Start: 09.15u
Tickets symposium:
A. Morning program (lectures): 39 Euro B. Full Day program: 69 Euro
Please register for participation via Lucy van Kleef / info@beyondexpression.nl Questions: 06 41015149 (10.00h – 18.00h) Location lectures (09.30u – 13.00u): Volkskrantgebouw conferentiezaal Location workshops/ masterclasses (13.30u – 18.00u ): DeVerdieping/ TrouwAmsterdam
TransNatural is a series of four exhibitions and symposiums which presents interesting attempts from art, design, and science to fuse technology with nature. A glimpse of a new world with work of articulate media artists, speculative designers, product designers, avant-garde businesses and bleeding edge researchers.
In TN 02: Becoming TransNatural they show work between life and technology with images, experiences and intuitions from a TransNatural culture that will feed and contextualize each other. In the TransNatural culture technology plays by the dynamic rules of nature without ramshackling the planet. But what can we think and how should we act to become TransNatural?
At the symposium speakers will offer a varied introduction to workshops that will explore the theme in roughly three different area’s: economy, aesthetics, and everyday life.
With workshop and lectures by: James Auger & Jimmy Loizeau (UK), Sascha Pohflepp (UK), Arne Hendriks (NL), Christina Stadlbauer (AT) / The Human and Apian Foraging Network en TU Delft/ iGEM (NL).
Participants exhibition: James Auger & Jimmy Loizeau (UK), Arne Hendriks (NL), Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg & James King (UK), David Benqué (UK), Sascha Pohflepp (UK/ GER), Frederik de Wilde (BE), Windowfarms (USA), Sonja Bäumel (AUT), Thomas Lommee (BE), Mike Thompson (UK/ NL), Jorinde Voigt (GER), Thomas Thwaites (UK), Walewijn den Boer (NL), RepRap / Ultimaker 3D printer, Erik de Bruijn (NL)
Exhibition 4 March – 1 April Open: Wed. – Sa. 14.00h – 20.00h, Sun. 13.00h – 17.00h Admission exhibition: 7,50 Euro
Symposium 12 March , 09.30h – 18.00h
Tickets symposium: register for participation via Lucy van Kleef / info@beyondexpression.nl Questions: 06 41015149 (10.00h – 18.00h)
Location: DeVerdieping/ TrouwAmsterdam
–>ALTER NATURE SYMPOSIUM: DESIGNING NATURE – DESIGNING HUMAN LIFE – OWNING LIFE
18 FEB 2011 – UHasselt
“If you change a living organism’s properties, you could also change its interactions with the environment or the human body.” (The Guardian)
Recent developments in bioscience and technology announce a biological revolution. The developments within bioscience and technology that pertain to the altering, manipulating and designing of nature, raise many questions in science, but also in business, policy, art and design.
Z33 – house for contemporary art in Hasselt, VIB and Hasselt University have joined forces for the first time in the organization of a symposium titled Alter Nature: Designing Nature – Designing Human Life – Owning Life. 15 international speakers will join the debate in three different sessions about the ability to design nature, the ability to design human life and questions of ownership.
The program and overview of all speakers: www.z33.be/projecten/alter-nature-designing-nature-designing-human-life-owning-life
Z33, VIB and UHasselt wish to invite every scientist, artist, policymaker and collaborator, student or interested party to this symposium.
Friday 18 February 2011 - 9am – 7.30pm
UHasselt – Agoralaan, Diepenbeek – Building D (room H6): www.uhasselt.be/UH/nl/OverUHasselt/Contact-en-ligging/OverUHasselt-Google-maps.html
Registration before 11 February 2011 via www.uhasselt.be/alter-nature
The symposium is free of charge and will be conducted in English.
Alter Nature: Designing Nature – Designing Human Life – Owning Life is part of Alter Nature, an overarching project by Z33, the Hasselt Fashion Museum and CIAP in collaboration with the MAD-faculty, Hasselt University, the Flemish Institute for Biotechnology (VIB), KULeuven University and bioSCENTer.
How’s the fish? Experiment and discussion at the Waag
Would you like to experience how transgenic plants and animals are produced in order to provide for human energy needs?
Together with experimental bioartist Adam Zaretsky, participate in research that uncovers the emotional state of zebrafish and that of the people examining the fish.
Bioethical philosopher Hub Zwart of the Centre for Society and Genomics, biologist David Lauwrier en Huub de Groot, professor of biophysical organic chemistry, are participating in the experiment and will react on Zaretsky’s work. Are you joining?
The Wetlab- where biotech meets art- is Waag Society’s research programme which investigates the link between art and science and examines the ethics of biotechnology.
Waag Society is a medialab which develops creative technology for social innovation.
Date: Tuesday 15th of February
Address: Waag Society, Nieuwmarkt 4
Time: 16-18 hrs
More information: www.events.waag.org
Sculptures (foam Bone China porcelain). The European Ceramic Workcentre, ‘s-Hertogenbosch (NL).
Ceramic as a material has been used increasingly in biomedicine, reconstructive and replacement surgery. Until recently, physicians used metals such as titanium and chromium for bone replacements, but because any foreign substance in the body is subjected to rejection, scientists are constantly trying to find more acceptable materials. Specifically, scientists are searching for substances that more closely resemble real bone; a ceramic composite, when introduced into the body, its porous nature allows blood vessels and cells to enter. Ceramic is an agent with the capability to intermediate between organic and inorganic material. Based upon this research into bio-engineering and medicine, I made sculptural simulations. These synthetic implants suggest a symbiosis within a living body in a continuous process of self-repair, self-growth and self-destruction.
Ajla R. Steinvåg (Vadsø, Norway 1975) works and lives in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. She has her education from Dutch Art Institute, the Netherlands, Kunsthøgskolen i Bergen, Norway, Glasgow School of Art, Scotland and AKV St. Joost s’-Hertogenbosch. After finishing art school Steinvåg did field-research into anatomy, pathology, prosthesis and implants. Steinvåg’s work-method is closely connected to medical models and figurative medical sculpture.
In the recent years Steinvåg’s artistic process has been influenced by medical and technological representations of the body, including technical apparatuses, appliances, bodily attachments and add-on’s such as prosthetic devices and implants. Steinvåg is interested in the representation of the human body in medical models, especially the fragmentation and estrangement when a body part is separated from its whole. Furthermore, this is even more evident in the craftsmanship of replicating human body parts for medical prosthetic. Medical replicas have ambiguous forms, which makes you question whether they are organic or inorganic, original or duplicated, human or non-human.
In the lights of transplantation medicine, genetic engineering and new media, the body itself has become a raw material which can be re-engineered, re-manipulated and re-designed. Often, the research into high-tech medical materials and processes are points of departure for subjective speculations were science serves as a tool. Separated from its original context, the highly detailed body imprints and technical scheme’s loses its practical function, instead they are open for further deformations, as devices that preserves the physical properties of sculptures. In this way, scientific tools, techniques and materials are re-appropriated to serve personal desires, investigation into aesthetics and self-expression.
At the present time Steinvåg is investigating industrial fabrication techniques in regenerative medicine, were aspects of self-repair, self-growth and self-destruction is re-worked into raw and realistic constructions.
Image 1: Peter Cox
Image 2: Ajla R. Steinvåg Prosthetic Self-Portrait Canniesburn Hospital Glasgow 2002
Go to the website class of outcasts.
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