[ISEA2011] Panel: Jennifer Willet – BioARTCAMP: trekking the LAB into the FIELD

Panel Statement

Panel: BioARTCAMP: Laboratory Ecologies in the Wild West

Chair person: Jennifer Willet                                                                                                          Presenters: Marie Pier Boucher, Paul Vanouse & Tagny Duff

Dr. Jennifer Willet Presents BioARTCAMP research at ISEA in Istanbul. Dr. Jennifer Willet will travel to Turkey present her BioARTCAMP project to The International Symposium on Electronic Art .  On a panel co-chaired with Marie Pier Boucher (Duke University), Paul Vanouse (UBuffalo) and Tagny Duff (Concordia University), Willet will report their experiences while camping and building a portable bioART Laboratory in Banff National Park in July 2011. BioART­CAMP is a large col­lab­o­ra­tive art/sci­ence pro­ject hosted in July 2011 by Jen­nifer Wil­let from IN­CU­BA­TOR: Hy­brid Lab­o­ra­tory at the In­ter­sec­tion of Art, Sci­ence and Ecol­ogy at The Uni­ver­sity of Wind­sor and The Banff Cen­tre for the Arts, in Canada.  With BioART­CAMP a va­ri­ety of artists, sci­en­tists and stu­dents will build a portable bioart lab in Banff Na­tional Park, Canada.  At this site they will con­duct a va­ri­ety of bioart pro­to­cols, and host an open house ‘art/sci­ence fair’ for the gen­eral pub­lic. In this pre­sen­ta­tion Wil­let will chart the prac­ti­cal and the­o­ret­i­cal un­der­pin­nings of the BioART­CAMP pro­ject with em­pha­sis on eco­log­i­cal metaphors for de­scrib­ing biotech­nol­ogy, and a de­sire to com­pli­cate the ‘Great Di­vide’ be­tween lab and field based re­search method­olo­gies in the hard sci­ences.  She will also take this op­por­tu­nity to ad­dress the in­evitable com­pli­ca­tion of her own the­o­ret­i­cal pre­sup­po­si­tions about BioART­CAMP – with the un­ruly hap­pen­stance of what ac­tu­ally oc­curred when she brought a va­ri­ety of artists, and sci­en­tists, and spec­i­mens, and lab equip­ment to­gether under a big tent in the Cana­dian Rocky Moun­tains! BioARTCAMP was directed by Willet as a co-production between INCUBATOR lab and The Banff Centre, and sponsored by The Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, The Ontario Arts Council, University of Windsor, Hosteling International, the Glenbow Museum, and The Art and Genomics Centre, at The University of Leiden, and Fonds BKVB.

  • Jen­nifer Wil­let is an in­ter­na­tion­ally suc­cess­ful artist in the emerg­ing field of bioart.  From 2000-2007 Wil­let and Shawn Bai­ley col­lab­o­rated on an pro­ject called BIOTEKNICA.  She taught in the Stu­dio Arts De­part­ment at Con­cor­dia Uni­ver­sity from 2000-2007, and com­pleted her PhD in the In­ter­dis­ci­pli­nary Hu­man­i­ties Pro­gram at the same in­sti­tu­tion.  She now works as an As­sis­tant Pro­fes­sor in the School of Vi­sual Arts at The Uni­ver­sity of Wind­sor in Canada.  In 2009 she opened a bioart re­search and teach­ing lab called IN­CU­BA­TOR: Hy­brid Lab­o­ra­tory at the In­ter­sec­tion of Art, Sci­ence, and Ecol­ogy at the UofW. jenniferwillet.com