WEDNESDAY 19TH FEBRUARY 2003

BIO TECH PUBLIC DISCUSSION FORUM

Summary of Bio-Tech InterChange
- Presentations by mentors/group and public questions and answers

Presenters: Nina Czegledy (Canada), Sara Diamond (Canada), Daniel Glaser (UK), Jane Prophet (UK), Ghislaine Boddington (UK), Sam Goddard (UK)

INTRODUCTION

• The Bio-Tech Public Discussion Forum presents a summary of debate during the 3 day retreat with artists and scientists in Colchester - 30 people.
• Debate and discussion focussed around themes and practice
• Getting to know deeper feelings around this area , the processes and collaborations in use and brainstorming issues and concerns for development
• Looking at needs and requirements onwards

PRESENTATIONS

Collaboration and collaborative practices

Talking from the perspective of artist working with a stem cell researcher.
Identify from beginning: shared goals and individual goals - aim is to come up with outputs that exist within our own discipline and potential of development of outcomes witch are shared between the disciplines.

Ethnography - observing artists and scientists working together: are we developing a shared language, tools to work with?. Currently limited number of formal research projects. Interested in social science overview - reflect back to collaborators - process of reflection and moving forward methodologies.

Important to
- Spend time in research to produce quality.
- Scale and scalability. - smaller goal or bigger application
- modular terms -production in parts/sections

Methodologies

What makes a project scientific is central to the philosophy of science and evaluation of methodologies.

Artists also have serious methodologies and this was unknown to me as a scientist.
Cannot talk about art and science without defining common ground.

Methodology of science is fundamentally different to those in the arts and this posed problem to sciart concepts and development. Awareness of similaries now. Tension exists. People working across both methodologies and come out with two outcomes - good art and good science. You can have science collaborating with art - deconstructing paradigms enables rebuilding. Art deconstructs fixed ideas about science, evidencing processes etc and for artists it is useful to see how rigorous science is. Work needs evaluation criteria which references it appropriately. Empirical and objective testing. Art and science are separate at the output. On subject of true synthesis, need a new paradigm - needs new set of criteria that accommodates arts and science methodologies SCI ART NEEDS A NEW SYNTHESIS

Bio-Tech Projects Overview
Talk about sweeping themes that related to bio-tech conceptual space.
- Ways we are struggling to rephysicalise human body and create a bridge between body and data and knowledge in virtual and physical space. All participants are bridging. Rematerialising the physical. Conscious relationship to technologies - pervasive. Desire in own work to be responsible.
- Tendency to work between fear and desire - sense of presence and invasive technologies
- Parallel set of patterns across disciplines. Artists become a bridge between different scientific processes. Through artist work that they bring all different professionals in science together.
- Development of the tactile in visual representation of science
- Issues of scale - era of the neutrino, age of nanotechnology, grasp sense of scale, attention to the deeply cellular and its beauty - crisis of disease and imminent war.
- Artists role in bridging internal and external spaces
- Lots of work with generative systems
- New forms of consciousness - with performing artists seeking a prelinguistic state - makes sense in a world where we are struggling with data, overtaken by the visual
- What is spirituality?
- Memory - data as a form of memory
- Aesthetics and beauty - discussion with discomfort, failure + pleasure of beauty

Myself as a neuroscientist - thinking about control and observation of movement. Movement generated by a biological system such as you and me
Reflection which takes place in brain which we see when sees movement of others
Body mediates biological and ecological, theoretical and practical, physical and spiritual

Body that can do experiments and change the world

Bodies in action, in response, the study of the body and movement is useful for those interested in art and science projects. The point in the middles - whether you come from arts or science perspectives - divergent/convergent views. Loose track as to where you have come from and where you are going - lack of self consciousness - alchemical moment - is the point in the middle.

Physical reflection of the brain is goal of people working with brain

To hear us all use each others terms is fantastic. I do antigravity artist and make work with the hanging body and currently motion capture integration- me measuring the way the body moves within a set of parameters The intimate gesture and the inside of the body. Group raised questions about the nature of information - does it have to be quantifiable? The presence of the UNTHINKING BODY. Difference between doing and being

Adding and accumulating versus undoing - what the body has been doing for a number of years which what I would now call raw data - pre linguistic state - opens up something new

Changing states of consciousness of humanness - important issue for the group in relation to new exploration.

The body as many layers of consciousness and states of being not just physical

Started wearing each others clothes and worlds - being in proximity you can express things you have always thought in other people’s terms.
Process of fluid matching has felt very spontaneous and free
Uncanny power invested in Future Physical - process of planning interchange

Self/Others

Artist working closely with scientists. Follow on some ideas for the body.

Question of identity - where you base your opinions

Contextual theme - how far would you go with your body? Taking idea of identity, being contextual ‘you’ - very varied responses within you (if you were ill you might do something) as well as we - identity in a social context. Collective responsibility - could you, would you, should you?

Mark Silver film - indigenous people’s relationship: important to remember world perspective. Identity is world not |I. Consideration from a global angle.

New Consciousness

Break our own stereotypes.
Choosing to be there to have mixed discussion
Trying to get to the bottom of some of the ethics.
Phrases linked to being as well as doing.
Paradigm shifts and new consciousness Alchemy and spiritual.

NEW HYBRID - not art or science and neither is it sciart it is its own thing. Need for new evaluation methods. Topic for a next bio-tech gathering

Positive results - referring back to audience, public, participant, creative user - enabling wider expression of creativity for people.

Good chance across next 5 - 15 years through connections between institutions and underground/radical organisations and groups - moving through society in youth culture movement - mass consciousness developing through younger generation who are more fluid, less categorising and much more able to reflect themselves in and around and on topical issues.

Participants from creative cultural work and academic institutions - need for merge crossover ANOTHER TYPE OF FORM not just arts and science.

Ethics - rights to our bodies

Wind up - practical list of needs and requirements

Some of the main ones:

1. Advocacy - by artists with projects well on their way in sic art sector - cell and code zebra Get it referenced within the scientific community
2. Mentoring - variety of different ways including residencies etc
3. Forums and list
4. Get together - informal gathering, third Monday of month at ICA Bar in London at 6pm - 17th March and development into other places: ST-ART

Q AND A

Q: Higher being? - I was referring to matchmaking - how do we get to interested people. Interested in concept of dating agency. Scale important - more numbers more chances of collaboration.

Isabel
Q: Both working with unthinking body. Can you talk about audience and content? Audience at forefront of the work throughout process. My aim is to affect. Goal = expand area /access something in themselves. Potential for shift in consciousness. Expansion.hypnos - created a state of undoing which had the same effect on me. Aim to create a space where the audience can PLUG IN DIRECTLY without an interface of any kind. The return is direct.

Not subjectivity or identity - but the subject position - the which, we, I and this includes audience. How do you bring knowledge from base practice of body/performance into online spaces - so non movers can dance in net space. Complete the virtual circle between the body, space and technology.

Lot of interest in bio-tech in public domain. Sci art - means to expand the audience for arts and scientific events. Tapping in to fears and issues and emotion in world we will find the audiences for sciart productions.

Several discussions around diffusion. Commissioned works are wide ranging. Use of content in multiple ways - multi component practice

IMMERSION - definite awareness that public want these experiences in environments where they have control over

Another element of audience - interaction between specialists in different fields - audience in lab when you are working. Being a mediator and creating a whole different audience every day within science depts of universities.

Irony - process of unlearning seems oppositional. Altered state and non over exertion

Art piece versus Venn diagram?

Q: Intersection between art and science - social policing divide
I write about plant technology. Science is seen as the embodiment of modernity - different activity to any other kind. Science is an ordinary kind of action. Policing boundaries. More money and prestige than arts. Cagey about defending their realm as being experts.

Neil Theise and his beautiful images. Quality of aesthetic images and publishing research outcomes. Most visual artists take it as read that the image does not tell the truth. Scientists use visuals as evidence - as truth statement. Different positions in relationship to image Outputs need to have status in both communities. Lot of excitement and need to build trust - accepting each others frames of reference.

More forms of dissemination. Working practice issues raised are important and getting scientists to think about truth statements in their images is needed work.

Scientific illustrations and publications. Human genetics has a public image right now and is flavour of month. Big selling point - illustrations - seductive - gaining corporate support and financing.