Panel Statement 

Keywords: Art, Nature, Residencies, Immersions, Technology

This panel discusses practical and theoretical investigations in art and technology related to nature immersions, the construction of hybrid ecologies and transcultural connectedness. We will approach these subjects from the sand point of artists that question and propose the understanding of emerging hybrid organic structures as aesthetic organisms. Working within the immaterial, invisible, dynamical flow that intercommunicates biological (living systems) and artificial (machine/electronic/digital) organisms in the process of invention, we propose the idea of artworks as transducers, interconnecting artist, nature, and the audience into an integrated dynamical whole. Specific methodological approaches create a flow of informative and sensitive experiences based on nature immersions, field trips, rural residencies, among others. Processes in which performances, actions, meetings, and interactive platforms are not only spaces for experimentation, but also environments in which the art practice reflects the concepts applied in the artistic work. Artworks created are related to a field of experimentations where the blend between artificial systems (digital or analogue) and living organisms is explored creatively. Investigation is driven towards promoting experiences, which may propitiate sensorial and intuitive integration between species, beings, and organisms. Artistic processes are conceived in order to foster possible states of awareness that are provided by the expression of phenomenon in coherent poetic systems. Immersions in natural environments are usually stimulating our senses and perceptions, bringing about the sense of being enhanced by technology and connected to nature.

• Laura Beloff (PhD) is an internationally acclaimed artist and a researcher. Research includes practice based investigations into a combination of information, technology and organic matter, which is located in the cross section of art, technology and science. Additionally to articles and book-chapters, the outcomes of her artistic research are artworks and projects that deal with the merger of the technological and biological matter and intelligence. The research engages with the field of art–science– technology including areas such as human enhancement, biosemiotics, biological matter, artificial life (AL) and artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, and information technology in connection to art, humans and society. Currently, she is Associate Professor and the Head of PhD-school at IT University in Copenhagen
• Karla Brunet is an artist and researcher, has a PhD in Audiovisual Communication and a master’s degree in Fine Arts. She has participated on many art exhibitions in Brazil, Europe and the USA. Karla is a professor at IHAC and Pós-Cultura at UFBA, where she researches projects that present intersection of art, science and technology. From 2009-2012, Karla was the coordinator of Lab-debug.net, a media lab focus on women and free technology, and in 2012, she was the curator of FACMIL/LabMAM, a medialab at the Museum of Modern Art of Bahia. In 2014/2015, she got a year art/research grant at UDK, Berlin. Nowadays, back in Brazil, Karla coordinates the Ecoarte, an interdisciplinary research and art group.  karlabru.net/site,  ecoarte.info dorkbotssa.org  errante.com.br
• Luciana Fleischman, Artistic residency program coordinator at Platohedro.org and Lecturer at EAFIT University (Medellin, Colombia)
• Maria Luiza P. G. Fragoso (aka Malu), multimedia artist with PHD In Arts and Multimedia by the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) In São Paulo (2003) and develops research on artistic experimentation in telematic environments focused on trans disciplinary aspects between art, science, technology and traditional cultures. Currently professor at the Visual Communication Design Department at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, thesis supervisor since 2005. Elected member of the National Association of Researcher in Fine Arts’s directory for the period 2010-2012. Coordinator of the research group REDEArt and Technology, trans cultural nets in multimedia and telematics, and coordinator of NANO Lab, Nucleus of Art and New Organisms.
• Carlos Augusto Nóbrega (aka Guto) is an Artist working with hybrids and biotelematics.  Associate Professor  NANO / EBA / UFRJ, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil. nano.eba.ufrj.br/
• Bart Vandeput, aka Bartaku, practices the art of enquiry with main interest in cognitive ecology, consciousness studies, neurobiology, energy and the philosophy of knowing and becoming. His work is often process-based, collaborative, transversal and situated in the folds and cracks of formal classifications. Since March 2016 he develops the deepening of the entanglement with the Aronia m. BaBe appleberry as a Doctoral candidate at the Department of Arts, Design and Architecture of Aalto University (Finland). He is participating artist in arts ecology project frontiersinretreat.org and member of both cultural lab FoAM (Brussels, Belgium) and the Finnish Bioart Society.  people.aalto.fi/bart_vandeput

Full text (PDF) p. 767