Workshop Statement

Wetware Hackers Discussed is a responsive/reflective discussion of Hands-On How-To Workshops on Biotech Art and Wet Lab Procedures. In addition to the issues of using biotech within an art practice, teaching biotech procedures presents additional issues that differ from teaching within an electronic/computational paradigm. The panel will generate, problemmatize, discuss and record observations of informal biotech instruction, specifically responding to the “Wetware Hackers” ISEA2006 workshop conducted by the panelists.

• Paul Vanouse, Buffalo, New York, USA. Interdisciplinary artist, Associate Professor of Visual Studies, University at Buffalo.
• Natalie Jeremijenko, New York, USA. Design engineer, techno artist, named one of the top one hundred young innovators by the MIT Technology Review, commissioned for the opening of the museum MASSMoCA, and a Rockefeller Fellow.
• Beatriz da Costa, Irvine, California, USA. Interdisciplinary artist, researcher, former collaborator of Critical Art Ensemble, a co-founder of Preemptive Media, an Assistant Professor of Arts, Computation, Engineering at the University of California, Irvine.
• Oron Catts, Australia. Artistic Director and Co-Founder of SymbioticA, artist/researcher, Founder of the Tissue Culture and Art Project (TC&A), Curator of Biofeel exhibition and The Aesthetics of Care? Symposium, BEAP 2002 and BioDifferences exhibition and conference, BEAP 2004, Research Fellow at The Tissue Engineering & Organ Fabrication Laboratory in 2000-2001, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School.