Tag Archives: SciArt

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.

Literature and your brain (the neuroscience of it)

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This guy (Angus Fletcher) is a little too much the evangelist for my taste but the ideas supporting the book he has authored and is promoting in this video are in line with a lot of thinking about vision and memory both of which can be described acts of creativity. In this case, Fletcher is applying these ideas to literature, which he describes as an act of co-creation,

A May 3, 2021 news item on phys.org announces the publication of Fletcher’s book,

If you really want to understand literature, don’t start with the words on a page—start with how it affects your brain.

That’s the message from Angus Fletcher, an English professor with degrees in both literature and neuroscience, who outlines in a new book a different way to read and think about stories, from classic literature to pulp fiction to movies and TV shows.

Literature wasn’t invented just as entertainment or a way to deliver messages to readers, said Fletcher, who is a professor at The Ohio State University.

“Stories are actually a form of technology. [emphasis mine] They are tools that were designed by our ancestors to alleviate depression, reduce anxiety, kindle creativity, spark courage and meet a variety of other psychological challenges of being human,” Fletcher said.

“And even though we aren’t taught this in literature classes today, we can still find and use these emotional tools in the stories we read today.”

…

Here’s more about the book and ideas supporting it in a May 3, 2021 Ohio State University (OSU) news release (also on EurekAlert) by Jeff Grabmeier and Aaron Nestor, which originated the news item,

Fletcher explains these concepts in his book Wonderworks: The 25 Most Powerful Inventions in the History of Literature.

For example, in a chapter about fighting loneliness, he discusses how reading The Godfather by Mario Puzo may help. A chapter on feeding creativity talks about the virtues of Alice in Wonderland and Winnie-the-Pooh. Looking for the best way to make your dreams come true? For that, Fletcher proposes the TV show 30 Rock.

Wonderworks doesn’t ignore the classics: The book discusses how reading Shakespeare can help us heal from grief, Virginia Woolf can assist readers in finding peace of mind, and Homer can support those needing courage.

Fletcher said his neuroscience background very much influences the approach to literature he takes in Wonderworks.

“When you read a favorite poem or story, you may feel joy, you feel a sense of empathy or connection. One of the things I do in the book is provide the scientific validation for the things we’ve long felt when we’ve read favorite books or watched movies or TV shows that we loved,” he said.

“From my neuroscience background and studies that I’ve done, I can see how literature’s inventions plug into different regions of our brain, to make us less lonely or help us build up our courage or do a variety of other things to help us. Every story is different and is, in effect, a different tool.”

Fletcher said to truly understand the power of literature requires a different way of approaching stories from what is offered by most traditional literature courses.

The usual method of teaching literature focuses on the words, asking students to look for themes, to consider what the author intended to say and mean.

But that’s not the focus at Project Narrative, an Ohio State program of which Fletcher is a member.

“At Project Narrative, we reverse the process. Instead of looking at the words first, we look first at what is going on in your mind. How does this story make you feel? We look at how people are responding to the characters, the plot, the world that the author created,” Fletcher said.

After examining how the story makes you feel, the second part of the process is to trace that feeling back to some invention of the story, whether it is the plot, a character, the narrator, or the world of the story.

The themes of the story, or what the author means to say, are less important in this approach to literature.

That means when you are looking for a book to stimulate your courage, you don’t have to look for a book that has “courage” in the title or even as one of its themes according to traditional literature analysis, Fletcher said.

“Courage comes from reading a work of literature that makes us feel like we’re participating in something bigger than ourselves. It doesn’t have to mention courage or have courage be one of its themes,” he said. “That’s not relevant.”

For example, you wouldn’t think of reading The Godfather to ward off loneliness. But Fletcher said it can have this effect, partly through its use of a specific operatic technique. In Wonderworks, Fletcher explains how some operas feature a period of dissonant and turbulent music that is eventually resolved by a sweet harmony.

“The clashing and discordant music is upsetting, but then the sweet relief of harmony comes and releases dopamine in our brain, bonding us to the music,” he said.

“Puzo does the same thing in The Godfather, by creating chaos and tension in a chapter and then just partly resolving it at the end, giving us this partial dopamine rush that bonds us to the characters and to the story and makes us feel like they are friends.”

And even though it may not be good to be friends with gangsters in real life, the dopamine rush that we get from befriending the Corleone family can help ward off loneliness, he said.

If you’re reading stories like The Godfather while isolated during the COVID-19 pandemic, it may even help ease the transition back to normal life when the world opens back up.

Neuroscientists have discovered that a part of the brain, called the dorsal raphe nucleus, helps us make friends, Fletcher said. It contains a cluster of dopamine neurons that are primed for short periods of loneliness and stand ready to encourage us to be sociable when we again meet people.

But if our isolation lasts weeks or months, like during the pandemic, that priming fades and our brain hunkers down in isolation – making it harder to re-connect with people.

“So what The Godfather and other stories can do is wake up the dorsal raphe nucleus and make it easier to rejoin society when the pandemic is over,” he explained.

Fletcher said the use of operatic techniques in The Godfather is just one example of how literature can be a form of technology.

And he hopes more people will want to figure out how these technological tools in literature really work in our brains.

“The idea behind the book is to give you a different way of reading, one that unlocks the extraordinary power of literature to heal your brain, give you more joy, more courage, whatever you need in your life.”

You can order “Wonderworks: The 25 Most Powerful Inventions in the History of Literature” from this Simon & Shuster (publisher) webpage,

A brilliant examination of literary inventions through the ages, from ancient Mesopotamia to Elena Ferrante, that shows how writers have created technical breakthroughs—rivaling any scientific inventions—and engineering enhancements to the human heart and mind.

Literature is a technology like any other. And the writers we revere—from Homer, Shakespeare, Austen, and others—each made a unique technical breakthrough that can be viewed as both a narrative and neuroscientific advancement. Literature’s great invention was to address problems we could not solve: not how to start a fire or build a boat, but how to live and love; how to maintain courage in the face of death; how to account for the fact that we exist at all.

Wonderworks reviews the blueprints for twenty-five of the most powerful developments in the history of literature. These inventions can be scientifically shown to alleviate grief, trauma, loneliness, anxiety, numbness, depression, pessimism, and ennui—all while sparking creativity, courage, love, empathy, hope, joy, and positive change. They can be found all throughout literature—from ancient Chinese lyrics to Shakespeare’s plays, poetry to nursery rhymes and fairy tales, and crime novels to slave narratives.

An easy-to-understand exploration of the new literary field of story science, Wonderworks teaches you everything you wish you learned in your English class. Based on author Angus Fletcher’s own research, it is an eye-opening and thought-provoking work that offers us a new understanding of the power of literature.

Should you be interested in Project Narrative, it can be found here.

Space and sound (music from the Milky Way)

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A May 17, 2021 posting on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) Radio Ideas programme blog describes and hosts embedded videos and audio clips of space data sonfications and visualizations,

After years of attempts and failures to get a microphone to Mars, NASA’s [US National Aeronautics and Space Administration] latest rover, Perseverance, succeeded. It landed in February carrying two microphones.

For Jason Achilles Mezilis, a musician and record producer who has also worked for NASA, listening to the haunting Martian wind was an emotional experience.

“I’m in this bar half drunk, and I go over to the corner and I listen to it on my cellphone and … I broke down.”

The atmosphere of Mars is a little thinner than Earth’s, but it still has enough air to transmit sound.

Ben Burtt, an Oscar-winning sound designer, editor and director, made the sounds of cinematic space fantasy — from Star Wars to WALL-E to Star Trek. But he’s also deeply interested in the sound of actual space reality.

“All sound is a form of wind, really. It’s a puff of air molecules moving. And when I heard the sound, I thought: ‘Well, you know, I’ve heard this many times in my headphones on recording trips,'” Burtt said

…

SYSTEM Sounds, founded by University of Toronto astrophysicist and musician Matt Russo, translates data from space into music. 

Planets or moons sometimes fall into what’s called “orbital resonance,” where two or more bodies pull each other into a regular rhythm. One example is the three inner moons of Jupiter: Ganymede, Europa, and Io. 

“The rhythm is very similar to what a drummer might play. There’s a very simple regularity,” Russo said.

“And there’s something about our ears and our auditory system that finds that pleasing, finds repeating rhythms with simple ratios between them pleasing or natural sounding. It’s predictable. So it gives you something to kind of latch on to emotionally.”

Russo created this tool to illustrate the musical rhythm of the Galilean moons. 

…

During the pandemic, scientists at NASA, with the help of SYSTEM Sounds, tried to find new ways of connecting people with the beauty of space. The result was “sonic visualizations,” translating data captured by telescopes into sound instead of pictures.

Most images of space come from data translated into colours, such as Cassiopeia A, the remains of an exploded star. 

A given colour is usually assigned to the electromagnetic signature of each chemical in the dust cloud. But instead of assigning a colour, a musical note can be assigned, allowing us to hear Cassiopeia A instead of just seeing it.

…

There are several embedded videos and the Ideas radio interview embedded in the May 17, 2021 posting. Should you be interested, you can find System Sounds here.

You will find a number of previous postings (use the search term ‘data sonification’); the earliest concerning ‘space music’ is from February 7, 2014. You’ll also find Matt Russo, the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system, and music in a May 11, 2017 posting.

2021 Visualizing Science contest

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The Canadian Science Publishing contest: Visualizing SCIENCE 2021 edition opened on July 20, 2021 with a deadline of August 17, 2021 at 23:59 (ET).

Fame, glory, and a couple of bucks could be yours should your image find favour with the judges.

Here’s more about the contest from the Visualizing SCIENCE webpage,

An image can capture a moment, communicate a message, and evoke emotion. From selfies and sketches to micrographs and modelling outputs, the Visualizing SCIENCE contest celebrates all images that visualize all facets of scientific research.

Whether you’re at the lab, in the field, or online at home, it’s time to start creating images for your chance to win cash prizes.

….

Grand Prize of $400 CAD
People’s Choice prize of $250 CAD
From the Lab category prize of $200 CAD
From the Machine category prize of $200 CAD
From the Field category prize of $200 CAD

I have more details from the Contest Rules (PDF),

In 2016, Canadian Science Publishing organized the Visualizing SCIENCE image contest. The contest seeks images that visualize scientific research. The contest is open to all members of the international research community.

Contest Participants can submit a maximum of five (5) images to each of the three (3) categories.

FROM THE LAB

This category includes all images taken within the lab including micrographs and photographs.

FROM THE MACHINE

This category includes all images created in silico (i.e., by computer) including data visualization, modelling, digital art, and infographic representations.

FROM THE FIELD

This category includes all images taken of and during field work including field sketches and photographs.

…

Please check out the Contest Rules (PDF) for more details such as Image requirements and Submission requirements.

You’ll find the submission form on the Visualizing SCIENCE webpage.

Finally, you might find interviews (written by Sydney Currier for Canadian Science Publishing) with some of this year’s contest judges helpful,

Good luck!

Israel’s Fetter Museum of Nanoscience & Art opens on Thursday, July 8, 2021

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According to a July 5, 2021 news article by Maya Margit in the Jerusalem Post (originally published by The Media Line) The Fetter Museum of Nanoscience & Art will be opening at Bar-Ilan University’s Institute of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials (BINA)* this Thursday, July 8, 2021 (Note: Links have been removed),

A new museum set to open in Israel this week combines the cutting-edge field of nanotechnology with the world of contemporary art to create a uniquely mind-bending experience.

The Fetter Nanoscience and Art Museum located at Bar-Ilan University’s Institute of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials (BINA), pushes the limits of creative expression with a series of artworks that are exhibited throughout the institute’s seven floors.

…

This museum seems to be conceptual as it is ‘found’ in spaces within BINA rather than having its own designated space within BINA or its own ‘brick and mortar’ structure.

For the curious, there is a Fetter Museum of Nanoscience & Art website where some sections still seem to be under construction.

Back to Margit’s July 5, 2021 news article,

Slated to open to the public on Thursday [July 8, 2021], the museum is the brainchild of acclaimed physics professor Yuval Garini, former director of BINA.

As he was wandering down the spacious halls of the institute one day, Garini realized that much could be done to make better use of the expansive central rooms and meeting areas at BINA.

“Nanotechnology is an interdisciplinary field so you really have to have the scientists from different disciplines working together to get something really novel,” Garini told The Media Line, adding that one of the primary purposes of the museum is to attract youngsters to join the burgeoning field of nanotechnology.

The museum has taken years to launch as evidenced by a November 2018 BINA newsletter issue 9 announcement,

Joseph Fetter Museum of Nanotechnology

The Nano-Art Museum will showcase breakthrough research conducted at the Institute, fusing art and science to create an interactive thought-provoking experience.

Art that speaks science

“It started several years ago as a dream to establish a nanotechnology museum through a collaborative process of scientists and artists,” said Prof. Yuval Garini, the visionary and driving force behind the project. “We wanted to dazzle visitors with magnificent experiences, exposing them to scientific principles and to the vast research possibilities in the natural sciences. I am deeply grateful to the Fetter family, whom, without their gracious help our vision would not have been realized”, he said.

…

The Nano-Art museum is scheduled to open in the summer of 2019, offering visitors a wondrous celebration of the senses. …

Bravo to professor Garini and the others whose continued determination has resulted in the museum.

Back again to Margit’s July 5, 2021 news article,

The launch show, Titled “New Languages,” features collaborations between artists and scientists from a wide variety of nanotechnology-related disciplines, including biology, computer science, engineering and chemistry.

…

New works will be added as time goes by and as these dialogues continue, she said. Unlike traditional white cube museums, the art at the Fetter Museum is exhibited in the institute’s main halls and in between its research labs, making for a one-of-a-kind museum experience in Israel.

Artist Vardi Bobrow, for instance, created an imposing large-scale sculptural installation called “Stretching the Limits” in BINA’s main hall that consists of a staggering 15,000 rubber bands. The rubber bands are intended to illustrate how damaged neurons recover by stretching and growing, an area of research that was explored by Prof. Orit Shefi. 

…

It’s not clear if they will be hosting an event of some kind; I was not able to find any press releases.

*ETA July 6.21 0840 PDT: Bar-Ilan University is in the city of Ramat Gan in the Tel Aviv District.

The Internet of Bodies and Ghislaine Boddington

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I stumbled across this event on my Twitter feed (h/t @katepullinger; Note: Kate Pullinger is a novelist and Professor of Creative Writing and Digital Media, Director of the Centre for Cultural and Creative Industries [CCCI] at Bath Spa University in the UK).

Anyone who visits here with any frequency will have noticed I have a number of articles on technology and the body (you can find them in the ‘human enhancement’ category and/or search fro the machine/flesh tag). Boddington’s view is more expansive than the one I’ve taken and I welcome it. First, here’s the event information and, then, a link to her open access paper from February 2021.

From the CCCI’s Annual Public Lecture with Ghislaine Boddington eventbrite page,

This year’s CCCI Public Lecture will be given by Ghislaine Boddington. Ghislaine is Creative Director of body>data>space and Reader in Digital Immersion at University of Greenwich. Ghislaine has worked at the intersection of the body, the digital, and spatial research for many years. This will be her first in-person appearance since the start of the pandemic, and she will share with us the many insights she has gathered during this extraordinary pivot to online interfaces much of the world has been forced to undertake.

With a background in performing arts and body technologies, Ghislaine is recognised as a pioneer in the exploration of digital intimacy, telepresence and virtual physical blending since the early 90s. As a curator, keynote speaker and radio presenter she has shared her outlook on the future human into the cultural, academic, creative industries and corporate sectors worldwide, examining topical issues with regards to personal data usage, connected bodies and collective embodiment. Her research led practice, examining the evolution of the body as the interface, is presented under the heading ‘The Internet of Bodies’. Recent direction and curation outputs include “me and my shadow” (Royal National Theatre 2012), FutureFest 2015-18 and Collective Reality (Nesta’s FutureFest / SAT Montreal 2016/17). In 2017 Ghislaine was awarded the international IX Immersion Experience Visionary Pioneer Award. She recently co-founded University of Greenwich Strategic Research Group ‘CLEI – Co-creating Liveness in Embodied Immersion’ and is an Associate Editor for AI & Society (Springer). Ghislaine is a long term advocate for diversity and inclusion, working as a Trustee for Stemette Futures and Spokesperson for Deutsche Bank ‘We in Social Tech’ initiative. She is a team member and presenter with BBC World Service flagship radio show/podcast Digital Planet.

Date and time

Thu, 24 June 2021
08:00 – 09:00 [am] PDT

…

@GBoddington

@bodydataspace

@ConnectedBodies

Boddington’s paper is what ignited my interest; here’s a link to and a citation for it,

The Internet of Bodies—alive, connected and collective: the virtual physical future of our bodies and our senses by Ghislaine Boddington. AI Soc. 2021 Feb 8 : 1–17. DOI: 10.1007/s00146-020-01137-1 PMCID: PMC7868903 PMID: 33584018

Some excerpts from this open access paper,

The Weave—virtual physical presence design—blending processes for the future

Coming from a performing arts background, dance led, in 1989, I became obsessed with the idea that there must be a way for us to be able to create and collaborate in our groups, across time and space, whenever we were not able to be together physically. The focus of my work, as a director, curator and presenter across the last 30 years, has been on our physical bodies and our data selves and how they have, through the extended use of our bodies into digitally created environments, started to merge and converge, shifting our relationship and understanding of our identity and our selfhood.

…

One of the key methodologies that I have been using since the mid-1990s is inter-authored group creation, a process we called The Weave (Boddington 2013a, b). It uses the simple and universal metaphor of braiding, plaiting or weaving three strands of action and intent, these three strands being:

1. The live body—whether that of the performer, the participant, or the public;

2. The technologies of today—our tools of virtually physical reflection;

3. The content—the theme in exploration.

As with a braid or a plait, the three strands must be weaved simultaneously. What is key to this weave is that in any co-creation between the body and technology, the technology cannot work without the body; hence, there will always be virtual/physical blending. [emphasis mine]

…

Cyborgs

Cyborg culture is also moving forward at a pace with most countries having four or five cyborgs who have reached out into media status. Manel Munoz is the weather man as such, fascinated and affected by cyclones and anticyclones, his back of the head implant sent vibrations to different sides of his head linked to weather changes around him.

Neil Harbisson from Northern Ireland calls himself a trans-species rather than a cyborg, because his implant is permanently fused into the crown of his head. He is the first trans-species/cyborg to have his passport photo accepted as he exists with his fixed antenna. Neil has, from birth, an eye condition called greyscale, which means he only sees the world in grey and white. He uses his antennae camera to detect colour, and it sends a vibration with a different frequency for each colour viewed. He is learning what colours are within his viewpoint at any given time through the vibrations in his head, a synaesthetic method of transference of one sense for another. Moon Ribas, a Spanish choreographer and a dancer, had two implants placed into the top of her feet, set to sense seismic activity as it occurs worldwide. When a small earthquake occurs somewhere, she received small vibrations; a bigger eruption gives her body a more intense vibration. She dances as she receives and reacts to these transferred data. She feels a need to be closer to our earth, a part of nature (Harbisson et al. 2018).

…

Medical, non medical and sub-dermal implants

Medical implants, embedded into the body or subdermally (nearer the surface), have rapidly advanced in the last 30 years with extensive use of cardiac pacemakers, hip implants, implantable drug pumps and cochlear implants helping partial deaf people to hear.

Deep body and subdermal implants can be personalised to your own needs. They can be set to transmit chosen aspects of your body data outwards, but they also can receive and control data in return. There are about 200 medical implants in use today. Some are complex, like deep brain stimulation for motor neurone disease, and others we are more familiar with, for example, pacemakers. Most medical implants are not digitally linked to the outside world at present, but this is in rapid evolution.

Kevin Warwick, a pioneer in this area, has interconnected himself and his partner with implants for joint use of their personal and home computer systems through their BrainGate (Warwick 2008) implant, an interface between the nervous system and the technology. They are connected bodies. He works onwards with his experiments to feel the shape of distant objects and heat through fingertip implants.

‘Smart’ implants into the brain for deep brain stimulation are in use and in rapid advancement. The ethics of these developments is under constant debate in 2020 and will be onwards, as is proved by the mass coverage of the Neuralink, Elon Musk’s innovation which connects to the brain via wires, with the initial aim to cure human diseases such as dementia, depression and insomnia and onwards plans for potential treatment of paraplegia (Musk 2016).

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Given how many times I’ve featured art/sci (also know as, art/science and/or sciart) and cyborgs and medical implants here, my excitement was a given.

*ETA December 28,2021: Boddington’s lecture was posted here on July 27, 2021.*

For anyone who wants to pursue Boddington’s work further, her eponymous website is here, the body>data>space is here, and her University of Greenwich profile page is here.

For anyone interested in the Centre for Creative and Cultural Industries (CCCI), their site is here.

Finally, here’s one of my earliest pieces about cyborgs titled ‘My mother is a cyborg‘ from April 20, 2012 and my September 17, 2020 posting titled, ‘Turning brain-controlled wireless electronic prostheses into reality plus some ethical points‘. If you scroll down to the ‘Brain-computer interfaces, symbiosis, and ethical issues’ subhead, you’ll find some article excerpts about a fascinating qualitative study on implants and ethics.

InterAction; 2021 congress (congrès) and Science Writers & Communicators of Canada (SWCC) 2021 conference

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I’m a little late to the congrès (May 27 -29, 2021) but they’re still taking registrations. Of course, you will need some French language skills.

InterAction

It might be worth testing those French language skills, as the organizers (L’Association des communicateurs scientifiques du Québec [ACS]) have arranged a fairly lively programme (PDF),

JEUDI 27 MAI

13 h 00 à 13 h 30 – Kiosques

13 h 30 à 13 h 45 – Plénière Allocutions d’ouverture du congrès

13 h 45 à 14 h 30 – Plénière Discussion avec Nicolas Martin, animateur de La méthode scientifique à France Culture

14 h 30 à 14 h 45 – Pause

14 h 45 à 16 h 00 – Ateliers

(1) Laboratoire artistique
(2) La polarisation dans les communicationssur les réseaux sociaux en lien avec la COVID: bilan et perspectives

16 h 00 à 16 h 15 – Pause

16 h 15 à 17 h 00 – Plénière Discussion avec Louis T, humoriste

VENDREDI 28 MAI

13 h 30 à 14 h 00 – Kiosques

14 h 00 à 15 h 00 – Plénière Comment communiquer la science en temps de pandémie ?

15 h 00 à 15 h 30 – Pause

15 h 30 à 16 h 45 – Ateliers

(1) Discours et pensée critique
(2) Science et savoirs autochtones

16 h 45 à 17 h 30 – Pause

Dès 17 h 30 – Remise des prix 2021 de l’ACS

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You can register here and there’s more information about L’Association des communicateurs scientifiques du Québec (ACS) here.

They’re also promoting the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada’s upcoming Science Literacy Week September 20 -26, 2021 or Semaine de la culture scientifique.

2021 Science Writers and Communicators of Canada (SWCC) Conference

In comparison with ‘Interaction’, the SWCC 2021 conference is titled: “Resilience: COVID-19. Pandemic life. Racial tension. Political unrest. Climate Change.” (The organizers have arranged a virtual conference that runs from June 7, 2021 to June 17, 2021 on nonconsecutive days.

Both organizations are covering many of the same topics but they’ve adopted different tones for approaching them as evidenced in the titles. While I’ve characterized the congrès programme as lively, I’d characterize this conference programme as earnest.

You can find the 2021 conference programme here and you can find registration details here.

COVID-19 infection as a dance of molecules

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What a great bit of work, publicity-wise, from either or both the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto (Canada) and artist/scientist Radha Chaddah. IAM (ee-yam): Dance of the Molecules, a virtual performance installation featuring COVID-19 and molecular dance, has been profiled in the Toronto Star, on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) website, and in the Globe and Mail within the last couple of weeks. From a Canadian perspective, that’s major coverage and much of it national.

Bruce DeMara’s March 11, 2021 article for the Toronto Star introduces artist/scientist Radha Chaddah, her COVID-19 dance of molecules, and her team (Note: A link has been removed),

Visual artist Radha Chaddah has always had an abiding interest in science. She has a degree in biology and has done graduate studies in stem cell research.

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[…] four-act dance performance; the first part “IAM: Dance of the Molecules” premiered as a digital exhibition on the Aga Khan Museum’s website March 5 [2021] and runs for eight weeks. Subsequent acts — human, planetary and universal, all using the COVID virus as an entry point — will be unveiled over the coming months until the final instalment in December 2022.

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Among Chaddah’s team were Allie Blumas and the Open Fortress dance collective — who perform as microscopic components of the virus’s proliferation, including “spike” proteins, A2 receptors and ribosomes — costumiers Call and Response (who designed for the late Prince), director of photography Henry Sansom and composer Dan Bédard (who wrote the film’s music after observing the dance rehearsals remotely).

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A March 5, 2021 article by Leah Collins for CBC online offers more details (Note: Links have been removed),

This month, the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto is debuting new work from local artist Radha Chaddah. Called IAM, this digital exhibition is actually the first act in a series of four short films that she aims to produce between now and the end of 2022. It’s a “COVID story,” says Chaddah, but one that offers a perspective beyond the anniversary of its impact on life and culture and toilet-paper consumption. “I wanted to present a piece that makes people think about the coronavirus in a different way,” she explains, “one that pulls them out of the realm of fear and puts our imaginations into the realm of curiosity.”

It’s scientific curiosity that Chaddah’s talking about, and her own extra-curricular inquiries first sparked the series. For several years, Chaddah has produced work that splices art and science, a practice she began while doing grad studies in molecular neurobiology. “If I had to describe it simply, I would say that I make art about invisible realities, often using the tools of research science,” she says, and in January of last year, she was gripped by news of the novel coronavirus’ discovery. 

“I started researching: reading research papers, looking into how it was that [the virus] actually affected the human body,” she says. “How does it get into the cells? What’s its replicative life cycle?” Chaddah wanted a closer look at the structure of the various molecules associated with the progression of COVID-19 in the body, and there is, it turns out, a trove of free material online. Using animated 3-D renderings (sourced from this digital database), Chaddah began reviewing the files: blowing them up with a video projector, and using the trees in her own backyard as “a kind of green, living stage.”

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Part one of IAM (the film appearing on the Aga Khan’s website) is called “Dance of the Molecules.” Recorded on Chaddah’s property in September, it features two dancers: Allie Blumas (who choreographed the piece) and Lee Gelbloom. Their bodies, along with the leafy setting, serve as a screen for Chaddah’s projections: a swirl of firecracker colour and pattern, built from found digital models. Quite literally, the viewer is looking at an illustration of how the coronavirus infects the human body and then replicates. (The very first images, for example, are close-ups of the virus’ spiky surface, she explains.) And in tandem with this molecular drama, the dancers interpret the process. 

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There is a brief preview,

To watch part 1 of IAM: Dance of the Molecules, go here to the Aga Khan Museum.

Enjoy!

Being a bit curious I looked up Radha Chaddah’s website and found this on her Bio webpage (click on About tab for the dropdown menu from the Home page),

Radha Chaddah is a Toronto based visual artist and scientist. Born in Owen Sound, Ontario she studied Film and Art History at Queen’s University (BAH), and Human Biology at the University of Toronto, where she received a Master of Science in Cell and Molecular Neurobiology. 

Chaddah makes art about invisible realities like the cellular world, electromagnetism and wave form energy, using light as her primary medium.  Her work examines the interconnected themes of knowledge, illusion, desire and the unseen world. In her studio she designs projected light installations for public exhibition. In the laboratory, she uses the tools of research science to grow and photograph cells using embedded fluorescent light-emitting molecules. Her cell photographs and light installations have been exhibited across Canada and her photographs have appeared in numerous publications.  She has lectured on basic cell and stem cell biology for artists, art students and the public at OCADU [Ontario College of Art & Design University], the Ontario Science Centre, the University of Toronto and the Textile Museum of Canada.

I also found Call and Response here, the Open Fortress dance collective on the Centre de Création O Vertigo website, Henry Sansom here, and Dan Bedard here. Both Bedard and Sansom can be found on the Internet Move Database (IMDB.com), as well.

Toronto’s ArtSci Salon and The Mutant Project March 15, 2021

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The Mutant Project is both a book (The Mutant Project: Inside the Global Race to Genetically Modify Humans) and an event about gene editing with special reference to the CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) twins, Lulu and Nana. The event is being held by Toronto’s ArtSci Salon. Here’s more from their March 3, 2021 announcement (received via email),

The Mutant Project

A talk and discussion with Eben Kirksey

Discussants:

Dr. Elizabeth Koester, Postdoctoral fellow, Department of History, UofT [University of Toronto]

Vincent Auffrey, PhD student, IHPST [Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology], UofT

Fan Zhang, PhD student, IHPST, UofT

This event will be streamed on Zoom and on Youtube

Here is the link to register to Zoom on the 15th:

https://utoronto.zoom.us/meeting/registe/tZErcemoqzwrG9foNF5Ud86uJXdNeIzQSfDw

Event on FB: https://www.facebook.com/events/4033393163381012/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEFfj3Ovsfk&feature=youtu.be

At a conference in Hong Kong in November 2018, Dr. He Jiankui announced that he had created the first genetically modified babies—twin girls named Lulu and Nana—sending shockwaves around the world. A year later, a Chinese court sentenced Dr. He to three years in prison for “illegal medical practice.”

As scientists elsewhere start to catch up with China’s vast genetic research program, gene editing is fueling an innovation economy that threatens to widen racial and economic inequality. Fundamental questions about science, health, and social justice are at stake: Who gets access to gene editing technologies? As countries loosen regulations around the globe, from the U.S. to Indonesia, can we shape research agendas to promote an ethical and fair society?

Join us to welcome Dr. Kirksey, who will discuss key topics from his book “The Mutant Project”.

The talk will be followed by a Q&A

EBEN KIRKSEY is an American anthropologist who finished his latest book as a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He has been published in Wired, The Atlantic, The Guardian and The Sunday Times. He is sought out as an expert on science in society by the Associated Press, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Democracy Now, Time and the BBC, among other media outlets. He speaks widely at the world’s leading academic institutions including Oxford, Yale, Columbia, UCLA, and the International Summit of Human Genome Editing, plus music festivals, art exhibits, and community events. Professor Kirksey holds a long-term position at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia. For more information, please visit https://eben-kirksey.space/.

Elizabeth Koester currently holds a SSHRC [Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada] Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of History at the University of Toronto. After practising law for many years, she undertook graduate studies in the history of medicine at the Institute for the History and Philosophy of
Science and Technology at the University of Toronto and was awarded a PhD in 2018. A book based on her dissertation, In the Public Good: Eugenics and Law in Ontario, will be published by McGill-Queen’s University Press and is anticipated for Fall 2021.

Vincent Auffrey is pursuing his PhD at the Institute for the History of Philosophy of Science and Technology (IHPST) at the University of Toronto. His focus is set primarily on the social history of medicine and the history of eugenics in Canada. Secondary interests include the histories of scientific racism and of anatomy, and the interplay between knowledge and power.

Fan Zhang is a PhD student at the History of Philosophy of Science and Technology (IHPST) at the University of Toronto

Kirksey’s eponymous website,