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SUNDAY 16TH FEBRUARY 2003
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20.00 | KEYNOTE SPEECH - SARA DIAMOND
(CANADA)
Click here to access
the archived stream of this speech
Cornfield and Flatford rooms
Keynote speech by visionary artist Sarah Diamond (Artistic
Director, Media Visual Arts, The Banff Centre, Canada) on
her concepts for the future merging of biology and technology.
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THE
MARRIAGE BETWEEN BIOLOGY & TECHNOLOGY
Process
based notes reported live during her talk which document the key
issues, thoughts, ideas and questions raised by Sara Diamond in
her talk on the marriage between biology and technology.
Ancient
myths
Human society/non living forms - taking on animal identities
MISANTHROPY
- truth telling and magic.
RESEARCH
ETHICS
SHAPE SHIFTING - animal form - ROLE PLAY
INVISIBLE SPIRT
EROTIC ENCOUNTER
BEAUTY
AND THE BEAST
Codes and rituals
Systems of beauty - meaning and effect
Desire and disgust
GAME PLAY
INTERIOR SPACES OF THE BODY
EROTIC FANTASY
STORY TELLING
THE BEAST WITHIN
THE RETURN
OF BEAUTY IN A POSTMODERN WORLD
Archaic values of beauty in scientific world
PHENOMENA
ALLEGORY
BEAUTY
= THREE THINGS:
INTEGRATION
CLARITY
HARMONY
WHOLENESS
HARMONY
RADIANCE
The construction
of beauty:
IMPORTANCE
OF AESTHETICS = artistic
Form is
essential to beauty not content
COMMUNICABILITY
UNIVERSAL TRUTH
CULTURAL SPECIFITY
COMPLEX SYSTEMS - KANTS IDEAS RELEVANT - PURPOSENESS
COMMON
CONGITION - shared statements of beauty
Hegel:
OBJECTIVE - qualitative view. There is something objective about beauty.
OBJECTIVE/SUBJECT
ROLE PLAY/FANTASY
- key to transformation
CHAOS
THEORY - diversity and beauty linked to
Culture
of the Goddess -
Interpretation
of beauty and beast
CONSUMPTION
BREEDER
FEMALE
EROTIC POWER/ANIMAL STATE
SEDUCTION
TRANSGENICS
Darwin
- EVOLUTION & SYMMETRY
BOUNDARIES
OF BEAUTY
GLOBALISATION
Complexity
and asymmetry as organising principles
Incomplete - makes things interesting
SOCIAL
VALUES AND CONSENSUS
NEW FORMS
OF PLEASURE - embrace beauty and disgust
State
changes/system
COOPERATIVE/COMPETITIVE
SYSTEMS
AESTHETIC
CONDITIONS OF INVENTION
NOTION
OF BEAUTY EQUILIBRIUM - the universal nature
Beauty
is a relation - in the comparison that we make - similarity/difference
Fashion
and taste culture
Misaim/Zebra
- function as social group, change form/camouflage - most advanced
form
RESOURCE
ACCESS for artists difficult
ARTISTIC PLAY - unwelcome in science
Web research
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CLONING AND GENOMICS
IMMUNOLOGY, GM
TRANSGENTICS
NANOTECHNOLOGY - carbon versus silicon and smart materials
ART
WAS ON THE EDGE - artists no longer claiming that role, science
is.
BIOTERROISM
- age of passivity
ARE
WE BEYOND THE IMAGE? Non visual space
Beautiful
panic culture of today. ANXIETY
Research ethics
Structure
of knowledge -
Art
is about METHODOLOGY - immersion in making/critique of making
Does life
matter and for whom?
Deprivation,
control and command
Think
twice - Kirin beer - Cow antibodies with human antibodies -cloning
- replacement of human parts within cows. Cats being cloned. Animals
as clones of ourselves. Cows as a container - never about cow. Think
inside the CLONE - being within that subject position.
Feminist
analysis of beauty > cows as holding tanks >domestic space
Spaces for artists in this work: between social and mythological.
PARTICIPANT
QUESTIONS
Are we
beyond the image -?
Role of design versus role of art. Designer takes role of user.
When things
are hot they are not red - they are white or blue
Artists
construct metaphors - problems of science in representation.
Move away from realism into abstraction.
Problem
with astrophysics - graphical representation of a star - use of colour
to demonstrate - issue of communication in user and limits of their
understanding. Interesting gap in terms of colour theory. Language
needs to shift to enable popular understanding, in this case wrong
as red is not associated with hot.
Troubled
by ideas of beauty - object as having intrinsic beauty. Beauty
only works if believe in beast - moral scale and artistic work. Theory
does not work for cultural audiences.
RETURN
TO BEAUTY AND AESTHETIC the organic and anti organic.
Beauty
and purposefulness. Difference between sublime and beauty and
purposelessness of sublime. No shared language between arts and scientists.
Scientists use beauty in a very uncomplex way, the idea of anti aesthetic
is not understood. Culture clash. What is important is that artists
are not trying to make beautiful work unlike data visualisation designers
who are searching for beauty.
Form important
in crossover culture/collaborative practice.
CULTURAL
CONTEXT - Animal - nature and animal activism in UK - relationship
very powerful.
Think
about subject position
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