Synthetic Aesthetics: Call for Residents — Deadline: March 31, 2010.

We seek participants for a project on synthetic biology, design, and aesthetics. The project will provide funding to bring together scientists and engineers working in synthetic biology with artists, designers,
and other creative practitioners.

Resources will be made available for twelve funded ‘embedded residencies’, in which six artists and designers will spend two weeks in laboratories, and six scientists and engineers will spend two weeks in artistic studios and design workspaces (institutions or independent studios). The participants will be in six exchanges (synbio/creative), each pair spending four weeks working together over the project. Continue reading

Symbio — with Aljoscha, Eleanna Anagnos, Richard Fajnor, Joseph Farbrook, Andrew Johnson, Marek Kvetan, Joao Simoes, Al Wildey :: December 21, 2009 - February 14th, 2010 :: Opening: December 21; 6:00 pm :: Vaclav Spala Gallery, Narodni 30, 110 00 Prague, Czech Republic.

Technology is influencing the way we conduct our everyday routines. Digital developments methodically build and redefine technology’s existence in our cultural identity. Digital media constructs an abstract version of our reality into complex recreations that can be viewed on a monitor. The exploration of our world in virtual reality, as opposed to a world that can be touched, is how new media is changing traditional forms of art. Continue reading

Eduardo Kac :: July 29, 2009; 6:00 pm :: The Project Room for New Media, Chelsea Art Museum (CAM), 556 West 22nd Street, New York City .

Eduardo Kac, a Brazilian-born Chicago-based pioneer of telepresence and bio art, is internationally known for his 1999 groundbreaking transgenic artwork “Genesis”, and “GFP Bunny, Alba”, the fluorescent green rabbit that attracted global attention in 2000.

Kac will talk about his new transgenic work Natural History of the Enigma has, a plantimal that is a genetically-engineered flower hybrid of the artist and Petunia. The work is a poetic reflection on the contiguity of life between different species. Continue reading

80+1 Kilpisjarvi — Climate Change (Finland): Part of 80+1-project by Ars Electronica :: Conference: July 15-18, 2009 :: Call for Participation.

80 + 1 Kilpisjarvi will host a four day conference (July 15-18) open for participation via the global window in Linz and via stream online. During the four days researchers will present a variety of issues about climate change in the arctic and globally. The themes vary from animal adaptability to societies’ preparedness to a changing environment. The audience has the opportunity to pose questions and discuss climate change with experts. The afternoon offers a video-screening program of artistic approaches related to the topic of climate change. Continue reading

“[...] Over the course of two decades Eduardo Kac’s hybrid networks connected in real time disparate and distant elements. They have also offered new insights into art while leading the artist in 1999 to the literal creation of new hybrid life forms. By changing habitual ways of seeing and communicating, Kac’s networks and transgenic creations continuously challenge our understanding of the “natural” environment as well as of the environment of art. They explore what the French philosopher Jacques Rancière termed the “distribution of the visible, the sayable, and the possible.”” From Invisible in plain sight, and as alive as you and I: An Interview with Eduardo Kac by Simone Osthoff, Flusser Studies.

1st X0y1 Meeting :: October 2009 :: Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Andalusian Contemporary Art Centre, Seville, Spain :: Call for Theoretical, Artistic, and Creative Projects on Gender and Cyberspace — Deadline: July 20, 2009.

The aim of the 1st X0y1 Meeting is to address the relationships between discursive and artistic practices about gender and the Internet, in terms of the different political and socio-critical theories that consider the cultural construction of sexual difference and an online society. The working framework will bring together contributions that deal with one or more of the following issues: Continue reading

Natural History of The Enigma — by Eduardo Kac — … is a plantimal, a new life form I created and that I call Edunia, a genetically-engineered flower that is a hybrid of myself and Petunia …

Developed between 2003 and 2008 … (t)he Edunia has red veins on light pink petals and a gene of mine is expressed on every cell of its red veins, i.e., my gene produces a protein in the veins only. The gene was isolated and sequenced from my blood. The petal pink background, against which the red veins are seen, is evocative of my own pinkish white skin tone. The result of this molecular manipulation is a bloom that creates the living image of human blood rushing through the veins of a flower…” More >>

Eye of the Storm :: June 19-20, 2009 :: Tate Britain, Millbank, London.

This two-day symposium brings together scientists, artists, social scientists and policy-makers to explore scientific controversy from an interdisciplinary perspective. From esoteric arguments over the structure of the universe to highly charged public controversies around the use of stem cells. Eye of the Storm will touch on brilliance and ego, dissent and whistle-blowing, big science, high finance, deviant science, the reliability of knowledge and the legislation of uncertainty. Speakers include Sheila Jasanoff, Eduardo Kac, Roger Malina, Rod Dickinson and Oron Catts.

Organised in collaboration with and supported by The Arts Catalyst in association with Leonardo/ OLATS.

Cybernetic Bacteria 2.0 by The Institute of Unnecessary Research :: April 16 - July 22, 2009 :: Talk: April 18, 2009; 5:00 pm :: The Science Gallery, Pearse Street, Dublin, Ireland.

What would a creature with access to humanity’s digital knowledge, the genetic toolbox that drives evolution; the sophistication of the pathogen; and awareness of all our intimate vulnerabilities do? In Cybernetic Bacteria 2.0, the chemical communication of bacteria and the live data streams of our own digital networks (the wireless / bluetooth / RFID activity taking place in and around the gallery) are combined in real time to generate a brand new artificial life form. This installation explores the layers of complexity in both digital and organic communications networks and investigates the relationship of bacteria to artificial life. By Anna Dumitriu (IUR - Director), Dr. Simon Park (IUR -Physarum Dynamic), Dr Blay Whitby (IUR - Head of Ethics), Tom Keene and Lorenzo Grespan U.K. Continue reading

Biotech Art – Revisited :: Exhibition: April 9 - May 2, 2009 — Opening: April 8, 6:00 pm :: Symposium: Life, Death & Biotechnia — April 8; 10:00 am - 5:00 pm :: Workshop: Vital Micro-Ecologies: Splice, Dice, Duplicate — April 14-17 :: Experimental Art Foundation, Lion Arts Centre, North Terrace (West End) Adelaide, South Australia.

The Biotech Art – Revisited project plans to explore connections between art, culture, biotechnology & genomics, with leading Australian and international artists and theorists set to present their recent works. Biotech Art – Revisited includes an exhibition (of the same name), a workshop, and a free public symposium. Continue reading