When I was writing this long and rambling report, I realized that every title contained a question mark. is it a sign of our failure to embrace this complex and difficult notion? does the question mark symbolize uncertainty (uncertain present and future, uncertain methods, fear of uncertainty ? The entire […]
Another fascinating stream at Mutamorphosis was Crossbreeding Sensibilities moderated by Franco Torriani What are the hopes and fears of becoming a hybrid in a de-modern scenario? How to understand neo-biological civilization and its anxieties? Can artists and creative practitioners substantially contribute, by cross researches and productions, to the treatment of major […]
One of The most interesting aspects of Mutamorphosis is both its disciplinary and thematic diversity. gathered under the same thematic umbrella, artists, scientists and theorists engage in inspiring conversations ranging from the internet of things to the networks of power (Phillips), deal with the full spectrum of living and semi-living […]
Being an attractor myself, I had a special investment in learning how artists and scientists understood and dealt with uncertainty. Upon meeting the artists and academics in my stream Beyond Uncertainty we agreed that despite the title of the conference, nobody had attempted to define uncertainty yet. after one day […]
Following her multi-year project on bacteria and the bacterial sublime, Anna Dumitriu presented a well balanced panel where artists (Dumitriu, Adam Zaretsky and Tagny Duff) and scientists (Kevin Cole and James Price) dealt with news on looming epidemics, mutations and lab waste: the antibiotic-resistant superbugs plaguing many hospitals, or multidrug […]
Everything preceding and during the conference highlighted an overall difficulty to deal with anything unexpected or unpredictable, starting from the fact that the program was only released a few weeks before the event. this caused some people to become impatients: this conference about uncertainty was indeed, very uncertain. I found […]
…with a little delay, and after a few inspiring days and a trip that felt like eternity, it is time for me to start transferring my remarks on the Mutamorphosis festival here. While I was traveling back home I noticed that early comments on the festival have already made their […]
Alondra Nelson is well known for her research on ancestry and the implications of DNA in genealogy. Her book Body and soul, the Black Panther Party and the fight against Medical Discrimination explores the way discrimination, far from being limited to the social realm, intervenes at the medical and genetic level […]
Day three of the festival was a bit more relaxed but not less intense. The day was dedicated to a movie screening and a key note lecture by Alondra Nelson (with Heidi McKenzie and Jeff Thomas as respondents) The topic for today was “the immortal body” It was also an […]
Thinking about the various definition of ecology, symbiosis is one of the terms that come to mind. Take a mushroom: how much of an influence does a mushroom has over our body? once we inject it, is it going to dissipate in our body? or is it going to continue […]
From the behavioral science of dancers, Rachel Mayeri directed our attention to primatology and, well, how our anthropocentric identification with primates can lay bare and ridicule our social habits.Her Primate Cinema was hilarious and somehow sad to watch, as the split screen– one side showing scenes of animal sociality and […]
Last night we attended a dance performance of EXPERIMENTS, where Logic and Emotion Collide, a collaboration between dancers and animal behavior scientists and ecologists. the piece is the product of a collaboration initiated in 2007 by dance choreographer Gail Lotenberg who approached Mark Winston, professor of biological science at Simon […]
Sound has been used extensively by artists to transmit the vitality and the complexity of their body to a wider audience. however, it is not utilized very often by the scientist or by the clinician, unless we consider the sound uttered by the process of machines such as MRI or […]
Back to the general themes of this festival, I am reminded of Fernanda D’Agostino’s claim that exploring science with art may uncover the unseen. I would add that the unseen can consist of many disparate things: from Butler’s revelation on its more personal and visceral senses, we quickly discover that […]
If C-lab’s presentation felt a bit like a survey and an introduction to the many aspects touched by the combination of art and biology, each of the following interventions engaged in deeper reflections of these aspects. Jack Butler’s very personal journey dealt with the challenges of exploring and representing pain […]
Second day, second topic. this time, presenters addressed issues and work related to, and inspired by biology, sometimes by engaging directly with biology as a medium with which to experiment and sometimes as a background presence to observe and critically explore. Biology refers to a broad field that spans the […]
The last two presentations seemed to be quite different from each other and from any other presentation of the day. Krister Shalm and James Andrew Smith are two scientists not directly involved with any artist or artistic activities. However, a further reflection reveals how quantum physics (Shalm) and engineering (Smith) […]
It was a bit of a relief to find that indeed, someone had thought seriously about the environment. Marc Bohlen’s work is all focused on issues related to the environment. However, he is concerned about one issue in particular: popular science often talks about pollution as if it applied equally […]
I was very excited to hear that among the projects featured at Subtle Technologies there would be a video featuring a proposal to save Venice from its demise as threatening water is increasingly rising. Well, I was soon disappointed. the project by Rachel Armstrong might even be a commendable attempt to […]
Seeing the invisible and making the invisible visible is what Fernanda D’Agostino seeks in her art practice. Her collaborations with Biomechanist Dr. Bret Tobalske and cinematographer Harry Dawson, Environmental Studies Professor John Reuter, and, more recently, with choreographers and programmers, revolve around revealing elements that we normally don’t see (but we can […]
…for those who thought that Youtube was about to go extinct once all those copyright videos were removed by the various industries, or those who thought that youtube had turned into a massive kitty display: youtube is thriving and redefining itself as we speak according to Henry Reich, who has […]
