Tag Archives: OCADU (Ontaro College of Art and Design University)

INTER/her, a talk with Camille Baker about an immersive journey inside the female body on Friday, December 3, 2021

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Before getting to the announcement, this talk and Q&A (question and answer) session is being co-hosted by ArtSci Salon at the Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences and the OCAD University/DMG Bodies in Play (BiP) initiative.

For anyone curious about OCAD, it was the Ontario College of Art and Design and then in a very odd government/marketing (?) move, they added the word university. As for DMG, in their own words and from their About page, “DMG is a not-for-profit videogame arts organization that creates space for marginalized creators to make, play and critique videogames within a cultural context.” They are located in Toronto, Ontario. Finally, the Art/Sci Salon and the Fields Institute are located at the University of Toronto.

As for the talk, here’s more from the November 28, 2021 Art/Sci Salon announcement (received via email),

Inspired by her own experience with the health care system to treat a
post-reproductive disease, interdisciplinary artist [Camille] Baker created the
project INTER/her, an immersive installation and VR [virtual reality] experience exploring
the inner world of women’s bodies and the reproductive diseases they
suffer. The project was created to open up the conversation about
phenomena experienced by women in their late 30’s (sometimes earlier)
their 40’s, and sometimes after menopause. Working in consultation
with a gynecologist, the project features interviews with several women
telling their stories. The themes in the work include issues of female
identity, sexuality, body image, loss of body parts, pain, disease, and
cancer. INTER/her has a focus on female reproductive diseases explored
through a feminist lens; as personal exploration, as a conversation
starter, to raise greater public awareness and encourage community
building. The work also represents the lived experience of women’s
pain and anger, conflicting thoughts through self-care and the growth of
disease. Feelings of mortality are explored through a medical process in
male-dominated medical institutions and a dearth of reliable
information. https://inter-her.art/ [1]

In 2021, the installation was shortlisted for the Lumen Prize.

 Join us for a talk and Q&A with the artist to discuss her work and its
future development.

 Friday, December 3,

6:00 pm EST

 Register in advance for this meeting:

https://utoronto.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0rcO6rpzsvGd057GQmTyAERmRRLI2MQ4L1

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing
information about joining the meeting.

This talk is  Co-Hosted by the ArtSci Salon at the Fields Institute for
Research in Mathematical Sciences and the OCAD University/DMG Bodies in
Play (BiP) initiative.

This event will be recorded and archived on the ArtSci Salon Youtube
channel

Bio

Camille Baker is a Professor in Interactive and Immersive Arts,
University for the Creative Arts [UCA], Farnham Surrey (UK). She is an
artist-performer/researcher/curator within various art forms: immersive
experiences, participatory performance and interactive art, mobile media
art, tech fashion/soft circuits/DIY electronics, responsive interfaces
and environments, and emerging media curating. Maker of participatory
performance and immersive artwork, Baker develops methods to explore
expressive non-verbal modes of communication, extended embodiment and
presence in real and mixed reality and interactive art contexts, using
XR, haptics/ e-textiles, wearable devices and mobile media. She has an
ongoing fascination with all things emotional, embodied, felt, sensed,
the visceral, physical, and relational.

Her 2018 book _New Directions in Mobile Media and Performance_ showcases
exciting approaches and artists in this space, as well as her own work.
She has been running a regular meetup group with smart/e-textile artists
and designers since 2014, called e-stitches, where participants share
their practice and facilitate workshops of new techniques and
innovations. Baker  also has been Principal Investigator for UCA for the
EU funded STARTS Ecosystem (starts.eu [2]) Apr 2019-Nov 2021 and founder
initiator for the EU WEAR Sustain project Jan 2017-April 2019
(wearsustain.eu [3]).

The EU or European Union is the agency that provided funding for S+T+Arts (Science, Technology & the Arts), which is an initiative of the European Commission’s. I gather that Baker was involved in two STARTS projects, one called the WEAR Sustain project and the other called, the STARTS Ecosystem.

ArtSci Salon visits the Society for Literature, Science & the Arts 2018 Meeting in Toronto (Canada) while Vancouver’s Curiosity Collider provides a November 2018 update

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I have two art/sci (or sciart) announcements, one concerns an event and the other is a news update.

Toronto’s ArtSci Salon and the Society of Literature, Science & the Arts (SLSA) 2018 Meeting

How could I not have stumbled across SLSA until now? Better late than never but the 2018 meeting/conference in Toronto, Canada is the 32nd of this annual event. (sigh)

Getting on to the important points, the ArtSci Salon is hosting a special roundtable as part of the conference (from a November 14, 2018 announcement received via email),

ArtSci Salon has organized a special roundtable at the annual SLSA
(Society for Science Literature and the Arts) which will take place in
Toronto this week.

The roundtable is public and will be held at OCADU [Ontario College of Art and Design University] in the gallery on 49 McCaul Street.

Re-locating the rational: on the re-making of categories through art and science (or: the artist is out of mind!)

A roundtable and a mobile/pop-up exhibition organized by ArtSci Salon

The world always exceeds our conception of it (Shotwell, 2016)

Coinciding with this year’s SLSA “Out of Mind” conference in Toronto, ArtSci Salon is proposing a panel/roundtable on “out-of-mindedness” as a way to re-think categories, and to disrupt the disciplinary and methodological status quo through which we normally see science and the humanities unfolding in academic contexts. We plan to do it through a pop-up exhibition featuring the works of local artists and members of SLSA.

What to do when the sciences and the humanities loose [sic] their ability to fully grasp, and sometimes even speak of, phenomena that have inevitably become too complex, too diffuse to be simplified through a model or a formula, or to be seized and summarized by one discipline?

This initiative is not designed to propose a set of new categories, but to pose a series of open questions, highlighting the necessity to conduct collaborative research between artistic practices and scientific research. We interpret the idea of “out of mind” as a strategy. In fact, using the arts as our preferred mode of expression, we believe that we ought to step out of the traditional mind configurations and fixed wiring in order to seize new ways to come to term with the multiplicities characterizing current environmental transformations. These occurrences have proved to be connected with nature, culture, and society in too many intricate ways, to the extent that neither science, nor technological methods are able to fully comprehend them.

Roundtable Participants:

Roberta Buiani (Chair)

Erika Biddles

Jenifer Wightman

Stephanie Rothenberg

Adam Zaretsky

Kathy High

Dolores Steinman

Here’s the poster:

One more logistical detail,

[T]he roundtable will be at 10:30-12:00 noon [Friday, November 16, 2018] followed by a small tour of the mobile pop-up exhibition[.]

For the curious, here’s the SLSA website and the SLSA 2018 [Meeting]—Out of Your Mind website. Unexpectedly, the University of Toronto is not one of the conference hosts, instead we have the University of Waterloo [Waterloo, Ontario] and York University [Toronto, Ontario] as joint hosts with OCAD University—Canada’s oldest art and design institution—partnering with the Rochester Institute of Technology (New York state, US).

Vancouver’s Curiosity Collider

Coincidentally on the same day I received the ArtSci Salon event information, I received a November 14, 2018 update for Vancouver’s art/sci (or sciart) organization, Curiosity Collider. From the update received via email,

Collider Update

Next events (save-the-date), call for submissions, and other art+science in town

Collisions Festival:
Meet Up & Hang Out

Are you an artist working in the sci/art genre? A scientist interested in collaborating with artists? Or one who wears both hats?

In the fall of 2019, the Curiosity Collider will be hosting our inaugural Sci-Art festival The Collisions Festival; the first theme will be Invasive Systems. The call for submission will be open in spring, 2019. The theme is meant to be broad in scope and not limited to any specific scientific subject/discipline; participants are encouraged to suggest various interpretation of the theme.

We would like to invite all artists and scientists who are interested in participating or potentially submitting a proposal to join us at this meet up event, chat about possible collaborations, and learn more about projects and details on “collaborative work” proposals we are looking for.

RSVP now so we know how many to expect.. This is a casual drop in event; feel free to stay, or just stop by and say hi!

Notice that RSVP? Taken with the next announcement, something becomes evident,

Join the Collider Team!

Are you passionate about art and science? Want to be part of the awesome Curiosity Collider team to help create new ways to experience science? 

We are now inviting applications for the following positions:

Read more on our volunteer page. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions!

In the old days a ‘development director’ was a ‘fundraiser’. That RSVP? Likely, they’re trying to establish the size of their potential audience so they can get government grants. Audience size is important to corporate or ‘other’ funders but if you want a government grant you need numbers.

Getting back to the update, this is a grouping of Curiosity Collider’s latest hits,

#ColliderCafe: Art. Science. Cadence.

Did you miss our most recent Collider Cafe event? You can now chek out the talks by Singer-songwriter Devon More, Biologists Wayne Maddison and David Maddison, as well as Integrated Media Artist Victoria Gibson on our YouTube Channel.

Check out the talks now.

Et al 3: Collaboration Process for Quantum Futures

Nerd Nite, Science Slam, and Curiosity Collider joined forces for the 3rd edition of Et al: the ultimate bar science night event. During the event, Quantum Physicist James Day and our Creative Managing Director Char Hoyt gave attendees an overview of the collaboration process that made Night shift: Quantum Futures, an event curated by CC and hosted at the Museum of Anthropology, possible.

Missed the show? Watch the presentation on our YouTube channel now.

While they don’t seem to have any details, there is a date for the next Collider Cafe,

Save the Date:
Next Collider Cafe

Our next Collider Cafe will be on Wednesday, January 23 at Cafe Deux Soleils. #ColliderCafe is a space for artists, scientists, makers, and anyone interested in art+science. Meet. Discover. Connect. Create.

Are you curious? Join us to explore how art and science intersect in the exploration of curiosity.

Finally, a miscellaneous listing of related events being held in Vancouver, mostly, this November,

Looking for more art+science in town?

  • November 17 (Victoria) Science Writers and Communicators of Canada is hosting a workshop on science writing in an age of reconciliation: What science writers can learn from indigenous community members about better representation and relationships. Only a few spots left! Register now.
  • November 15-18 CC friend Dzee Louise will open her studio during the East Side Cultural Crawl! Drop by at studio #5 just at the top of the stairs of the William Clark Building at 1310 William Street (on the corner of Clark).
  • November 21 Natural History (Paleoart) Illustrator Julius Csotonyi will present a public lecture at the Vancouver Public Library (Kits branch) on the mutually beneficial affair between science and art.
  • November 21 Our friends at Nerd Nite Vancouver is hosting another awesome event next week, including a presentation by artist Michael Markowsky who will talk about how he ends up “Painting on the Moon”. Get your tickets now!
  • Until December 15 Vancouver Biennale’s CURIOUS IMAGININGS continues…check out the exhibition that will “challenge us to explore the social impacts of emerging biotechnology and our ethical limits in an age where genetic engineering and digital technologies are already pushing the boundaries of humanity.”

For more Vancouver art+science events, visit the Curiosity Collider events calendar. Let us know about your art+science events by emailing info@curiositycollider.org.

I did write a preview (June 18, 2018) for the last event on the list, Curious Imaginings, which included some of the latest science on xenotransplantation and chimeras (i.e., examples of  emerging biotechnology). That’s all folks!