Panel Statement
Chair Person: Nell Tenhaaf & Mónica Bello Bugallo
Presenters: Sally Jane Norman, Paul Vanouse, Sonia Cillari & Jose-Carlos Mariategui
For this panel, we will analyze new discourses and modes in art and artificial life research. This will be placed in relation to recent outcomes of the computational sciences together with the most revolutionary developments and discourses of the life sciences. The focus will be specifically on: creative modes engaged with dynamic living processes that have been affected by simulation, explorations in synthetic life systems, environmental visualizations, hybrid spaces, augmented and mixed reality landscapes and prospective methods and devices.
- Nell Tenhaaf is an electronic media artist and writer. She has exhibited across Canada, the US and in Europe. A survey exhibition of fifteen years of her work entitled Fit/Unfit opened in April 2003 at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa and then traveled to four other venues. Tenhaaf’s works created between 1989 and the mid-1990s were aimed at deconstructing the dominance in mainstream biological and biotechnology discourse of DNA as the master molecule. The discourses themselves have evolved since then. Later works attempt to represent some of the complex dynamics of life and involve the viewer as one element in a continuous flux, for example in Push/Pull (2009), Flo’nGlo (2005), Swell (2003) and the touch-activated video installation UCBM (You Could Be Me, 1999). Tenhaaf has recently been collaborating with sound artist John Kamevaar and computer science researcher Melanie Baljko. Tenhaaf has published numerous reviews and articles that address the cultural implications of biotechnologies and artificial life. She has been a jury member for the Vida/Life art and artificial life competition based in Madrid since its inception. Tenhaaf is an Associate Professor in the Visual Arts department of York University in Toronto, Canada and is represented by Paul Petro Contemporary Art.
fundaciontelefonica.com/vida - Monica Bello Bugallo is a curator with a special interest in the area of art and science. She is currently artistic director of VIDA, the art and artificial life international awards founded in 1999 by Fundacion Telefonica, Madrid, Spain, having been a board member since 2006. She has curated several exhibitions, seminars and workshops on art, science and technology in society. In 2005 she co-founded Capsula, a platform for research into, and production of, cultural events involving art, science and nature. From 2005 to 2007 she curated Res-qualia, a web project promoting research in art-science and evolution of consciousness. From 2007 to 2008 she collaborated with the Digital Research Unit (DRU) of Huddersfield University to curate the Biorama event, organizing fieldwork explorations and debate platforms on digital culture and natural phenomena. Between 2008 and 2010, she held the position of head of educational programs of LABoral Centro de Arte y Creacion Industrial in Gijon, Spain, in which she lead experimental programs in digital media and education, research on new formats which facilitate artistic production, as well as promoted the collaboration between art and academia with the initiation of the postgraduate studies Innovation in Culture: Art, Digital Media and Popular Culture with the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC). She participates in different advisory boards and she has published articles on art, science, technology and new education modes on arts. In the academic area, she has lectured in Art and Technology seminars and has given talks on the merging of art and life sciences nationally and internationally.