| Miguel Amado holds an MA in Curating Contemporary Art from the
Royal College of Art, London. He is Curatorial Fellow at Rhizome, an
affiliate of the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York City, and
Curator at the PLMJ Foundation, Lisbon. Selected curated exhibitions
include the annual show Options & Futures: Works from the Collection of
the PLMJ Foundation – Recent Acquisitions (2005, 2006), E=mc2 (2005),
An Extension of the Eye: Photographs from the Collection of the PLMJ
Foundation (2005) and 7/10 (2003). He authored the book 25 Frames per
Second: Videos from the Collection of the PLMJ Foundation (2006) and
writes regularly for magazines including Artforum, Artforum.com, Flash
Art, Contemporary and Exit Express, as well as for catalogues such as the
27th Bienal de São Paulo: Guide (2006).
Roy Ascott is pioneering the place of cybernetics and telematics in art
and has been working with issues of art, technology and consciousness
since the 1960s. He directs the Planetary Collegium from the University
of Plymouth, which he founded (originally as CAiiA at the University of
Wales Newport) in 1994. He is Visiting Professor in Design|Media Arts,
University of California, Los Angeles. He has held senior university posts
in the USA, Austria, Canada and the UK. He is founding editor of
Technoetic Arts, and advises journals, juries and new media centres in
Brazil, China, Japan, Korea, North America and Europe. His theoretical
work is published many languages. Ascott has shown at the Venice
Biennale, Electra Paris, Ars Electronica Linz, V2 Holland, Milan
Triennale, Biennale do Mercosul, Brazil, European Media Festival,
gr2000az at Graz, Austria.
André Brodyk is a Genetic artist and researcher who uses living
transgenic organisms as new art media and genetic protocols as new art
processes to critique art and science within multimedia installations.
His research is centred on hybrid literal/fictional interpretations of
recombinant DNA technologies and the creation of biochemically
compatible novel codons made from inanimate sources. He is
completing a PhD at the College of Fine Art UNSW and lecturing in Fine
Art at the University of Newcastle (Australia) where he is also Artist in
Residence within The School of Environmental and Life Sciences. Brodyk
has written extensively in the area of art and genomics. In 2002 he
pioneered in Australia the exhibition of Genetically Modified Organisms
and bioluminescent material as art. He has recently undertaken artist
residencies and research within microbiology laboratories and has
generally exhibited art informed by genetics. Brodyk is represented in
16 Australian public art museums and corporate collections, including
NGA, AGSA and Art Bank.
Stuart Bunt is co-founder and Scientific Director of SymbioticA at the
University of Western Australia — the first art and biology lab situated
in a science department. He consults and lectures on the nexus between
art/science and technology, and the philosophy and history of science.
He has exhibited in Ars Electronica and collaborated on, or helped to
produce, a number of biotech art pieces revolving around emergent
technologies in the biosciences. http://www.symbiotica.uwa.edu.au
Heath Bunting emerged from the 80’s committed to building open/
democratic communication systems and social contexts. He came from
the street up, passing through and often revisiting graphity,
performance, intervention, pirate radio, fax/mail art and BBS systems to
become an active participant in the explosion of the internet. He has
produced many internet projects, some highly recognised, and has
helped form a strong context for the practice of net.art. Recently he has
moved into the field of genetics proclaiming it to be the next ‘new media’,
and is also developing work in the area of physical network performance.
Gary Cass graduated with a Bachelor of Science (Horticulture) from the
University of Western Australia and is currently working at the UWA in
the Agriculture student laboratories as a lab technician. His scientific
knowledge covers a broad field including microbiology, molecular
biology, soil science and plant biology. He has collaborated on several art
projects involving DNArt (painting with bacteria), fungal textile dyeing,
DNA Musik and plant tissue culture sculpture.
Oron Catts is the Artistic Director of SymbioticA, Artist/Researcher and a
curator. Founded the Tissue Culture and Art Project (TC&A) in 1996.
Co-Founder and Artistic Director of SymbioticA - The Art & Science
Collaborative Research Laboratory at The School of Anatomy & Human Biology, University of Western Australia. Curator of Biofeel exhibition
and the Aesthetic of Care symposium, BEAP 2002 and BioDifferences exhibition and conference, BEAP 2004. A research fellow at The Tissue
Engineering & Organ Fabrication Laboratory, Massachusetts General
Hospital, Harvard Medical School (2000-2001).
Trained in product design and visual art, Catts exhibited in venues such
as Ars Electronica 2000, 2001, Adelaide Biennale of Australian Arts 2002,
LÁrt Biotech, France 2003 and National Gallery of Victoria 2003. Published
in Leonardo magazine (MIT Press), and Live Art (Tate Publication). Catts
is continuously presenting his own work as well as the work done in
SymbioticA as public talks and workshops around the world.
Boo Chapple is a practising artist and researcher whose work focuses on
processes of material-technical transformation that operate at the
boundary between life and non-life, bodies and culture. She has explored
this theme in a number of different mediums including radio, sound
performance, video, networked communication, and biological art. Her
work has been exhibited in national and international contexts including
the Beijing Biennale of Architecture and in an exhibition of Australian
Sound Art at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Chapple has
completed a Master of Design a RMIT University and was awarded the
2005-2006 Australia Council for the Arts SymbioticA Residency
Melinda Cooper graduated from the University of Paris VIII in 2001.
She is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the University of East Anglia,
UK. Her current research is concerned with questions of growth, crisis
and limits at the intersection of economic and political theory and the
life sciences. In March 2004, she participated in the Biotech Art
Workshop held at the Experimental Art Foundation in Adelaide. She was
co-editor, along with Andrew Goffey and Anna Munster, of the 2005
‘biopolitics’ issue of the e-journal Culture Machine. Cooper’s forthcoming
book Surplus Life - Biotechnics and the Transformations of Capital, will be
published in the In-Vivio series in 2007.
Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) is a collective of tactical media
practitioners of various specializations, including computer graphics
and web design, wetware, film/video, photography, text art, book art,
and performance. Formed in 1987, CAE’s focus has been on the
exploration of the intersections between art, critical theory, technology,
and political activism. The collective has performed and produced a wide
variety of projects for an international audience at diverse venues
ranging from the street, to the museum, to the Internet. Critical Art
Ensemble has also written six books including the recently released Marching Plague: Germ Warfare and Global Public Health. Steve Kurtz is
an Associate Professor of Art at SUNY, Buffalo, USA.
http://www.critical-art.net/
Gina Czarnecki’s art-work intersects multiple genres, disciplines and
platforms. Increasingly this is developed in collaboration with
musicians, biotechnologists, programmers, and choreographers, and
address issues surrounding the convergence of biology and technology,
systems of classification and identification. Through micro editing and
weaving tapestries of images, she constructs contemplative spaces with
strong visual aesthetics. Recent works include the award winning film, Nascent, and multi-media collaboration, Devolution (Australian Dance
Theatre / Louis Philippe Demers) and Spine, a giant outdoor projection
for AVO6 Festival, Newcastle, UK/ Laneways Melbourne. She studied at
Wimbledon School of Art, London, and did a Postgraduate at University
of Dundee. From 1997-1991 she co-ran the workshop of the London
Film-Makers Co-operative and, from 1992, led the time-based art
programs at the University of Humberside/Northern Media School.
From 1997-2003 she led the prestigious Masters Program in Electronic
Art at Duncan of Jordanstone College in Scotland.
Kirsty Darlaston is an Adelaide based writer and artist. Her work
focuses on post-Cartesian conceptions of the body in performance and
interactive art. She is currently a PhD candidate at the University of
South Australia, where she is researching perceptions of artists working
in public space.
Joe Davis: I was born 4 December 1950. I entered and was expelled from
Jefferson Davis Junior College and the University of Southern
Mississippi in the late 1960s. I graduated with a BA in Creative Arts from
Mt. Angel College, Oregon in 1973. I have held academic and research appointments at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for over 25
Years and have been a Research Affiliate at MIT Laboratory of Molecular
Structure, MIT Department of Biology since 1990. I am an artist working
in art and technology in assorted fields for over 30 years. I have a
background in sculpture and have created public works with
conventional media. My best known works have involved laser and
electron beam applications, telecommunications and the search for
extraterrestrial intelligence, molecular biology and biotechnology,
bioinformatics and a collection of strange new instruments for the
investigation of previously unresolved phenomena. Microvenus
(ca. 1986) is widely regarded to be the first example of recombinant or
‘genetically-engineered’ art. I have an extensive track record of successful
gallery and museum exhibitions worlwide and I have written several
journal articles for serious international scientific publications including
Nature’s Encyclopedia of the Human Genome (2003).
Nik Gaffney is a founding member and media+systems researcher at
FoAM in Belgium. His interest in connecting everything with everything
else has made him into a multidisciplinary octopus, working on projects
that range from visual programming to perceptual modeling and
algorithmic media design. His studies covered the fields of computer
science, cognitive science and organic chemistry at Adelaide University,
Australia. As one of the founders of the artists’ collective mindfluX,
he worked on installation pieces, performances and the creation of the
electronic magazine mindvirus. He is a member of farmersmanual, a paneuropean,
multisensory disturbance conglomerate. Within the
collective, he works on network sonification while building aluminium
buckyballs and small plastic geometric models. Farmersmanual has had
a continuously erratic stream of performances and installations since
1996, recently receiving BBC’s ‘Experimental album of the year’ award
for the 95 hour DVD epic RLA.
George Gessert was born in 1944 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA.
He has degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, and the
University of Wisconsin, Madison. Since 1985 his work has focused on
the overlap of art and genetics. He has exhibited widely in the United
States and Europe. His writings have appeared in many publications.
Currently he is editor for art and biology for Leonardo.
Eduardo Kac is internationally recognised for his interactive net
installations and his bio art. A pioneer of telecommunications art in the
pre-Web ‘80s, Eduardo Kac emerged in the early ‘90s with his radical
telepresence and biotelematic works. His visionary combination of
robotics and networking explores the fluidity of subject positions in the
post-digital world. His work deals with issues that range from the
mythopoetics of online experience (Uirapuru) to the cultural impact of
biotechnology (Genesis); from the changing condition of memory in the
digital age (Time Capsule) to distributed collective agency (Teleporting an
Unknown State); from the problematic notion of the ‘exotic’ (Rara Avis) to the creation of life and evolution (GFP Bunny). At the dawn of the
twenty-first century Kac shocked the world with his ‘transgenic art’ —
first with a groundbreaking net installation entitled Genesis (1999),
which included an ‘artist’s gene’ he invented, and then with his
fluorescent rabbit called Alba (2000). http://www.ekac.org
Maja Kuzmanovic has a Master’s degree in Interactive Multimedia
(University of Portsmouth). Since graduating she has collaborated on a
range of interdisciplinary projects in research institutes around Europe
and the USA (such as CWI, the Netherlands; GMD, Germany; Starlab,
Belgium). Her research spanned time-based interaction, interactive
storytelling, HCI and generative media design for virtual and mixed
reality. For these works, Kuzmanovic was elected one of the Top 100 Young
Innovators by MIT ’s Technology Review. FoAM, founded by Kuzmanovic as
a cultural research department in Starlab in 2000, has become an
independent organisation in 2001, a distributed entity with cells in
Brussels and Amsterdam in 2002 and a Mixed Reality laboratory in 2004.
Maja Kuzmanovic’s role as FoAM’s coordinator and artist-researcher,
allow her to spend most of her life in the interstitial spaces between the
virtual and physical, natural and technological, cultural and scientific.
Diane Ludin is an artist and writer. She filters the ideological gaps of
power through a radical poetics by playing with the representations of
biotech and informatic labour industries. Resulting projects include internet-based collages, installations and performances that explore
ideas of media representation as information. Diane Ludin has
presented her work in the US and Europe. Commissioned works include
internet art projects for The Walker Art Center, Franklin Furnace, New
Radio and Performing Arts and The Alternative Museum. Collaborative
performances and broadcasts with The Electronic Disturbance Theater,
FAKESHOP, Los Fantasmos, Prema Murthy, Francesca da Rimini,
Ricardo Dominguez and Agnese Trocchi. Diane Ludin lives and works
in Brooklyn and received an MFA from the School of Visual Arts.
http://www.thing.net/~diane
Marta de Menezes is a Portuguese artist (b. Lisbon, 1975) with a
degree in Fine Arts from the University in Lisbon, and a Masters in
History of Art and Visual Culture from the University of Oxford. She has
been exploring the interaction between Art and Biology, working in
research laboratories demonstrating that new biological technologies
can be used as a new art medium, and proving that laboratories can be
art studios. In 1999 de Menezes created her first biological artwork
(Nature?) by modifying the wing patterns of live butterflies. Since then
she has used diverse biological techniques, including functional MRI of
the brain, to create portraits by which the mind can be visualised
(Functional Portraits, 2002); fluorescent DNA probes to create microsculptures
in human cell nuclei (nucleArt, 2001); or sculptures made of
proteins (Proteic Portrait, 2002). De Menezes’ work has been presented
internationally in exhibitions, articles and lectures. She is currently artistin-
residence at the Structural Biology Department, University of Oxford.
Mez “… does for code poetry as jodi and Vuk Cosic have done for ASCII Art:
Turning a great, but naively executed concept into something brilliant,
paving the ground for a whole generation of digital artists.” (Florian
Cramer). The impact of her unique code/net.wurks [constructed via her
pioneering net.language “mezangelle”] has been compared to that of
Shakespeare, James Joyce, Emily Dickinson, and Larry Wall. Mez has
exhibited extensively; Wollongong World Women Online 1995, ISEA
1997 Chicago USA, ARS Electronica 1997, SIGGRAPH 1999 & 2000, _
Under_Score_ @ The Brooklyn Music Academy USA 2001, +playengines+
Melbourne Australia 2003, p0es1s Berlin Germany 2004, Arte Nuevo
InteractivA Yucatan Mexico 2005 + in Radical Software @ Turin Italy
2006. Her awards include the 2001 VIF Prize [Germany], the
JavaMuseum Artist Of The Year 2001 [Germany], 2002 Newcastle New
Media Poetry Prize [Australia], winner of the 2006 Site Specific
Competition [Italy] + 2006 Artificial A.Gender Competition [Australia].
Anna Munster is a media theorist and artist. Her book, Materialising
New Media: Embodiment in Information Aesthetics (Dartmouth, USA
2006) examines the contribution of new media arts and technologies
to new formations of materiality. She has contributed to anthologies
on media and digital arts and to journals such as CTheory and has
edited special editions of the online journals fibreculture and Culture
Machine. She collaborates with Michele Barker on installation and new
media art and was the 2006 winner of the Australian National Digital
Art Acquisitive Award for the 3-channel installation Struck. She is a
Senior Lecturer at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South
Wales, Australia.
Melentie Pandilovski is the Director of the Experimental Art
Foundation and Curator of the Art of the Biotech Era project. He was the
initiator and Director/Curator of the Skopje Electronic Arts Fair, the
first media art manifestation in the Balkans, which investigated the
new languages of international artists and theoreticians working in the
fields of genetics and biotechnology. He has taken part as an artist,
theorist, and workshop leader, in numerous international exhibitions
including the International Symposium of Electronic Arts (Chicago 1997,
Manchester 1998, etc). His theoretical research deals with examination
of the links between art, culture, technology, individual identity, and
consciousness. He has delivered texts for international conferences
including The Phenomenology and the Web, San Diego, 2000, and
Consciousness Reframed, Perth, 2002.
Michalis Pichler uses public space and everyday life both as a source
and as a venue or site. Employed techniques include camouflage/
imitation, and infiltration, as well as sculptural, archaeological and
ethnographic procedures. His work has appeared in numerous places,
amongst them the Postfuhramt, Berlin, the Museum of Contemporary
Art, Skopje, and the Goethe-Institut/InterNationes, New York, where he was a DAAD Arts Fellow in 2002/03.
http://www.buypichler.com
Liljana Simjanovska (Jankovic) was born in 1960 in Bitola,
Macedonia. She graduated in 1984 from the Faculty of Pharmacy at
University of St. Kiril and Metodij, Skopje, Macedonia. In 1989/90
Simjanovska undertook research training at the Medical College of
Georgia, Augusta, Georgia, USA, and in 1996 gained a PhD degree from
the Faculty of Medicine, University of Sofia, Bulgaria. Since 1985 she has
been employed at the Research Center for Genetic Engineering,
Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Skopje, Macedonia.
Main research interests in the past were molecular aspects of disorders
of hemoglobin, other monogenic and infectious diseases, prenatal
diagnosis of inherited diseases and human DNA identification in
forensic medicine. Since 1998 Simjanovska has been teaching in Post
Graduate studies in Molecular Biology and Genetic Engineering and
continuously involved in training of young scientists. Simjanovska has
collaborated in many foreign and domestically funded research projects,
co-authored numerous research articles published in international
journals and participated in many international and domestic
conferences and symposia.
Niki Sperou is a visual artist who has had a longstanding interest in the
cultural, economic and ethical implications of biotechnology-the major
focus of her work since 2001. In 2003 she created a solo installation for
the AusBiotech Convention at the Adelaide Convention Centre. She has
a Bachelor of Visual Arts and Applied Design from AIT Arts Adelaide and
a BVA Honours from the University of South Australia. She was awarded
the Fringe Festival Individual Artist Award for her Chimera installation
produced as part of her Honours investigation into the interface
between biotechnology and ancient Greek culture. Currently she is
undertaking a residency at the Department of Biotechnology, Flinders
University/Medical Centre.
Mike Stubbs trained at Cardiff and the Royal College of Art. He is
Director of FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) in
Liverpool UK. Until April 2007, Stubbs was Head of Exhibitions at the
Australian Centre for Moving Image (ACMI). As Senior Research
Resident at TVI, University of Dundee, he developed the Burning Bush
Festival. During his Directorship of Hull Time Based Arts, he developed
the ROOT Festival, The Centre for Time Based Art, and EMARE (European
Media Arts Residency Exchange). He co-founded Metamedia, a Sohobased
production company specializing in art and music. He has curated
widely, including Kiev International Media Art Festival in the Ukraine and
the Microwave Festival in Hong Kong. Donut and Resistor aired on
mainstream British television. He has won major international awards
—for Homing at Oberhausen, 1995, for Gift at Osnabruk, 1996, a Golden
Artronic at Locarno for Sweatlodge, in 1992, and the Hamburg Short Film
Festival 2004 first prize for Cultural Quarter. In 1999 he presented a video
retrospective at the Tate Gallery, London. He is the recipient of a Fleck
Fellowship from Banff Art Centre, Canada.
Eugene Thacker is the author of two books on biotechnology, Biomedia (University of Minnesota Press, 2004) and The Global Genome (MIT
Press, 2006). He teaches at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and also
collaborates with Biotech Hobbyist.
Zoran Todorovic is a media artist who was born in Belgrade in 1965
where he lives and works as a Junior Professor at the Faculty of Fine
Arts. He studied painting but is now best known for his new media and
video works. His work has been shown in many leading media art
institutions and events in Europe and beyond such as at the Centre
Pompidou, Paris, ZKM Centre for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Museum
for Contemporary Arts, Belgrade, Artspace, Sydney, Museum for
Contemporary Arts, Zagreb. He is the author of numerous installations
and performances that demonstrate radical human, social and political
engagement in the face of cultural conventions.
Polona Tratnik lives in Slovenia where she is currently finishing a PhD
on the Philosophy and Theory of Visual Culture at the Faculty for
Humanistic Studies. She graduated in Painting at the Academy for Fine
Arts in Ljubljana, Slovenia, where she also completed an MA in Sculpture
in 2001. From 2002 she has worked as an independent cultural worker
and has been occupied with editing and publishing including a book
Spaces/Places of Art. She was co-editor of the Slovenian art magazine Art Words and editor for Horizons, a magazine on the philosophy and theory
of art. From 1997 she has been organizing lectures and colloquiums on
aesthetics, contemporary art and culture and is an active member of the
Slovenian Society of Aesthetics. Since 1998, she has exhibited widely in
solo and group exhibitions in Slovenia and abroad: firstly as a painter,
then a multimedia artist and in the last few years as a bio-artist including
in L’Art Biotech (2003 Nantes, France), Breakthrough (2004 Den Haag, the
Netherlands), and Biennale of Electronic Art Perth (2004 Perth, Australia). http://www.ars-tratnik.si
Raewyn Turner is concerned with the senses and technologies that are
shaping an extrasensory perception of the world. She was Digital
Resident Artist in 2004 at University of Waikato. World Tree, in
collaboration with Colin Beardon, was included in Graphite 2005,
Vodafone Digital Art Awards, NZ, Digital Trance, Sardinia, 11th
International Festival Electronic Arts, Argentina, and was featured on
the Italian site Neural.IT. Turner has an extensive background working
with coloured light and contemporary music on international tours
across Britain, USA, Canada, Australia and Europe. Her video has been
shown in numerous national and international exhibitions including NZ
Film Festival, Te Papa National Gallery and Museum of NZ, 15th fAf
fineArt forum Anniversary Travelling Screening Program, Los Angeles
MOCA, Vancouver, Munich, and the MAAP Festival. Spatial Forms
Generated by Music, her collaboration with Devetakovic Radojevic, was
presented at the Generative Art Conference GA2002 Milan. Turner’s
multisensory work includes Four Senses 1999 and 2002, a collaboration
with Tony Brooks (UK) and a symphony orchestra. Her ‘Example
Olfactory Translations and Interpretations’ was published in 2004 in
Performance Research, UK, ‘On Smell’.
Tanya Visosevic is a film critic/theorist/maker, her work fashioned on
a series of variations on the theme of the death instinct. Visosevi? hopes
to pair down her visual and narrative style, steadily refining it into a
delicately observed study of our emotional and philosophical dilemmas.
Recent work cross-pollinates with performance and biotechnology.
Currently Tanja Visosevi? is lecturing in film and video studies at Edith
Cowan University and completing a doctorate at Murdoch University.
Adam Zaretsky is a bio-artist, working as a research affiliate in Arnold
Demain’s Laboratory for Industrial Microbiology and Fermentation in
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Department of Biology.
He received a Master of Fine Arts in 1999 from the School of the Art
Institute of Chicago, where he studied and researched with ‘transgenic’
artist Eduardo Kac. Since then, he has worked with such pioneers of bioart
as Joe Davis, Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr. Zaretsky also taught an art
and biology studio class in fall 2001 as a visiting artist at San Francisco
State University. Besides the bio-art installations on which he is
working, Zaretsky has created a large body of digital artworks, collage
and photography.
Ionat Zurr is a biological artist and a curator. Exhibited and published
nationally and internationally. Artist in Residence in SymbioticA - the
Art & Science Collaborative Research Laboratory at The School of
Anatomy & Human Biology, University of Western Australia. Cofounder
of the Tissue Culture and Art Project. Curator of BioDifferences
exhibition and conference, BEAP 2004. Research fellow at The Tissue
Engineering & Organ Fabrication Laboratory, Massachusetts General
Hospital, Harvard Medical School (2000-2001). ANAT Summer School
participant 1999. Studied photography and media studies, presently a
PhD candidate researching the ethical and epistemological implications
of wet biology art practices and teaching the Art & Life Manipulation
course in UWA. Zurr is developing a programme for Master by
Coursework in Biological Arts to be offered by SymbioticA. http://www.tca.uwa.edu.au http://www.symbiotica.uwa.edu.au
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