It is that time of the year: Subtle Technologies Festival is back for a week-long ride to explore Open Culture in Art and Science. The theme this year is particularly timely: DIY-bio labs, hacker spaces and hacklabs, maker spaces etc… are popping up everywhere, new forms of sharing ranging from […]
I would like to conclude this year’s report on Subtle technologies festival with a note on life and time. I want to dedicate this to my good friend Arlan Londoño, a Colombian Canadian artist and curator who had given me curatorial advice on the final panel. I had invited […]
To conclude this fabulous round of Subtle technologies, we couldn’t omit the element that during these days has informed and enriched with its presence our conversations: Science Fiction. Subtle technologies started with a reference to the Hitchhicker’s guide to the galaxy, mentioned many times William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, Mary Shelley […]
So far, the symposium has explored projects and research that understand immortality as a way to bring back the past and the long gone; to restore and preserve memory; to pass human legacy to others; and to extend the ability and the perception of the human in its interrelation with […]
Trained in art and dentistry, David Khang brought to Toronto his research on the benefits and the limitation of Botox injections as well as on the result of the interaction of human subjects and other microorganisms (botox is a neurotoxin). British Columbia is the first state in Canada to allow dentists […]
June 9 morning sessions were marked by two very different presentations, Scott Menary’s Born in the big bang and Alan Sondheim’s Digital and Physical Collapse. Interestingly, and despite their different approaches, they set a dialogue among each other: The first explained how the building blocks of our universe have been […]
Strategically scheduled in-between the two days, the documentary “The Singularity” by flamboyant director Doug Wolens was one of the most anticipated events of the festival. As Wolens states in the documentary website Ultimately, if we become more machine-like, and machines more like us, will we sacrifice our humanity to […]
Hendrik Poinar, a professor in Paleogenetics at McMaster University has some fond memories of his parents (entomologists) spending time uncovering and examining insects fossilized and encased in Amber. What if we could bring them back? what if we could de-extinct dinosaurs and other animals? As a Paleogeneticist, Poinar considers himself […]
Very similarly, Tweets in Space by Scott Kildall and Nathaniel Stern collected twitter messages from a 30 minutes performance at ISEA 2012 identified with #tweetsinspace tag. later on, these messages were beamed towards GJ667Cc, an exoplanet that might (or not) support extraterrestrial life. In 30 minutes, Kildall and Stern collected 1500 […]
During a break between the presentations, I had a very insightful discussion with the attendees. So far, It looks like most of this festival has focused on non-literal notions of immortality, that is, on those instances of immortality that concern leaving a trace of ourselves on this world, rather than […]
speaking about memory and preservation in the near and not-so-near future , Line Dezainde ponders the precarious status of collective memory now archived digitally, both in terms of its arbitrary /curatorial nature and in terms of its ephemerality as a resource prone to obsolescence and loss. in the last few […]
Amber is a resinous material associated with an insoluble bituminous substance. It comes in liquid form,but when it solidifies, it has the property of preserving any object that has been trapped in it. many fossilized insects and small animals have come to us from remote past encased in amber . Amber is […]
“What does immortality mean in terms of a non-human centered world?” Our current world is a diverse mix of many worlds and many dimensions, we are ourselves a combination of the biological and the informational, we live in connection with processes that are outside and beyond ourselves. According to curator […]
What does immortality mean? Does it mean surpassing the thresholds that define our mortal existence? and how? using what instruments? As I mentioned before, there are many ways to interpret this “transcending” mortal existence. We are all aware that it would be impossible to cover the diversity of approaches that […]
I was forwarded this article that will appear tomorrow on the globe and mail (the only national newspaper here in canada) entitled “What happens when our machines get smarter than we are? (No, don’t ask Siri)” by Geoff Pevere. It introduces the theme of the festival and of course the subtheme of (insert […]
Subtle Technologies Festival starts officially tomorrow with the opening of the exhibition The Beyond Category at the Beaver Hall gallery, but let me talk about this workshop organized by Ryan Jordan. Tonight Jordan introduced Retro-Death-Telegraphy with his workshop at Interaccess. using a piece of germanium from the experiments conducted by […]
A short preview of what is going to happen this week end at Subtle Technologies and a bit of history of the Festival
Remember these? Last year, Subtle Technologies Festival ended with a talk on Henrietta Lacks: her life was cut short by a cancer of the cervix, yet her cancer cells were discovered to be immortal. Today, these cells, known as HeLa Cells are widely used in biological and medical science. She died, […]
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 […]
