Tag Archives: Art/Sci Salon

more-than-human, an art/sci exhibition and series of events starting February 1, 2023

Toronto’s Art/Sci Salon’s January 30, 2023 announcement (received via email) lists information for two organizations, the Onsite Gallery’s events and the Salon’s own events.

Onsite Gallery

This gallery is located in Toronto, Ontario at 199 Richmond St. W. From the homepage, “It is the flagship professional gallery of OCAD [Ontario College of Art and Design] University and an experimental curatorial platform for art, design and new media.”

From the Onsite Gallery ‘more-than-human‘ event page. First, there’s the exhibition (Note 1: I found the gallery’s event page I’m using here more informative than the email announcement; Note 2: I have not included the images featuring the artists and their work),

more-than-human
February 01 to May 13, 2023
Curated by Jane Tingley
Core exhibition of the CONTACT Photography Festival
more-than-human presents media artworks at the intersection of art, science, Indigenous worldviews, and technology that speculatively and poetically use multimodal storytelling as a vehicle for interpreting, mattering, and embodying more-than-human ecologies. The artworks in this exhibition aim to critically and emotionally engage with the important work of decentering the human and rethinking the perspective that sees nature as a lifeless resource for exploitation. Many of the artworks use technological and scientific tools as entry points for witnessing and interacting with these more-than-human worlds, as they help visualize phenomena beyond human sensory perception while nevertheless situating us within them. Combined, the artworks in the show weave a story that tells a tale of symbiosis, intersections, and more-than-human relationality. They incorporate scientific, philosophical, and Indigenous perspectives to create an experiential tapestry that asks the viewer to reconsider, reorient, and rethink relationships with the more-than-human.
more-than-human Online Exhibition Publication
more-than-human curator and artist
Jane Tingley is an artist, curator, Director of the SLOlab: Sympoietic Living Ontologies Lab and Associate Professor at York University. Her studio work combines traditional studio practice with new media tools – and spans responsive/interactive installation, performative robotics, and telematically connected distributed sculptures/installations. Her works is interdisciplinary in nature and explores the creation of spaces and experiences that push the boundaries between science and magic, interactivity, and playfulness, and offer an experience to the viewer that is accessible both intellectually and technologically. Using distributed technologies, her current work investigates the hidden complexity found in the natural world and explores the deep interconnections between the human and non-human relationships. As a curator her interests lie at the intersection art, science, and technology with a special interest in collaborative creativity as impetus for innovation and discovery. Recent exhibitions include Hedonistika (2014) at the Musée d’art contemporain (Mtl, CA), INTERACTION (2016) and Agents for Change (2020) at THE MUSEUM (Kitchener, CA). As an artist she has participated in exhibitions and festivals in the Americas, the Middle East, Asia, and Europe – including translife -International Triennial of Media Art at the National Art Museum of China, Beijing, Elektra Festival in Montréal (CA) and the Künstlerhause in Vienna (AT). She received the Kenneth Finkelstein Prize in Sculpture (CA), the first prize in the iNTERFACES – Interactive Art Competition (PT).
more-than-human artists
Ursula Biemann is an artist, author and video essayist. Her artistic practice is research oriented and involves fieldwork from Greenland to Amazonia, where she investigates climate change and the ecologies of oil, ice, forests and water. In her multi-layered videos, she interweaves vast cinematic landscapes with documentary footage, science fiction poetry and academic findings to narrate a changing planetary reality. In 2018, Biemann was commissioned by Museo de Arte, Universidad Nacional de Colombia in the co-creation of a new Indigenous University in the South of Colombia led by the Inga people in which she contributes the online platform Devenir Universidad. Her recent video installation Forest Mind (2021) emerges from this long-term collaboration. She has published numerous books, including Forest Mind (2022) and the audiovisual online monograph Becoming Earth on her ecological video works between 2011-2021. Biemann has exhibited internationally with recent solo exhibitions at MAMAC, Nice and the Centre culturel suisse, Paris. She is appointed Doctor honoris causa in Humanities by the Swedish University Umea, and has received the 2009 Prix Meret Oppenheim, the Swiss Grand Award for Art, and the 2022 Zurich Art Award.
www.geobodies.org
Lindsey french (she/they) is a settler artist, educator and writer whose work engages in multi- sensory signaling within ecological and technological systems. She has exhibited widely including at the Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), the International Museum of Surgical Science (Chicago), Pratt Manhattan Gallery (New York), the Miller Gallery for Contemporary Art (Pittsburgh), and SixtyEight Art Institute (Copenhagen). Recent publications include chapters for Ambiguous Territory: Architecture, Landscape, and the Postnatural (Actar, 2022), Olfactory Art and The Political in an Age of Resistance (Routledge, 2021), Why Look at Plants (Brill, 2019), and poetry for the journal Forty-Five. They earned an interdisciplinary BA in Environment, Interaction, and Design (Hampshire College), and an MFA in Art and Technology Studies (School of the Art Institute of Chicago). Newly based in the prairie landscape of Treaty 4 territory in Regina, Saskatchewan, french teaches as an Assistant Professor in Creative Technologies in the Faculty of Media, Art, and Performance at the University of Regina.
www.lindseyfrench.com
Grace Grothaus Is a computational media artist whose research explores ecosystemic human and plant relationships in relation to the present global climate crisis and speculative futures. She is interested in art’s potential to foster empathy with more-than-human worlds. Frequently collaborative, Grace works with scientists, engineers, musicians and other visual and performing artists. Her research-creation is expressed as physical computing installations which take place both outdoors or in the gallery and often center around the sensing and visualization of invisible environmental phenomena. Her artworks have been exhibited widely including at the International Symposium of Electronic Art (Barcelona, ES & Durban, SA), Environmental Crisis: Art & Science (London, UK), Cité Internationale des Arts (Paris, FR), and the World Creativity Biennale (Rio de Janiero, BR). Grothaus has received numerous awards including from the United States National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts. Currently she is working towards a PhD in Digital Media from York University where she has been named a VISTA scholar and a Graduate Fellow of Academic Distinction.
Dolleen Tisawii’ashii Manning is an interdisciplinary artist and Queen’s National Scholar in Anishinaabe Language, Knowledge, and Culture (ALKC) in the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Studies at Queen’s University. Manning has expertise in Anishinaabe ontology, mnidoo interrelationality, phenomenology, and art. A member of Kettle and Stoney Point First Nation, her primary philosophical influence and source of creativity is her early childhood grounding in Anishinaabe onto- epistemology. She is Principal Investigator of Earthdiver: Land-Based Worlding (MITACS), and Co-Investigator on Pluriversal Worlding with Extended Reality. Manning co-directs the cross- institutional Peripheral Visions Co-Lab (York and Queen’s). She is an affiliate of Revision Centre for Art and Social Justice, and Fellow of The International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI).
Mary Bunch is a media artist, Canada Research Chair, and Associate Professor, Cinema and Media Arts at York University. Through theoretical inquiry and collaborative research creation, Bunch mobilizes queer, feminist, disability and decolonial frameworks to better understand peripheral worldmaking imaginaries in media arts and intermedial performance. She is co-editor of a special issue on Access Aesthetics in Public, Principal Investigator on the research creation project Pluriversal Worlding with Extended Reality (SSHRC Insight) and co-investigator on Earthdiver: Land- Based Worlding (MITACS). Dr Bunch is co-director of the Peripheral Visions Co- Lab, Executive Committee member of Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts and Technology, a core member of Vision: Science to Applications (VISTA), a Fellow at the Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies, and an Affiliate of Revision Centre for Art and Social Justice.
Suzanne Morrissette (she/her) (she/her) is an artist, curator, and scholar who is currently based out of Toronto. Her father’s parents were Michif- and Cree-speaking Metis with family histories tied to the Interlake and Red River regions and Scrip in the area now known as Manitoba. Her mother’s parents came from Canadian-born farming families descended from United Empire loyalists and Mennonites from Russia. Morrissette was born and raised in Winnipeg and is a citizen of the Manitoba Metis Federation. As an artistic researcher Suzanne’s interests include: family and community knowledge, methods of translation, the telling of in-between histories, and practices of making that support and sustain life. Her two recent solo exhibitions, What does good work look like? and translations recently opened in Toronto (Gallery 44) and Montreal (daphne art centre) respectively. Her work has appeared in numerous group exhibitions such as Lii Zoot Tayr (Other Worlds), an exhibition of Metis artists working with concepts of the unknowable, and the group exhibition of audio-based work about waterways called FLOW with imagineNATIVE Film + Media Art Festival. Morrissette holds a PhD from York University in Social and Political Thought. She currently holds the position of Assistant Professor and Graduate Program Director for the Criticism and Curatorial Practices and Contemporary Art, Design, and New Media Histories Masters programs at OCAD University.
www.suzannemorrissette.com
Joel Ong (PhD, MSc.Bioart) is a media artist whose works connect scientific and artistic approaches to the environment, developed from more than a decade of explorations in sound, installation and socially conscious art. His conceptual explorations revolve around metaphors of distance, connectivity, assiduously reworking this notion of the ‘environment’ – how different tools and scales of observation reveal diverse biotic and abiotic relationalities, and how these continually oscillate between natural and computational worlds. His works have been shown at internationally at the Currents New Media Festival, Nuit Blanche Toronto, Seattle Art Museum, the Gregg Museum of Art and Design, the Penny Stamps Gallery and the Ontario Science Centre etc. Joel is Associate Professor in Computational Arts and Director of Sensorium:The Centre for Digital Arts and Technology at York University, in Toronto, Canada. His research has been funded by such as SSHRC, eCampus Ontario, Women and Gender Equality Canada.
Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits are Riga and Karlsruhe based artists and co-founders of RIXC Center for New Media Culture in Riga [Latvia], co-curators of RIXC Art and Science Festival, chief-editors of Acoustic Space, as well as co-chairs of recently founded NAIA – Naturally Artificial Intelligence Art association in Karlsruhe, Germany. Together they create visionary and networked artworks – from pioneering internet radio experiments in 1990s, to artistic investigations in electromagnetic spectrum and collaborations with radio astronomers, and more recent “techno-ecological” explorations. Their projects have been nominated (Purvitis Prize 2019, 2021, International Public Arts Award – Euroasia region 2021), awarded (Ars Electronica 1998, Falling Walls – Science Breakthrough 2021) and shown widely including at the Venice Architecture Biennale, Latvian National Museum of Arts, House of Electronic Arts in Basel, Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, and other venues, exhibitions and festivals in Europe, US, Canada and Asia. More recently they both also have been lecturers in MIT ACT – Art Culture Technology program (2018-2021), Boston.
Rasa Smite holds a PhD in sociology of media and culture; her thesis Creative Networks. In the Rear-View Mirror of Eastern European History (11) has been published by The Amsterdam Institute for Network Cultures. Currently she is a Professor of New Media Art at Liepaja University, and Senior Researcher at FHNW Academy of Art and Design in Basel, Switzerland.
Raitis Smits holds his doctoral degree in arts, and he is a Professor at the Art Academy of Latvia. In 2017 Raitis was a Fulbright Researcher in the Graduate Center of NYC.
www.smitesmits.com | www.rixc.org

Now, for the free public events (From the Onsite Gallery ‘more-than-human‘ event page), Note: Some events are being live streamed,

Opening Reception  – Wednesday, February 01 [2023], 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., at Onsite Gallery, 199 Richmond Street West  
Join us for the public launch of the exhibition, with a land acknowledgement and opening remarks.  
more-than human Artists Panel Discussion Part 1  – Thursday, February 02 [2023], 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.  at Onsite Gallery (199 Richmond Street West) and Live Streamed Online  
Artists Rasa Smite & Raitis Smits, Grace Grothaus, Suzanne Morrissette and Lindsey french introduce their works exhibited in more-than-human and engage in a discussion about their practice. Moderated by Jane Tingley.
Register here: https://bit.ly/3G7xJ65
Multiplicities and plurality: Curator Jane Tingley in Conversation with Dr. Karen Houle  – Thursday, March 23 [2023], 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. at Onsite Gallery, 199 Richmond Street West  
Join Dr Karen Houle for an introductory talk on basic premises of Cartesian humanism followed by an exhibition tour discussion of the artworks in that context with Jane Tingley.  
Register here: https://bit.ly/3ZFhVPI
Screening of Forest Mind followed by Q+A with Ursula Biemann – Friday, April 07 [2023], 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. at Onsite Gallery (199 Richmond Street West) and Live Streamed Online  
Forest Mind (31 minutes) tackles the underlying concepts that distinguish the Indigenous knowledge systems from that of modern science, gauging the limits of rationalism which has dominated Western thinking for the last 200 years. 
Register here: https://bit.ly/3ipAWVC
more-than human Artists Panel Discussion Part 2  – Saturday, April 29 [2023], 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.   at Onsite Gallery (199 Richmond Street West) and Live Streamed Online  
Artists Joel Ong, Jane Tingley, Dolleen Tisawii’ashii Manning and Mary Bunch introduce their artworks their works exhibited in more-than-human and engage in a discussion about their practice. Moderated by Lisa Deanne Smith.
Register Here: https://bit.ly/3QwLRsW
Guided Nature and Forest Therapy Walk– Saturday, May 13 [2023], 12 p.m. to 3 p.m.  at High Park, 1873 Bloor Street West 
Join us for a slow paced, sensory-based guided walk that connects you with the healing power of the natural world. Space is limited, advance registration required.  
Registration is limited, free tickets will be released on 1 April [2023] at 12 p.m.: https://bit.ly/3XlyOga

There’s more.

Art/Sci Salon February 28 – May 7, 2023 events

From the January 30, 2023 Art/Sci Salon announcement (received via email), Note: Most of the in-person events take place in Toronto,Ontario,

Mark your calendar for the following events
(more details coming up soon)
Artsci Dialogues
Ecology, Symbiosis, Human/Plant Relations
Feb 25 [2023], 3:00-5:00 pm,
The Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences
[222 College Street · Toronto, Ontario]
In person and Online
Ethics of Care
March 25 [2023], 3:00-5:00 pm
The Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical sciences
In person and Online
Immersive Poetry Performance
Madhur Anand, Karen Houle
animated by Ilze (Kavi) Briede
Apr 5 [2023], 7:30-9:00 pm
The Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences
Day at rare Charitable Reserve
Panel with artists and scientists,
Workshop led by Dr. Alice Jarry
Guided walk by rare staff and affiliated scientists
May 7th [2023], rare Charitable [Research] Reserve
[1679 Blair Rd, Cambridge ON]

Should you be curious, you can view the contents of the email here, as of February 1, 2023 (not sure how long this page will be available).

Toronto’s ArtSci Salon in Vancouver (Canada) and Venice (Italy)

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In addition to the June 22 – July 16, 2022 exhibition in Toronto (These are a Few of Our Favourite Bees) highlighted in my June 14, 2022 posting, the ArtSci Salon has sent a June 20, 2022 announcement (received via email) about two events taking place for the first time in venues outside of Toronto,

IN VANCOUVER

A LIGHT FOOTPRINT IN THE COSMOS
SYMPOSIUM, EXHIBITIONS, PERFORMANCES, AND SCREENINGS

JUNE 24 – 27, 2022 | IN-PERSON AND ONLINE
DJAVAD MOWAFAGHIAN WORLD ART CENTRE
SFU GOLDCORP CENTRE FOR ARTS,
149 W. HASTINGS ST., VANCOUVER AND OTHER VENUES

REGISTRATION ON A SLIDING FEE SCALE.
IN-PERSON REGISTRATION INCLUDES CATERED LUNCHES AND COFFEE BREAKS AND
ADMISSION TO PERFORMANCES AND SCREENINGS.

…

A Light Footprint in the Cosmos is a celebration of research methods
and intercultural dialogue elaborated by the Substantial Motion Research
Network (SMRN).

Inspired by 17th–century Persian process philosopher Sadr al-Dīn
al-Shīrāzī, Azadeh Emadi and Laura U. Marks founded SMRN in 2018
for scholars and practitioners interested in cross-cultural exploration
of digital media, art and philosophy. Sadra famously stated that each
individual is “a multiplicity of continuous forms, unified by the
essential movement itself,” which describes how SMRN’s members inform
each other’s practice and how those practices weave across artistic
and scholarly work. Our collective method unfolds hidden connections:
researching histories of media in world cultures, tracing paths of
transmission, seeking models for media in world philosophies, studying
vernacular practices, cultivating cultural openness, developing hunches,
building imaginative and fabulative connections, and diagramming the
processes of unfolding and enfolding. We fold South, Central, and East
Asian, Persian, Arab, North and sub-Saharan African and African
diaspora, Eastern European, and global Indigenous practices into
contemporary media and thought. Our light footprint lies in seeking
appropriate technological solutions, often from non-Western and
traditional practices, to contemporary overbuilt digital
infrastructures.

Celebrating the substantial motion of thought and/as creative practice,
A Light Footprint in the Cosmos will feature presentations by 60
scholars and artists, delivered both online and in person, at the
acoustically sophisticated performance venue Djavad Mowafaghian World
Art Centre.

The exhibitions, performances, and curated film screenings are integral
to the event. We are delighted to present exhibitions of works of 17
artists, curated by Nina Czegledy and hosted by Vancouver contemporary
art venues Or Gallery and Centre A: Vancouver International Centre for
Contemporary Asian Art, and Studio T at SFU’s Goldcorp Centre for the
Arts. The artworks explore, via a wide variety of analogue and digital
media, the global circulation and connectivity of theories and
technologies, addressing both historical inspirations and contemporary
issues. They illuminate hidden connections and reveal diverse yet
complementary concepts and practices. The musical performances literally
draw breath from deep cultural sources. SMRN’s methods extend into the
curated screenings Cinema of Breath: Rapture, Rupture and Cosmological Diagrams.

A Light Footprint in the Cosmos affirms the substantial movement of
thought and practice by seeking to stage dialogues, provoke discussion
and spark new collaborations in order to decolonize media studies, art
history and aesthetics.

IN VENICE (ITA)

Emergent [emphasis mine]

a post pandemic mobile gallery

Part 1

Megachile Alienus
Sala Camino
Fondazione Bevilacqua la Masa
Venezia

June 22-25, 2022

Opening June 22, 18:30
…
Emergent is a mobile gallery featuring collaborations across the
sciences and the arts. Its goal is to better comprehend and cope with
the emergence, survival, and adaptation of life due to climate change
and global mobility, laboratory manipulations and world making.

Emergent is a porous object: it encourages reflections across different
experiences and sites of divergence through and with the arts; it may
reach new human and non-human audiences, and have a transformative
effect on the places it visits.

Emergent is a postpandemic gallery interrogating the role of exhibition
spaces today. What possible experiences, what new dialogues could a
redesign of the gallery as a living, breathing entity foster?

Emergent was
Designed and executed by
Roberta Buiani
Lorella Di Cintio
Ilze Briede [Kavi]

Fabrication:
Rick Quercia

Megachile Alienus is an Installation by
Cole Swanson

Scientific collaboration:
Laurence Packer

Fabrication for installation:
Jacob Sun

Thanks to:
Alessandro Marletta
Anna Lisa Manini
…

Steven Baris, Never the Same Space Twice D29 (oil on Mylar, 24 x 24 inches, 2022). [downloaded from https://www.sfu.ca/sca/events—news/events/a-light-footprint-in-the-cosmos.html?mc_cid=f826643d70&mc_eid=584e4ad9fa]

You can find more details and a registration link here at SFU’s “A Light Footprint in the Cosmos” event page.

[downloaded from https://artscisalon.com/post-p/]

You can find more details about Emergent in Venice here.

Of Health Myths and Trickster Viruses; a Who Cares? windup event on Friday, April 1, 2022 (+ more final Who Cares? events)

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Toronto’s ArtSci Salon has been hosting a series of events and exhibitions about COVID-19 and other health care issues under the “Who Cares?” banner. The exhibitions and events are now coming to an end (see my February 9, 2022 posting for a full listing).

A March 29, 2022 Art/Sci Salon announcement (received via email) heralds the last roundtable event (see my March 7, 2022 posting for more about the Who Cares? roundtables), Note: This is an online event,

There are the acknowledgements,

“Who Cares?” is a Speaker Series dedicated to fostering transdisciplinary conversations between doctors, writers, artists, and researchers on contemporary biopolitics of care and the urgent need to move towards more respectful, creative, and inclusive social practices of care in the wake of the systemic cracks made obvious by the pandemic.
We wish to thank/ nous the generous support of the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, New College at the University of Toronto and The Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies at York University; the Centre for Feminist Research, Sensorium Centre for Digital Arts and Technology, The Canadian Language Museum, the Departments of English and the School of Gender and Women’s Studies at York University; the D.G. Ivey Library and the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at the University of Toronto; We also wish to thank the support of The Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences
This series is co-produced in collaboration with the ArtSci Salon

The Who Cares? series webpage, found here, lists the exhibitions and final events,

Exhibitions
March 24 – April 30 [2022]
Alanna Kibbe – TRANSFORM: Exploring Languages of Healing. Opening March 31, 5 pm
Canadian Language Museum, 2275 Bayview Avenue, York University Glendon Campus
in person. Virtual opening available
Camille Baker – INTER/her. Opening April 7 [2022], 4 pm
Ivey Library, 20 Willcox Street, New College, University of Toronto
in person. Virtual opening available
Closing Presentation and Interactive Session
Karolina Żyniewicz – Signs of the time, Collecting Biological Traces and Memories
Artist talk: April 8 [2022], 4:00-6:00 [ET]
online
Memory Collection: Apr 9 [2022], 2:00-4:00 [ET]
online and in person

Data Meditation and three roundtables: a collection of Who Cares? March 2022 events

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You can find out more about Toronto’s Art/Sci Salon’s Who Cares? speaker series in my February 9, 2022 posting. For this posting, I’m focusing on the upcoming March 2022 events, which are being offered online. From a March 7, 2022 Art/Sci Salon announcement (received via email),

We’re pleased to announce our next two events from our “Who Cares?” Speaker Series
Nous sommes heureux d’annoncer notre deuxième événement de notre “Who Cares?” Série de conferences
March 10 [2022], 2:00-3:00 pm [ET]
Data Meditation: Salvatore Iaconesi and Oriana Persico
HER – She Loves Data
Nuovo Abitare
Join us for a discussion about questions like:
Why does data have to be an extractive process?
What can we learn about ourselves through the data we generate everyday?
How can we use them as an expressive form to represent ourselves?
Data Meditations is the first ritual designed with the new approach of HER: She Loves Data, which addresses data as existential and cultural phenomena, and the need of creating experience (contemporary rituals) that allow societies and individuals to come together around data generating meaning, new forms of solidarity, empathy, interconnection and knowledge.
Rejoignez-nous pour une discussion basée sur des questions telles que :
Pourquoi les données doivent-elles être un processus d’extraction ?
Que pouvons-nous apprendre par rapport à nous, grâce aux données que nous générons chaque jour ?
Comment pouvons-nous les utiliser comme une forme expressive pour nous représenter ?
Data Méditations est le premier rituel conçu avec la nouvelle approche de HER [elle] : She loves Data , qui parle des données en tant que phénomènes existentiels et culturels , mais également , la nécessité de créer des expériences [ rituels contemporains ] qui permettent aux sociétés et aux individus de se réunir autour de données générant du sens , de nouvelles formes de solidarité , empathie , d’interconnexion et de connaissance.
Register HERE/Inscrivez-vous ici
[Beyond triage and data culture roundtable]
March 11, 5:00-7:00 pm [ET]

Maria Antonia Gonzalez-Valerio,
Professor of Philosophy and Literature, UNAM, Mexico City.
Sharmistha Mishra,
Infectious Disease Physician and Mathematical Modeller, St Michael’s Hospital
Madhur Anand,
Ecologist, School of Environmental Sciences, University of Guelph
Salvatore Iaconesi and Oriana Persico,
Independent Artists, HER, She Loves Data
One lesson we have learnt in the past two years is that the pandemic has not single-handedly created a global health crisis, but has exacerbated and made visible one that was already in progress. The roots of this crisis are as cultural as they are economic and environmental. Among the factors contributing to the crisis is a dominant orientation towards healthcare that privileges a narrow focus on data-centered technological fixes and praises the potentials of technological delegation. An unsustainable system has culminated in the passive acceptance and even the cold justification of triage as an inevitable evil in a time of crisis and scarcity.
What transdisciplinary practices can help ameliorate the atomizing pitfalls of turning the patient into data?
How can discriminatory practices such as triage, exclusion based on race, gender, and class, vaccine hoarding etc.. be addressed and reversed?
What strategies can we devise to foster genuine transdisciplinary approaches and move beyond the silo effects of specialization, address current uncritical trends towards technological delegation, and restore the centrality of human relations in healthcare delivery?
L’une des leçons que nous avons apprises au cours des deux dernières années est que la pandémie n’a pas créé à elle seule une crise sanitaire mondiale, mais qu’elle en a exacerbé et rendu visible une qui était déjà en cours. Les racines de cette crise sont aussi bien culturelles qu’économiques et environnementales. Parmi les facteurs qui contribuent à la crise figure une orientation dominante en matière de soins de santé, qui privilégie une vision étroite des solutions technologiques centrées sur les données et fait l’éloge du potentiel de la délégation technologique. Un système non durable a abouti à l’acceptation passive et même à la justification froide du triage comme un mal inévitable en temps de crise et de pénurie.
Quelles pratiques transdisciplinaires peuvent contribuer à améliorer les pièges de l’atomisation qui consiste à transformer le patient en données ?
Comment les pratiques discriminatoires telles que le triage, l’exclusion fondée sur la race, le sexe et la classe sociale, la thésaurisation des vaccins, etc. peuvent-elles être abordées et inversées ?
Quelles stratégies pouvons-nous concevoir pour favoriser de véritables approches transdisciplinaires et dépasser les effets de silo de la spécialisation, pour faire face aux tendances actuelles non critiques à la délégation technologique, et pour restaurer la centralité des relations humaines dans la prestation des soins de santé ?
Register HERE/Inscrivez-vous ici
…
We wish to thank/ nous [sic] the generous support of the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, New College at the University of Toronto and The Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies at York University; the Centre for Feminist Research, Sensorium Centre for Digital Arts and Technology, The Canadian Language Museum, the Departments of English and the School of Gender and Women’s Studies at York University; the D.G. Ivey Library and the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at the University of Toronto; We also wish to thank the support of The Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences

There are two more online March 2022 roundtable discussions, from the Who Cares? events webpage,

2. Friday, March 18 – 6:00 to 8:00 pm [ET]
Critical care and sustainable care
Suvendrini Lena, MD, Playwright and Neurologist at CAMH and Centre for Headache, Women’s College Hospital, Toronto
Adriana Ieraci, Roboticist and PhD candidate in Computer Science, Ryerson University
Lucia Gagliese – Pain Aging Lab, York University
(online)
3. Friday, March 25 – 5:00 to 7:00 pm [ET]
Building communities and technologies of care
Camille Baker, University for the Creative Arts, School of Film media and Performing Arts
Alanna Kibbe, independent artist, Toronto
(online)

There will also be some events in April 2022 and there are two ongoing exhibitions, which you can see here.

Who Cares? a series of Art/Sci Salon talks and exhibitions in February and March 2022

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COVID-19 has put health care workers in a more than usually interesting position and the Art/Sci Salon in Toronto, Canada is ‘creatively’ addressing the old, new, and emerging stresses. From the Who Cares? events webpage (also in a February 8, 2022 notice received via email),

“Who Cares?” is a Speaker Series dedicated to fostering transdisciplinary conversations between doctors, writers, artists, and researchers on contemporary biopolitics of care and the urgent need to move towards more respectful, creative, and inclusive social practices of care in the wake of the systemic cracks made obvious by the pandemic.
About the Series
Critiques of the health care sector are certainly not new and have been put forward by workers and researchers in the medical sector and in the humanities alike. However, critique alone fails to consider the systemic issues that prevent well-meaning practitioners to make a difference. The goal of this series is to activate practical conversations between people who are already engaged in transforming the infrastructures and cultures of care but have few opportunities to speak to each other. These interdisciplinary dialogues will enable the sharing of emerging epistemologies, new material approaches and pedagogies that could take us beyond the current crisis. By engaging with the arts as research, our guests use the generative insights of poetic and artistic practices to zoom in on the crucial issues undermining holistic, dynamic and socially responsible forms of care. Furthermore, they champion transdisciplinary dialogues and multipronged approaches directed at changing the material and discursive practices of care.
Who cares? asks the following important questions:
How do we lay the groundwork for sustainable practices of care, that is, care beyond ‘just-in-time’ interventions?
What strategies can we devise to foster genuine transdisciplinary approaches that move beyond the silo effects of specialization, address current uncritical trends towards technological delegation, and restore the centrality responsive/responsible human relations in healthcare delivery?
What practices can help ameliorate the atomizing pitfalls of turning the patient into data?
What pathways can we design to re-direct attention to long lasting care focused on a deeper understanding of the manifold relationalities between doctors, patients, communities, and the socio-environmental context?
How can the critically creative explorations of artists and writers contribute to building resilient communities of care that cultivate reciprocity, respect for the unpredictable temporalities of healing, and active listening?
How to build a capacious infrastructure of care able to address and mend the damages caused by ideologies of ultimate cure that pervade corporate approaches to healthcare funding and delivery?

The first event starts on February 14, 2022 (from the On care, beauty, and Where Things Touch webpage),

On care, beauty, and Where Things Touch
Bahar Orang (University of Toronto, Psychiatry)
Feb. 14 [2022], 10:30 am – 12-30 pm [ET]
This event will be online, please register HERE to participate. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
A Conversation with Bahar Orang, author of Where Things Touch, on staying attuned to the fragile intimacies of care beyond the stifling demands of institutional environments.
This short presentation will ask questions about care that move it beyond the carceral logics of hospital settings, particularly in psychiatry. Drawing from questions raised in my first book Where Things Touch, and my work with Doctors for Defunding Police (DFDP), I hope to pose the question of how to do the work of health care differently. As the pandemic has laid bare so much violence, it becomes imperative to engage in forms of political imaginativeness that proactively ask what are the forms that care can take, and does already take, in places other than the clinic or the hospital?
Bahar Orang is a writer and clinician scholar in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto. Her creative and clinical work seeks to engage with ways of imagining care beyond the carcerality that medical institutions routinely reproduce

Here’s the full programme from the Who Cares? events webpage,

Opening dialogue
February 14, 10:30-12:30 pm [ET]
On care, beauty, and Where Things Touch
Bahar Orang, University of Toronto, Psychiatry
( Online)
Keynote
Thursday March 10, 1:00-3:00 pm [ET]
Keynote and public reveal of Data meditation
Salvatore Iaconesi and Oriana Persico
independent artists, HER, She Loves Data
(Online)
Roundtables
1. Friday, March 11 – 5:00 to 7:00 pm [ET]
Beyond triage and data culture
Maria Antonia Gonzalez-Valerio, Professor of Philosophy and Literature, UNAM, Mexico City.
Sharmistha Mishra, Infectious Disease Physician and Mathematical Modeller, St Michael’s Hospital
Madhur Anand, Ecologist, School of Environmental Sciences, University of Guelph
Salvatore Iaconesi and Oriana Persico, independent artists, HER, She Loves Data
(Online)
2. Friday, March 18 – 6:00 to 8:00 pm [ET]
Critical care and sustainable care
Suvendrini Lena, MD, Playwright and Neurologist at CAMH and Centre for Headache, Women’s College Hospital, Toronto
Adriana Ieraci, Roboticist and PhD candidate in Computer Science, Ryerson University
Lucia Gagliese – Pain Aging Lab, York University
(online)
3. Friday, March 25 – 5:00 to 7:00 pm [ET]
Building communities and technologies of care
Camille Baker, University for the Creative Arts, School of Film media and Performing Arts
Alanna Kibbe, independent artist, Toronto
(online)
Keynote Conversation
Friday, April 1, 5:00-7:00 pm [ET]
Seema Yasmin, Director of Research and Education, Stanford Health Communication Initiative [Stanford University]
Bayo Akomolafe, Chief Curator of The Emergence Network
(hybrid) William Doo Auditorium, 45 Willcox Street, Toronto
Exhibitions
March 24 – April 30
Alanna Kibbe – TRANSFORM: Exploring Languages of Healing. Opening March 31, 5 pm
Canadian Language Museum, 2275 Bayview Avenue, York University Glendon Campus
(Hybrid event. Limited in person visits by appointment)
Camille Baker – INTER/her. Opening April 7, 4 pm [ET]
Ivey Library, 20 Willcox Street, New College, University of Toronto
(Hybrid event. Limited in person visits by appointment)
Closing Presentation and Interactive Session
Karolina Żyniewicz – Signs of the time, Collecting Biological Traces and Memories
Artist talk: April 8, 4:00-6:00 [ET]
Memory Collection: Apr 9, 2:00-4:00
* The format of this program and access might change with the medical situation
We wish to thank the generous support of the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, New College, the D.G. Ivey Library, and the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at the University of Toronto; the Centre for Feminist Research, Sensorium Centre for Digital Arts and Technology, The Canadian Language Museum, the Departments of English and the School of Gender and Women’s Studies at York University. We also wish to thank the support of The Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences
This series is co-produced in collaboration with the ArtSci Salon

Hopefully, one of those times works for you.

Proximal Fields from September 8 – 12, 2021 and a peek into the international art/sci/tech scene

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Toronto’s (Canada) Art/Sci Salon (also known as, Art Science Salon) sent me an August 26, 2021 announcement (received via email) of an online show with a limited viewing period (BTW, nice play on words with the title echoing the name of the institution mentioned in the first sentence),

PROXIMAL FIELDS
The Fields Institute was closed to the public for a long time. Yet, it
has not been empty. Peculiar sounds and intriguing silences, the flows
of the few individuals and the janitors occasional visiting the building
made it surprisingly alive. Microorganisms, dust specs and other
invisible guests populated undisturbed the space while the humans were
away. The building is alive. We created site specific installations
reflecting this condition: Elaine Whittaker and her poet collaborators
take us to a journey of the microbes living in our proximal spaces. Joel
Ong and his collaborators have recorded space data in the building: the
result is an emergent digital organism. Roberta Buiani and Kavi
interpret the venue as an organism which can be taken outside on a
mobile gallery.
PROXIMAL FIELDS will be visible September 8-12 2021 at
https://ars.electronica.art/newdigitaldeal/en/proximal-fields/
it [sic] is part of Ars Electronica Garden LEONARDO LASER [Anti]disciplinary Topographies
https://ars.electronica.art/newdigitaldeal/en/antidisciplinary-topographies/
see [sic] a teaser here:
https://youtu.be/AYxlvLnYSdE
With: Elaine Whittaker, Joel Ong, Nina Czegledy, Roberta Buiani, Sachin
Karghie, Ryan Martin, Racelar Ho, Kavi.
Poetry: Maureen Hynes, Sheila Stewart
Video: Natalie Plociennik

This event is one of many such events being held for Ars Electronica 2021 festival.

For anyone who remembers back to my May 3, 2021 posting (scroll down to the relevant subhead; a number of events were mentioned), I featured a show from the ArtSci Salon community called ‘Proximal Spaces’, a combined poetry reading and bioart experience.

Many of the same artists and poets seem to have continued working together to develop more work based on the ‘proximal’ for a larger international audience.

International and local scene details (e.g., same show? what is Ars Electronica? etc.)

As you may have noticed from the announcement, there are a lot of different institutions involved.

Local: Fields Institute and ArtSci Salon

The Fields Institute is properly known as The Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences and is located at the University of Toronto. Here’s more from their About Us webpage,

…
Founded in 1992, the Fields Institute was initially located at the University of Waterloo. Since 1995, it has occupied a purpose-built building on the St. George Campus of the University of Toronto.
The Institute is internationally renowned for strengthening collaboration, innovation, and learning in mathematics and across a broad range of disciplines. …
…
The Fields Institute is named after the Canadian mathematician John Charles Fields (1863-1932). Fields was a pioneer and visionary who recognized the scientific, educational, and economic value of research in the mathematical sciences. Fields spent many of his early years in Berlin and, to a lesser extent, in Paris and Göttingen, the principal mathematical centres of Europe of that time. These experiences led him, after his return to Canada, to work for the public support of university research, which he did very successfully. He also organized and presided over the 1924 meeting of the International Congress of Mathematicians in Toronto. This quadrennial meeting was, and still is, the major meeting of the mathematics world.
There is no Nobel Prize in mathematics, and Fields felt strongly that there should be a comparable award to recognize the most outstanding current research in mathematics. With this in mind, he established the International Medal for Outstanding Discoveries in Mathematics, which, contrary to his personal directive, is now known as the Fields Medal. Information on Fields Medal winners can be found through the International Mathematical Union, which chooses the quadrennial recipients of the prize.
Fields’ name was given to the Institute in recognition of his seminal contributions to world mathematics and his work on behalf of high level mathematical scholarship in Canada. The Institute aims to carry on the work of Fields and to promote the wider use and understanding of mathematics in Canada.

The relationship between the Fields Institute and the ArtSci Salon is unclear to me. This can be found under Programs and Activities on the Fields Institute website,

2020-2021 ArtSci Salon
Description
ArtSci Salon consists of a series of semi-informal gatherings facilitating discussion and cross-pollination between science, technology, and the arts. ArtSci Salon started in 2010 as a spin-off of Subtle Technologies Festival to satisfy increasing demands by the audience attending the Festival to have a more frequent (monthly or bi-monthly) outlet for debate and information sharing across disciplines. In addition, it responds to the recent expansion in the GTA [Greater Toronto Area] area of a community of scientists and artists increasingly seeking collaborations across disciplines to successfully accomplish their research projects and questions.
For more details, visit our blog.
Sign up to our mailing list here.
For more information please contact:
Stephen Morris: smorris@physics.utoronto.ca
Roberta Buiani: rbuiani@gmail.com
…
We are pleased to announce our upcoming March 2021 events (more details are in the schedule below):
…

Ars Electronica

It started life as a Festival for Art, Technology and Society in 1979 in Linz, Austria. Here’s a little more from their About webpage,

…
… Since September 18, 1979, our world has changed radically, and digitization has covered almost all areas of our lives. Ars Electronica’s philosophy has remained the same over the years. Our activities are always guided by the question of what new technologies mean for our lives. Together with artists, scientists, developers, designers, entrepreneurs and activists, we shed light on current developments in our digital society and speculate about their manifestations in the future. We never ask what technology can or will be able to do, but always what it should do for us. And we don’t try to adapt to technology, but we want the development of technology to be oriented towards us. Therefore, our artistic research always focuses on ourselves, our needs, our desires, our feelings.
…

They have a number of initiatives in addition to the festival. The next festival, A New Digital Deal, runs from September 8 – 12, 2021 (Ars Electronica 2021). Here’s a little more from the festival webpage,

Ars Electronica 2021, the festival for art, technology and society, will take place from September 8 to 12. For the second time since 1979, it will be a hybrid event that includes exhibitions, concerts, talks, conferences, workshops and guided tours in Linz, Austria, and more than 80 other locations around the globe.
…

Leonardo; The International Society for Arts, Sciences and Technology

Ars Electronica and Leonardo; The International Society for Arts, Sciences and Technology (ISAST) cooperate on projects but they are two different entities. Here’s more from the About LEONARDO webpage,

Fearlessly pioneering since 1968, Leonardo serves as THE community forging a transdisciplinary network to convene, research, collaborate, and disseminate best practices at the nexus of arts, science and technology worldwide. Leonardo’ serves a network of transdisciplinary scholars, artists, scientists, technologists and thinkers, who experiment with cutting-edge, new approaches, practices, systems and solutions to tackle the most complex challenges facing humanity today.
As a not-for-profit 501(c)3 enterprising think tank, Leonardo offers a global platform for creative exploration and collaboration reaching tens of thousands of people across 135 countries. Our flagship publication, Leonardo, the world’s leading scholarly journal on transdisciplinary art, anchors a robust publishing partnership with MIT Press; our partnership with ASU [Arizona State University] infuses educational innovation with digital art and media for lifelong learning; our creative programs span thought-provoking events, exhibits, residencies and fellowships, scholarship and social enterprise ventures.
…

I have a description of Leonardo’s LASER (Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous), from my March 22, 2021 posting (the Garden comes up next),

Here’s a description of the LASER talks from the Leonardo/ISAST LASER Talks event page,
“… a program of international gatherings that bring artists, scientists, humanists and technologists together for informal presentations, performances and conversations with the wider public. The mission of LASER is to encourage contribution to the cultural environment of a region by fostering interdisciplinary dialogue and opportunities for community building.”

To be specific it’s Ars Electronica Garden LEONARDO LASER and this is one of the series being held as part of the festival (A Digital New Deal). Here’s more from the [Anti]disciplinary Topographies ‘garden’ webpage,

Culturing transnational dialogue for creative hybridity
Leonardo LASER Garden gathers our global network of artists, scientists, humanists and technologists together in a series of hybrid formats addressing the world’s most pressing issues. Animated by the theme of a “new digital deal” and grounded in the UN Sustainability Goals, Leonardo LASER Garden cultivates our values of equity and inclusion by elevating underrepresented voices in a wide-ranging exploration of global challenges, digital communities and placemaking, space, networks and systems, the digital divide – and the impact of interdisciplinary art, science and technology discourse and collaboration.
Dovetailing with the launch of LASER Linz, this asynchronous multi-platform garden will highlight the best of the Leonardo Network (spanning 47 cities worldwide) and our transdisciplinary community. In “Extraordinary Times Call for Extraordinary Vision: Humanizing Digital Culture with the New Creativity Agenda & the UNSDGs [United Nations Sustainable Development Goals],” Leonardo/ISAST CEO Diana Ayton-Shenker presents our vision for shaping our global future. This will be followed by a Leonardo Community Lounge open to the general public, with the goal of encouraging contributions to the cultural environments of different regions through transnational exchange and community building.

Getting back to the beginning you can view Proximal Fields from September 8 – 12, 2021 as part of the Ars Electonica 2021 festival, specifically, the ‘garden’ series.

ETA September 8, 2021: There’s a newly posted (on the Fields Institute webspace) and undated notice/article “ArtSci Salon’s Proximal Fields debuts at the Ars Electronica Festival,” which includes an interview with members of the Proximal Fields team.

October and November 2019 art/science events in Canada

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I’ve already written about October 2019 science and art/science events in Canada (see my Sept. 26, 2019 posting), but more event notices for Octoberhave come my way. These events are all art/science (or sciart as it’s sometimes called).

… on the future of life forms … a two-night (Oct./Nov.) discussion in Toronto, Canada

Here’s more from the ArtSci Salon’s October 3, 2019 announcement (received via email)

“…now they were perfecting a pigoon that could grow five or six kidneys at a time. Such a host animal could be reaped of its extra kidneys; then, rather than being destroyed, it could keep on living and grow more organs, much as a lobster could grow another claw to replace
a missing one. That would be less wasteful, as it took a lot of food and care to grow a pigoon.
A great deal of investment money had gone into OrganInc Farms…” (Margaret Atwood – Oryx & Crake 2003)

In Oryx and Crake Margaret Atwood describes a not-too-distant future where humans have perfected the art of fabricating and modifying a variety of creatures to improve and prolongue their own lives and wellbeing.
As Atwood has stated in various occasions, this is not science fiction.
It is in fact already happening. New forms of life appear not only as the product of lab fabrication or gene editing, but also as the result of toxic pollutants and climate change induced adaptation.
what to make of them?
how to cope with a world where extinction, adaptation and mutation risk to make traditional categories and taxonomies obsolete?
or not?

Join us to this two-parts series to discuss the ethics and implications of these transformations with artists, scientists and bioethicists.

this is a “double date”! Please, note the two dates
please, RSVP here
https://bit.ly/2AH1Pe8

Part 1
Thursday, October 17, 6:00-8:00 pm The Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences
Altered Inheritance: extinction, recreation or transformation?
a dialogue and discussion on the implications of genome editing on humans and other organisms

with
Francoise Baylis – Research Professor, Bioethicist, Dalhousie University

Karen Maxwell – Dept. of Biochemistry, Maxwell Lab, University of Toronto

emergent artists from OCADU [Ontario College of Art and Design University] and YorkU [York University, Toronto]

——————-

Part 2
Thursday, November 21, 6:00-8:00 pm The Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences
Classifying the new?
why do we classify? what is it good for? what is the limit of taxonomy and classification in a transforming world?

with
Richard Pell – Centre for PostNatural History, Pittsburgh, PA

Laurence Packer – Mellitologist, Professor of biology and environmental studies, York University

Stefan Herda – earth science artist

Cole Swanson – artist and educator (Art Foundation and Visual and Digital Arts, Humber college)

Anna Marie O’Brien – Frederickson, Rochman, and Sinton labs, University of Toronto

—————————

BIOS

Françoise Baylis is University Research Professor at Dalhousie University. She is a member of the Order of Canada and the Order of Nova Scotia, as well as a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. Baylis was one of the organizers of, and a key participant in, the 2015 International Summit on Human Gene Editing. She is a member of the WHO expert advisory committee on Developing Global Standards for Governance and Oversight of Human Genome Editing. Her new book “Altered Inheritance. CRISPR and the Ethics of Human Genome Editing” is published by Harvard University Press

Karen Maxwell is a research professor in the dept of biochemistry at the university of toronto, where she runs the Maxwell Lab. Among other topics, the lab’s three branches “Anti-CRISPR”, “Phage morons” and “Anti-Phage defences” study the interplay of phages with their bacterial hosts, with a focus on phage mediated bacterial virulence mechanisms and inhibitors of anti-phage bacterial defenses.

Richard Pell works at the intersections of science, engineering, and culture. He has worked in a variety of electronic media from documentary video to robotics to bioart to museum exhibition. He is the founder and director of the Center for PostNatural History (CPNH), an organization dedicated to the collection and exposition of life-forms that have been intentionally and heritably altered through domestication, selective breeding, tissue culture or genetic engineering. The CPNH operates a permanent museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and produces traveling exhibitions that have appeared in science and art museums throughout Europe and the United States, including being the subject of a major exhibition at the Wellcome Collection in London.

Laurence Packer is a mellitologist, ie a scholar whose main subject of study is wild bees. his research primarily involves the systematics of the bee subfamily Xeromelissinae – an obscure, but fascinating group of bees, restricted to the New World south of central Mexico. he has also expended considerable energy leading the global campaign to barcode the bees of the world. his work is concerned with promulgating the importance of bees: for genetic reasons, it seems that bees are more extinction prone than are almost all other organisms

Stefan Herda‘s practice explores our troubling relationship to the natural world through drawing, sculpture and video. Inspired by the earth sciences, Herda’s work navigates the space between truth and fiction. His material and process-based investigations fuse elements of authenticity, façade, the natural and the manufactured together. He received his BAH from the University of Guelph in 2010. His work in both sculpture and video has been included in exhibitions nationally and has been featured by CBC Arts and Daily VICE. Recently, Stefan has held solo shows at Patel Projects (Toronto) and Wil Kucey Gallery (Toronto), participated in group shows such as Cultivars: Possible Worlds at InterAccess (Toronto) and was featured as one of 12 artists in the Cabinet Project at the University of Toronto

Cole Swanson is an artist and educator based in Toronto, Canada. He has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions across Canada and throughout international venues in North America, South America, Europe, and Asia. At the heart of recent work is a cross-disciplinary exploration of materials and their sociocultural and biological histories. Embedded within art media and commonplace resources are complex relations between nature and culture, humans and other agents, consumers and the consumed. Swanson has engaged in a broad material practice using sound, installation, painting, and sculpture to explore interspecies relationships.

Anna Marie O’Brien is a post doc in the Frederickson, Rochman, and Sinton labs at University of Toronto, working on duckweeds, microbes, urban contaminants, and phenotypes.her PhD work was at Davis, with thesis advisors Dr. Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra and Dr. Sharon Strauss. she also collaborated closely with Dr. Ruairidh Sawers at LANGEBIO-CINVESTAV in Guanajuato, Mexico.

The first highlighted speaker, Françoise Baylis, has been mentioned here twice before, in a May 17, 2019 posting (scroll down to the ‘Global plea for moratorium on heritable genome editing’ subheading) and in an April 26, 2019 posting (scroll down to the ‘Finally’ subheading, the second paragraph). Both postings touch on the topic of CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) and germline editing (genetic editing that will affect all of your descendents).

Cartooney in New Westminster (near Vancouver, Canada) starting October 18, 2019

I like physics but I love cartoons Stephen Hawking

There you have it from one of the 20th/early 21st century’s most famous physicists. The quote is the opening line for the New Westminster (near Vancouver, Canada) New Media Gallery’s latest event webpage, Cartooney,

The impact of animated cartoons has been profound. In the early 20th century, we began exploiting the possibilities of the animated frame. The seven artists in this exhibition don’t create cartoons, they deconstruct those that already exist; from Looney Tunes, to The Simpsons to Charlie Brown. They exploit this potent material to reveal the inner and outer workings of our human world. The original cartoon is ever-present, haunting us with suggestive content.

The artists in this exhibition reframe our world. Here we are asked to consider the laws, systems and iconographies of the cartoon world while drawing parallels with our human world; physical laws, the laws of gravitation, matter + light, the physics of motion, and societal psychologies & behaviours. We are presented with fascinating catalogues and overlaying systems of symbolic language. The purposeful demolition of expectation in these works, mirrors the instabilities and dreams of modern life. They remind us that the pervasive medium of the cartoon can reflect and influence how we navigate the world. If there is a paradox here, it might be that dismantling a cartoon can throw open the doors of perception.

Artist Andy Holden becomes a cartoon avatar in Laws of Motion in a Cartoon Landscape. Photograph By contributed [downloaded from https://www.newwestrecord.ca/entertainment/what-can-cartoons-tell-us-about-the-state-of-the-universe-find-out-in-new-west-1.23969740]

An Oct. 7, 2019 article in the New Westminster Record provides a few more details about the show,

The New Westminster New Media Gallery’s next exhibition is exploring the impact of animated cartoons.

Cartooney opens at the gallery on Friday, Oct. 18 and runs until Dec. 8 [2019], then again from Jan. 7 to Feb. 2 [2020].
Artist Kevin McCoy, one-half of the duo of Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, will be on hand for an artist talk on opening night, Friday, Oct. 18. The talk will run from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m., with a reception and open exhibition from 7:30 to 9 p.m.
…
Laws of Motion in a Cartoon Landscape, by Andy Holden (U.K.):

In his two-channel audiovisual installation, 57 minutes long, Holden becomes a cartoon avatar, giving both a lecture on cartoons and a cartoon lecture, describing how our world is best now understood as a cartoon. The project incorporates Greek philosophy, Stephen Hawking, critical theory, physics, art, the financial crisis and Donald Trump, while adapting 10 laws of cartoon physics to create a theory of the world and a prophetic glimpse of the world we live in.

…

CB-MMXVIII (I’ve been thinking of giving sleeping lessons), by Patten (U.K.):
In this multi-screen audiovisual installation, the artist duo Patten subjects Charlie Brown to all the digital stresses, distortions and manipulations available in 2018, testing his plasticity.
“Sampled texts from philosophy, science and critical theory criss-cross the screens and are linked with scrolling images related to the natural world, DNA, systems, multiples; all serving to influence our reading of the cartoon character and the texts,” says the release. The ambient soundtrack is a dramatically slowed down Linus and Lucy theme.

You can find the New Westminster New Media Gallery on the third floor at the Anvil Centre, 777 Columbia St. See www.newmediagallery.ca for more details.

Collisions Festival: Invasive Systems in Vancouver, November 2019

An October 8, 2019 Curiosity Collider news release announces Vancouver’s first ever art/sci (or sciart) festival,

Curiosity Collider, a Vancouver-based not-for-profit organization, will be hosting its inaugural art-science Collisions Festival: Invasive Systems at the VIVO Media Arts Centre from November 8 to 10, 2019. The festival features an art-science exhibition showcasing independent works and collaborative works by artist/scientist pairs, a hands-on DNA sonification workshop, an opening reception with performances, and guided discussions and tours.
Curated by Curiosity Collider’s Creative Director Char Hoyt, the theme of the festival focuses on the “invasive systems” that surround us – from technology and infections, to pollution and invasive species. “We want to create a space to explore the influence of the invasive aspects of our world on our inner and outer lives” said Char. “We will examine our observations from both scientific and artistic perspectives- are these influences beneficial, inevitable, or preventable?” Attendees can anticipate a deep dive into the delicate and complicated nature of how both living and inanimate things redefine our lives and environments – through visual art, multimedia installations, and interactive experiences.
“I am not a scientist and do not come from a family of scientists, but I have always appreciated knowing how things work, how things are connected and how things evolve – collaboration between art and science feel natural to me,” said Vancouver artist Dzee Lousie. “Both artists and scientists are curious, perform experiments and are driven by questions.” Dzee’s work Crossing, an interactive puzzle painting that examines how microbial colonies can impact our behaviours and processes in our body, is the result of a collaboration with UBC PhD candidate Linda Horianopoulos. “As scientists, we often want people to take notice of our work and engage with it. I think that art attracts people to do exactly that,” said Linda.
The sculptural work Invasion by Prince George artist Twyla Exner explores the remnants of technology. “My artworks propose hybrids of technological structures and living organisms. They take form as abandoned technologies that have sprouted with new life, clever artificialities that imitate nature, or biotechnological fixtures of the not-so-distant future,” Twyla shared. Like Dzee, she feels that artists and scientists share the sense of curiosity, experimentation, and creative problem solving. “Both art and science have the ability to tell stories and shape how people see and interpret the world around them.”
The festival is hosted in collaboration with the VIVO Media Arts Centre (2625 Kaslo Street, Vancouver, BC V5M 3G9). It will open on the evening of November 8th, with a reception and a live performance by local sound artist Edzi’u, during which her sculptural installation Moose are Life will be brought to life. On Saturday, artist Laara Cerman will co-host a DNA sonification workshop with scientist Scott Pownall. Their work Flora’s Song No. 1 in C Major – a hand-cranked music box that plays a tune created from the DNA of local invasive plants – will be on exhibit during the festival. The festival will also include tours by the curator at 3:30pm and guided discussions at 4pm on both Saturday and Sunday. Visit https://collisionsfestival2019.eventbrite.ca for festival tickets and http://bit.ly/collisionsfestival2019 for festival information.
Other participating artists and collaborating scientists include: Christian Dahlberg (Photography/ Painting / New Media Artist), Chris Dunnett (Multidisciplinary Artist), Garth Covernton (PhD Candidate, University of Victoria), Joanne Hastie (Artist / Mechanical Engineer), Kathryn Wadel (Interdisciplinary Mixed Media Artist), and Katrina Vera Wong (Artist / Writer / Editor).
Curiosity Collider and VIVO Media Arts Centre gratefully acknowledge the support of BC Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, City of Vancouver, Metro Vancouver Regional Cultural Project Grants Program, UBC Faculty of Science, and our printing sponsor Jukebox, for making Collisions Festival: Invasive Systems possible.
About Curiosity Collider Art-Science Foundation
Curiosity Collider Art-Science Foundation is a Vancouver based non-profit organization that is committed to providing opportunities for artists whose work expresses scientific concepts and scientists who collaborate with artists. We challenge the perception and experience of science in our culture, break down the walls between art and science, and engage our growing community to bringing life to the concepts that describe our world.
Website: https://curiositycollider.org
Twitter: @ccollider
Facebook:@curiositycollider
Instagram: @curiositycollider

Banner image by Wisrgallery via Wikipedia Commons.

DNA data sonification workshop

From the DNA sonification workshop registration page on eventbrite,

Are you curious about data sonification? Wondering how music theory and DNA sequences could converge to create a work of art and science? Join us to explore more!
Note: Participants will receive complimentary admission into the Collisions Festival: Invasive Systems (art-science festival).
In this DNA sonification workshop, participants will learn the process of DNA barcoding of invasive plant species, and how to sonify DNA sequences with basic music theory and MIDI freeware. Participants will also get hands-on experience in amplying specific genetic regions in plants through polymerase chain reaction (PCR), a step necessary in preparing samples for DNA barcoding.

This workshop will be led by artist Laara Cerman and scientist Scott Pownall, whose art-science collaborative work “Flora’s Song No. 1 in C Major” will be on exhibit during Collisions Festival: Invasive Systems. Laara and Scott will also share their process of working together, and how decisions were made to arrive at their collaborative work of art and science.
This workshop is part of the Collisions Festival: Invasive Systems (art-science festival). Due to workshop space, the capacity of this workshop will be capped at 12 people.
For more information about the festival, including artist/scientist biographies, visit the festival website.
***
We acknowledge that Collisions Festival and its events take place on the traditional, ancestral, unceded territories of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil- Waututh) Nations. We are grateful for the opportunity to live and work on this land.

I asked the Curiosity Collider folks (@CCollider on Twitter) if you needed to bring any equipment or have any knowledge of music. The answer was: no, you don’t need to bring anything (unless you want to) and you don’t need to know about music.

Uncorked at Science World at TELUS World of Science in Vancouver on November 14, 2019

This is not a cheap night out. An October 10, 2019 article by Lindsay William-Ross for the Daily Hive website gives you reasons to go anyway (Note: Links have been removed),

A new wine-themed event will have Vancouverites swirling with nerdy glee. Uncorked: A Celebration of the Science of Wine is an evening of sipping and learning that will bring together world-renown winemakers, chefs, and science experts for an unforgettable event.
…

Participating wineries are:

Mission Hill Family Estate
CedarCreek Estate Winery
CheckMate Artisanal Winery
Martin’s Lane Winery
Road 13 Vineyards
The wines will be paired with bites from Chef Patrick Gayler from Mission Hill’s Terrace Restaurant and Chef Neil Taylor from CedarCreek’s new Home Block Restaurant.
Programming for the evening includes seminars on the science of blending wine, the science of aging wine, the role of technology at modern vineyards, and the science of soil and terroir.
…
Proceeds from Uncorked will support Science World’s On the Road program, which last year brought live science performances to 41,500 students throughout B.C. who otherwise might not have had a chance to visit TELUS World of Science.

Tickets are $89 and can be purchased here. You may also want to reserve some money for the silent auction. Don’t forget, it’s November 14, 2019 from 7 pm to 10 pm at Science World in Vancouver. You can find directions and a map here.

September 2019’s science’ish’ events in Toronto and Vancouver (Canada)

2 Replies

There are movies, plays, a multimedia installation experience all in Vancouver, and the ‘CHAOSMOSIS mAchInesexhibition/performance/discussion/panel/in-situ experiments/art/ science/ techne/ philosophy’ event in Toronto. But first, there’s a a Vancouver talk about engaging scientists in the upcoming federal election. .

Science in the Age of Misinformation (and the upcoming federal election) in Vancouver

Dr. Katie Gibbs, co-founder and executive director of Evidence for Democracy, will be giving a talk today (Sept. 4, 2019) at the University of British Columbia (UBC; Vancouver). From the Eventbrite webpage for Science in the Age of Misinformation,

Science in the Age of Misinformation, with Katie Gibbs, Evidence for Democracy
In the lead up to the federal election, it is more important than ever to understand the role that researchers play in shaping policy. Join us in this special Policy in Practice event with Dr. Katie Gibbs, Executive Director of Evidence for Democracy, Canada’s leading, national, non-partisan, and not-for-profit organization promoting science and the transparent use of evidence in government decision making. A Musqueam land acknowledgement, welcome remarks and moderation of this event will be provided by MPPGA students Joshua Tafel, and Chengkun Lv.
Wednesday, September 4, 2019
12:30 pm – 1:50 pm (Doors will open at noon)
Liu Institute for Global Issues – xʷθəθiqətəm (Place of Many Trees), 1st floor
Pizza will be provided starting at noon on first come, first serve basis. Please RSVP.
What role do researchers play in a political environment that is increasingly polarized and influenced by misinformation? Dr. Katie Gibbs, Executive Director of Evidence for Democracy, will give an overview of the current state of science integrity and science policy in Canada highlighting progress made over the past four years and what this means in a context of growing anti-expert movements in Canada and around the world. Dr. Gibbs will share concrete ways for researchers to engage heading into a critical federal election [emphasis mine], and how they can have lasting policy impact.
Bio: Katie Gibbs is a scientist, organizer and advocate for science and evidence-based policies. While completing her Ph.D. at the University of Ottawa in Biology, she was one of the lead organizers of the ‘Death of Evidence’—one of the largest science rallies in Canadian history. Katie co-founded Evidence for Democracy, Canada’s leading, national, non-partisan, and not-for-profit organization promoting science and the transparent use of evidence in government decision making. Her ongoing success in advocating for the restoration of public science in Canada has made Katie a go-to resource for national and international media outlets including Science, The Guardian and the Globe and Mail.
Katie has also been involved in international efforts to increase evidence-based decision-making and advises science integrity movements in other countries and is a member of the Open Government Partnership Multi-stakeholder Forum.
Disclaimer: Please note that by registering via Eventbrite, your information will be stored on the Eventbrite server, which is located outside Canada. If you do not wish to use this service, please email Joelle.Lee@ubc.ca directly to register. Thank you.
Location
Liu Institute for Global Issues – Place of Many Trees
6476 NW Marine Drive
Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z2

Sadly I was not able to post the information about Dr. Gibbs’s more informal talk last night (Sept. 3, 2019) which was a special event with Café Scientifique but I do have a link to a website encouraging anyone who wants to help get science on the 2019 federal election agenda, Vote Science. P.S. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to post this in a more timely fashion.

Transmissions; a multimedia installation in Vancouver, September 6 -28, 2019

Here’s a description for the multimedia installation, Transmissions, in the August 28, 2019 Georgia Straight article by Janet Smith,

Lisa Jackson is a filmmaker, but she’s never allowed that job description to limit what she creates or where and how she screens her works.
The Anishinaabe artist’s breakout piece was last year’s haunting virtual-reality animation Biidaaban: First Light. In its eerie world, one that won a Canadian Screen Award, nature has overtaken a near-empty, future Toronto, with trees growing through cracks in the sidewalks, vines enveloping skyscrapers, and people commuting by canoe.
…
All that and more has brought her here, to Transmissions, a 6,000-square-foot, immersive film installation that invites visitors to wander through windy coastal forests, by hauntingly empty glass towers, into soundscapes of ancient languages, and more.
Through the labyrinthine multimedia work at SFU [Simon Fraser University] Woodward’s, Jackson asks big questions—about Earth’s future, about humanity’s relationship to it, and about time and Indigeneity.
Simultaneously, she mashes up not just disciplines like film and sculpture, but concepts of science, storytelling, and linguistics [emphasis mine].
…
“The tag lines I’m working with now are ‘the roots of meaning’ and ‘knitting the world together’,” she explains. “In western society, we tend to hive things off into ‘That’s culture. That’s science.’ But from an Indigenous point of view, it’s all connected.”
Transmissions is split into three parts, with what Jackson describes as a beginning, a middle, and an end. Like Biidaaban, it’s also visually stunning: the artist admits she’s playing with Hollywood spectacle.
Without giving too much away—a big part of the appeal of Jackson’s work is the sense of surprise—Vancouver audiences will first enter a 48-foot-long, six-foot-wide tunnel, surrounded by projections that morph from empty urban streets to a forest and a river. Further engulfing them is a soundscape that features strong winds, while black mirrors along the floor skew perspective and play with what’s above and below ground.
“You feel out of time and space,” says Jackson, who wants to challenge western society’s linear notions of minutes and hours. “I want the audience to have a physical response and an emotional response. To me, that gets closer to the Indigenous understanding. Because the Eurocentric way is more rational, where the intellectual is put ahead of everything else.”
Viewers then enter a room, where the highly collaborative Jackson has worked with artist Alan Storey, who’s helped create Plexiglas towers that look like the ghost high-rises of an abandoned city. (Storey has also designed other components of the installation.) As audience members wander through them on foot, projections make their shadows dance on the structures. Like Biidaaban, the section hints at a postapocalyptic or posthuman world. Jackson operates in an emerging realm of Indigenous futurism.
…

The words “science, storytelling, and linguistics” were emphasized due to a minor problem I have with terminology. Linguistics is defined as the scientific study of language combining elements from the natural sciences, social sciences, and the humanities. I wish either Jackson or Smith had discussed the scientific element of Transmissions at more length and perhaps reconnected linguistics to science along with the physics of time and space, as well as, storytelling, film, and sculpture. It would have been helpful since it’s my understanding, Transmissions is designed to showcase all of those connections and more in ways that may not be obvious to everyone. On the plus side, perhaps the tour, which is part of this installation experience includes that information.

I have a bit .more detail (including logistics for the tours) from the SFU Events webpage for Transmissions,

Transmissions
September 6 – September 28, 2019
The Roots of Meaning
World Premiere
September 6 – 28, 2019

Fei & Milton Wong Experimental Theatre
SFU Woodward’s, 149 West Hastings
Tuesday to Friday, 1pm to 7pm
Saturday and Sunday, 1pm to 5pm
FREE
In partnership with SFU Woodward’s Cultural Programs and produced by Electric Company Theatre and Violator Films.
TRANSMISSIONS is a three-part, 6000 square foot multimedia installation by award-winning Anishinaabe filmmaker and artist Lisa Jackson. It extends her investigation into the connections between land, language, and people, most recently with her virtual reality work Biidaaban: First Light.
Projections, sculpture, and film combine to create urban and natural landscapes that are eerie and beautiful, familiar and foreign, concrete and magical. Past and future collide in a visceral and thought-provoking journey that questions our current moment and opens up the complexity of thought systems embedded in Indigenous languages. Radically different from European languages, they embody sets of relationships to the land, to each other, and to time itself.
Transmissions invites us to untether from our day-to-day world and imagine a possible future. It provides a platform to activate and cross-pollinate knowledge systems, from science to storytelling, ecology to linguistics, art to commerce. To begin conversations, to listen deeply, to engage varied perspectives and expertise, to knit the world together and find our place within the circle of all our relations.
…
Produced in association with McMaster University Socrates Project, Moving Images Distribution and Cobalt Connects Creativity.
….
Admission: Free Public Tours
Tuesday through Sunday
Reservations accepted from 1pm to 3pm. Reservations are booked in 15 minute increments. Individuals and groups up to 10 welcome.
Please email: sfuw@sfu.ca for more information or to book groups of 10 or more.

Her Story: Canadian Women Scientists (short film subjects); Sept. 13 – 14, 2019

Curiosity Collider, producer of art/science events in Vancouver, is presenting a film series featuring Canadian women scientists, according to an August 27 ,2019 press release (received via email),

“Her Story: Canadian Women Scientists,” a film series dedicated to sharing the stories of Canadian women scientists, will premiere on September 13th and 14th at the Annex theatre. Four pairs of local filmmakers and Canadian women scientists collaborated to create 5-6 minute videos; for each film in the series, a scientist tells her own story, interwoven with the story of an inspiring Canadian women scientist who came before her in her field of study.
Produced by Vancouver-based non-profit organization Curiosity Collider, this project was developed to address the lack of storytelling videos showcasing remarkable women scientists and their work available via popular online platforms. “Her Story reveals the lives of women working in science,” said Larissa Blokhuis, curator for Her Story. “This project acts as a beacon to girls and women who want to see themselves in the scientific community. The intergenerational nature of the project highlights the fact that women have always worked in and contributed to science.
This sentiment was reflected by Samantha Baglot as well, a PhD student in neuroscience who collaborated with filmmaker/science cartoonist Armin Mortazavi in Her Story. “It is empowering to share stories of previous Canadian female scientists… it is empowering for myself as a current female scientist to learn about other stories of success, and gain perspective of how these women fought through various hardships and inequality.”
When asked why seeing better representation of women in scientific work is important, artist/filmmaker Michael Markowsky shared his thoughts. “It’s important for women — and their male allies — to question and push back against these perceived social norms, and to occupy space which rightfully belongs to them.” In fact, his wife just gave birth to their first child, a daughter; “It’s personally very important to me that she has strong female role models to look up to.” His film will feature collaborating scientist Jade Shiller, and Kathleen Conlan – who was named one of Canada’s greatest explorers by Canadian Geographic in 2015.
Other participating filmmakers and collaborating scientists include: Leslie Kennah (Filmmaker), Kimberly Girling (scientist, Research and Policy Director at Evidence for Democracy), Lucas Kavanagh and Jesse Lupini (Filmmakers, Avocado Video), and Jessica Pilarczyk (SFU Assistant Professor, Department of Earth Sciences).
This film series is supported by Westcoast Women in Engineering, Science and Technology (WWEST) and Eng.Cite. The venue for the events is provided by Vancouver Civic Theatres.
Event Information
Screening events will be hosted at Annex (823 Seymour St, Vancouver) on September 13th and 14th [2019]. Events will also include a talkback with filmmakers and collab scientists on the 13th, and a panel discussion on representations of women in science and culture on the 14th. Visit http://bit.ly/HerStoryTickets2019 for tickets ($14.99-19.99) and http://bit.ly/HerStoryWomenScientists for project information.

I have a film collage,

I looks like they’re presenting films with a diversity of styles. You can find out more about Curiosity Collider and its various programmes and events here.

Vancouver Fringe Festival September 5 – 16, 2019

I found two plays in this year’s fringe festival programme that feature science in one way or another. Not having seen either play I make no guarantees as to content. First up is,

AI Love You
Exit Productions
London, UK
Playwright: Melanie Anne Ball
exitproductionsltd.com
Adam and April are a regular 20-something couple, very nearly blissfully generic, aside from one important detail: one of the pair is an “artificially intelligent companion.” Their joyful veneer has begun to crack and they need YOU to decide the future of their relationship. Is the freedom of a robot or the will of a human more important?
For AI Love You:
***** “Magnificent, complex and beautifully addictive.” —Spy in the Stalls
**** “Emotionally charged, deeply moving piece … I was left with goosebumps.” —West End Wilma
**** —London City Nights
Past shows:
***** “The perfect show.” —Theatre Box

Intellectual / Intimate / Shocking / 14+ / 75 minutes
…

The first show is on Friday, September 6, 2019 at 5 pm. There are another five showings being presented. You can get tickets and more information here.

The second play is this,

Red Glimmer
Dusty Foot Productions
Vancouver, Canada
Written & Directed by Patricia Trinh

Abstract Sci-Fi dramedy. An interdimensional science experiment! Woman involuntarily takes an all inclusive internal trip after falling into a deep depression. A scientist is hired to navigate her neurological pathways from inside her mind – tackling the fact that humans cannot physically re-experience somatosensory sensation, like pain. What if that were the case for traumatic emotional pain? A creepy little girl is heard running by. What happens next?

Weird / Poetic / Intellectual / LGBTQ+ / Multicultural / 14+ / Sexual Content / 50 minutes

This show is created by an underrepresented Artist.
Written, directed, and produced by local theatre Artist Patricia Trinh, a Queer, Asian-Canadian female.

The first showing is tonight, September 5, 2019 at 8:30 pm. There are another six showings being presented. You can get tickets and more information here.

CHAOSMOSIS mAchInes exhibition/performance/discussion/panel/in-situ experiments/art/ science/ techne/ philosophy, 28 September, 2019 in Toronto

An Art/Sci Salon September 2, 2019 announcement (received via email), Note: I have made some formatting changes,

CHAOSMOSIS mAchInes
28 September, 2019
7pm-11pm.
Helen-Gardiner-Phelan Theatre, 2nd floor
University of Toronto. 79 St. George St.
A playful co-presentation by the Topological Media Lab (Concordia U-Montreal) and The Digital Dramaturgy Labsquared (U of T-Toronto). This event is part of our collaboration with DDLsquared lab, the Topological Lab and the Leonardo LASER network

7pm-9.30pm, Installation-performances,
9.30pm-11pm, Reception and cash bar, Front and Long Room, Ground floor

Description:
From responsive sculptures to atmosphere-creating machines; from sensorial machines to affective autonomous robots, Chaosmosis mAchInes is an eclectic series of installations and performances reflecting on today’s complex symbiotic relations between humans, machines and the environment.

This will be the first encounter between Montreal-based Topological Media Lab (Concordia University) and the Toronto-based Digital Dramaturgy Labsquared (U of T) to co-present current process-based and experimental works. Both labs have a history of notorious playfulness, conceptual abysmal depth, human-machine interplays, Art&Science speculations (what if?), collaborative messes, and a knack for A/I as in Artistic Intelligence.

Thanks to Nina Czegledy (Laser series, Leonardo network) for inspiring the event and for initiating the collaboration

Visit our Facebook event page
Register through Evenbrite

Supported by

Main sponsor: Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies, U of T
Sponsors: Computational Arts Program (York U.), Cognitive Science Program (U of T), Knowledge Media Design Institute (U of T), Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology (IHPST), Fonds de Recherche du Québec – Société et culture (FRQSC), The Centre for Comparative Literature (U of T)
A collaboration between
Laser events, Leonardo networks – Science Artist, Nina Czegledy
ArtsSci Salon – Artistic Director, Roberta Buiani
Digital Dramaturgy Lab^squared – Creative Research Director, Antje Budde
Topological Media Lab – Artistic-Research Co-directors, Michael Montanaro | Navid Navab

Project presentations will include:
Topological Media Lab
tangibleFlux φ plenumorphic ∴ chaosmosis
SPIEL
On Air
The Sound That Severs Now from Now
Cloud Chamber (2018) | Caustic Scenography, Responsive Cloud Formation
Liquid Light
Robots: Machine Menagerie
Phaze
Phase
Passing Light
Info projects
Digital Dramaturgy Lab^squared
Btw Lf & Dth – interFACING disappearance
Info project

This is a very active September.

ETA September 4, 2019 at 1607 hours PDT: That last comment is even truer than I knew when I published earlier. I missed a Vancouver event, Maker Faire Vancouver will be hosted at Science World on Saturday, September 14. Here’s a little more about it from a Sept. 3, 2019 at Science World at Telus Science World blog posting,

Earlier last month [August 2019?], surgeons at St Paul’s Hospital performed an ankle replacement for a Cloverdale resident using a 3D printed bone. The first procedure of its kind in Western Canada, it saved the patient all of his ten toes — something doctors had originally decided to amputate due to the severity of the motorcycle accident.
Maker Faire Vancouver Co-producer, John Biehler, may not be using his 3D printer for medical breakthroughs, but he does see a subtle connection between his home 3D printer and the Health Canada-approved bone.
“I got into 3D printing to make fun stuff and gadgets,” John says of the box-sized machine that started as a hobby and turned into a side business. “But the fact that the very same technology can have life-changing and life-saving applications is amazing.”
When John showed up to Maker Faire Vancouver seven years ago, opportunities to access this hobby were limited. Armed with a 3D printer he had just finished assembling the night before, John was hoping to meet others in the community with similar interests to build, experiment and create. Much like the increase in accessibility to these portable machines has changed over the years—with universities, libraries and makerspaces making them readily available alongside CNC Machines, laser cutters and more — John says the excitement around crafting and tinkering has skyrocketed as well.
“The kind of technology that inspires people to print a bone or spinal insert all starts at ground zero in places like a Maker Faire where people get exposed to STEAM,” John says …
…
… From 3D printing enthusiasts like John to knitters, metal artists and roboticists, this full one-day event [Maker Faire Vancouver on Saturday, September 14, 2019] will facilitate cross-pollination between hobbyists, small businesses, artists and tinkerers. Described as part science fair, part county fair and part something entirely new, Maker Faire Vancouver hopes to facilitate discovery and what John calls “pure joy moments.”

Hopefully that’s it.

Fields Centre for Quantitative Analysis and Modelling (CQAM) and ArtSci Salon: call for mathematical artworks

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Currently, the deadline is July 26, 2019. For information about the call, there’s a July 6, 2019 ArtSci Salon announcement (received via email) about the call). Note: Both the Art/Sci Salon and CQAM are located in Toronto, Ontario but this is not limited to Canadian artists as far as I can tell,

Please, see this quick call!! this is for existing artworks: do you have
any math-related digital work/photography/drawing/ in high res? please
consider submitting!!!
…
Call for Artworks
Fields CQAM – ArtSci Salon
deadline: July 26, 2019

The Fields Centre for Quantitative Analysis and Modeling and ArtSci
Salon are looking for Mathematically related, Mathematically inspired,
or Mathematically informed artworks to feature on a limited series of
cards and small prints.

Fields CQAM (CQAM https://www.cqam.ca/ … is a research centre
comprised of 11 labs pairing leading researchers and industry from
across Ontario, simultaneously training a new pool of quantitative
scientists while enabling rapid translation of innovations from idea to
implementation. Mathematical modeling data analytics and visualization,
geometry processing and fabrication, health analytics, and human machine
interaction are only a few of the diverse research fields the centre is
engaged in. Please, check their website …for more information.

The artwork will be printed on cards. A limited number of bigger prints
will be distributed to volunteers who have made an outstanding
contribution to Fields CQAM. The selected artist will receive an
honorarium of $300 – $500 [CAD].

GENERAL REQUIREMENTS

– Artworks can engage with a variety of topics in mathematics. For
instance, they can complement themes explored by CQAM labs.

– Acceptable formats are: Black & White or Color digitally generated
artworks (like visualizations, or digitally produced illustrations);
reproductions of paintings and other canvas-based work; photographic
work; drawings and other illustrations etc. Artworks must be high res
(see below)

– Size can vary (5X7in, 4X6in, 5x5in, 3×3 etc., keep in mind that the
artwork must fit a rectangular or squared-shaped – card).

TECHNICAL INSTRUCTIONS

Please, send the following material tracy.barber@cqam.ca via WeTransfer
(use free version) https://wetransfer.com/ …

– 1 high res (300dpi) image

– a short bio

– a short description of the artwork

The deadline to propose your artwork is July 26, 2019

For more information please contact Tracy Barber (CQAM)
tracy.barber@cqam.ca

Or Roberta Buiani (ArtSci Salon) rbuiani@gmail.com

I’m guessing this art/sci call for artworks is being handled exclusively by the Art/Sci Salon folks since there doesn’t seem to be any additional information about it on the CQAM website.

Pancakes & booze (underground) art show on Sept. 28, 2018 in Toronto and North Carolina’s public call for art for the upcoming exhibition Art’s Work in the Age of Biotechnology: Shaping our Genetic Futures.

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Pancakes & booze

From an August 12, 2018 Art/Sci Salon announcement (received via email),

Toronto — Batter sizzles, beer foams, and bare flesh is slathered in paint as gawkers look on. Indie musicians and DJs thunder sound waves off the canvas-lined, graffiti-strewn walls. Revelers stuff their faces with endless pancakes.

What is this, some type of hipster themed IHOP? A Lady Gaga video? Bansky’s mom’s basement? Nah, it’s the Pancakes & Booze Art Show – the hottest pop-up traveling art event in all the land.

This is no stuffy wine-and-cheese, someone-gag-me-with-a-cocktail-napkin gallery. It’s an innovative reimagining of the art show concept, as DIY art movement mayhem. Up-and-coming artists strut and sell their stuff in a freeverse, electric funhouse of mayhem.

You know you want to come, right? Hit me up so we can talk about ways to convince your editor to pay you to visit the show and maybe relax that no-alcohol-on-the-job policy. Hell, even bring your boss along If you like.

WHAT: Pancakes & Booze Art Show: Over 80 emerging artists showcasing their hottest work in a Warhol-style, anything-goes, massive warehouse environment–live music, body painting, multimedia displays, and FREE pancakes! The show originated in 2009 in Los Angeles and since has popped up more than 300 times in over 35 cities around the world. Each show draws as many as 3000 guests throughout the night.

WHEN:
Friday, September 28
8pm – 2am

WHERE:
The Opera House
735 Queen St. E.
Toronto, Ontario M4M 1H1

ABOUT TOM: Tom Kirlin, 40, left his movie career as a Hollywood cameraman to start Pancakes & Booze in 2009. Born in Tucson, Ariz., he’s a travel fiend who has visited over forty countries across every continent but Antarctica. At 6-foot-6, he’s a hell of a ringer in pick-up basketball games. Bug him at info@pancakesandbooze.com

There’s also this summary along with additional details from the announcement:

Toronto’s Premier Underground Art Show featuring:

80+ Emerging Local Artists

Live Body Painting

Live Art

Live Music

FREE Pancake Bar

21+ EVENT

8pm – 2am

$10 – $13

Event info: https://www.facebook.com/events/390234974807730/

Tickets: https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/3442689

The Opera House
735 Queen St. E.
Toronto, Ontario M4M 1H1

Wanna show some work?
Submit here: www.pancakesandbooze.com/submit

Check us out on

IG @pancakesandbooze

FB @pancakesandboozeartshow
Twitter @pancakesbooze

#pancakesandbooze

North Carolina: Art’s work in the age of biotechnology: Shaping our genetic futures

This too is from an August 12, 2018 Art/Sci Salon email,

This looks good!
Apply!

…

The NCSU [North Carolina State University] Libraries, NC State’s Genetic Engineering and Society (GES) Center, and the Gregg Museum of Art & Design have issued a public call for art for the upcoming exhibition Art’s Work in the Age of Biotechnology: Shaping our Genetic Futures.

Planned for fall 2019, the multi-site exhibition will be held simultaneously at the Gregg Museum of Art & Design and in the physical and digital display spaces of the NCSU Libraries–the Exhibit Gallery in the D. H. Hilll Library and the video walls in the James B. Hunt Jr. Library. Outdoor and/or greenhouse spaces are also available.

about

Art’s Work/Genetic Futures poses the question: How do artists and designers contribute materially, rhetorically, and conceptually to modern biotechnology? We are looking for contemporary work and project proposals that will engage viewers in examining how genomic sciences could shape the future of our society. Projects that question and challenge current biotechnology tropes, as well as projects that embrace the transformative potential of biotechnology and biomedicine, are welcome.

Guest curator Hannah Star Rogers will organize Art’s Work/Genetic Futures with a panel from the exhibition partners at NC State. Rogers has curated Making Science Visible: The Photography of Berenice Abbott, which received an exhibits prize from the British Society for the History of Science and resulted in an invited lecture at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art. She is past Director of Research and Collaboration forEmerge: Artists and Scientists Redesign the Future 2016 and served as Guest Bioart Curator for 2017.

This call is open to artists, scientists, designers, and makers at all career stages. Emerging artists, creators who are traditionally underrepresented in the arts and sciences, and artists working outside the U.S. are especially encouraged to apply.

Artists will receive an honorarium of $2,500 and three copies of the full-color catalog with essays by the curator and other contributors. Artists working in a collaborative team will share the honorarium.

The deadline for work and proposals is Monday, Oct. 1, 2018.

A shortlist will be announced Thursday, Nov. 15, 2018. Final notification of acceptance will be Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2019.

Full details about the exhibition, the call for art, and how to submit are available on the Art’s Work/Genetic Futures exhibition website at go.ncsu.edu/artswork.

Good luck!

FrogHeart

Commentary about nanotech, science policy and communication, society, and the arts

Tag Archives: Art/Sci Salon

more-than-human, an art/sci exhibition and series of events starting February 1, 2023

Onsite Gallery

Art/Sci Salon February 28 – May 7, 2023 events

Toronto’s ArtSci Salon in Vancouver (Canada) and Venice (Italy)

Of Health Myths and Trickster Viruses; a Who Cares? windup event on Friday, April 1, 2022 (+ more final Who Cares? events)

Data Meditation and three roundtables: a collection of Who Cares? March 2022 events

Who Cares? a series of Art/Sci Salon talks and exhibitions in February and March 2022

Proximal Fields from September 8 – 12, 2021 and a peek into the international art/sci/tech scene

International and local scene details (e.g., same show? what is Ars Electronica? etc.)

Local: Fields Institute and ArtSci Salon

Ars Electronica

Leonardo; The International Society for Arts, Sciences and Technology

September 2019’s science’ish’ events in Toronto and Vancouver (Canada)

Science in the Age of Misinformation (and the upcoming federal election) in Vancouver

Transmissions; a multimedia installation in Vancouver, September 6 -28, 2019

Her Story: Canadian Women Scientists (short film subjects); Sept. 13 – 14, 2019

Vancouver Fringe Festival September 5 – 16, 2019

CHAOSMOSIS mAchInes exhibition/performance/discussion/panel/in-situ experiments/art/ science/ techne/ philosophy, 28 September, 2019 in Toronto

Pancakes & booze (underground) art show on Sept. 28, 2018 in Toronto and North Carolina’s public call for art for the upcoming exhibition Art’s Work in the Age of Biotechnology: Shaping our Genetic Futures.

Pancakes & booze

North Carolina: Art’s work in the age of biotechnology: Shaping our genetic futures