BioArt New York Collective Meeting

[size=60]BioArt New York [/size]
Introductory Meeting
Tuesday, Dec. 1st, 6:30 pm
11th Street Bar, back room (510 E. 11th St, btwn A & B)

The first meeting of BioArt NY will be next week! We want to get things rolling as soon as we can, and at the end of the meeting we're going to try to go ahead and get smaller groups organized to work on specific projects. We have a couple in mind to start things off with, and we'll all develop others as things progress. But if you have ideas that are fleshed out enough that you want to begin on them right away, let us know before the meeting and we'll arrange time for you to present them.

I hope you can all make it. Feel free to bring friends or colleagues - but please let us know if you're coming, and whether you're bringing anyone, as the bar would like a rough head count.

Mowgli + Eric

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BioArt, though still quite new, is a growing field, and has many different aspects. We want this group to be as focused as possible, and what we're mainly interested in is complex, high-tech, multimedia installation pieces. Work like this is not easy to do on your own, or without the right tools. Most of the work that's been done in recent years has been by artists with fairly limited laboratory access. The main goal of this group is to give artists (or biologists who want to make art) broad, distributed access to the tools, labs, and people that will make ambitious bio-art projects possible.

There are lots of groups around that are focused on the theoretical aspects of the overlap between the sciences and the arts. We don't want to follow that route - we're not planning on seminars, or panels, or prolonged theoretical discussion. Actually, we do have a rough theoretical orientation, and we hope that we'll proceed with one eye on the philosophical aspects of what it means to make art with living things, and we expect some ongoing wrangling over these issues. But our primary focus is on building things.

There are also lots of forums for art that is about biology, or art that is related to biology but is created in traditional media. We are hoping to avoid using traditional media, for example we include microscopy images in that category - though we hope to do a lot with certain kinds of novel video microscopy. We see the biological sciences as providing a newer kind of New Media, and we want to explore how the tools, the knowledge, and the living stuff of biology can be used as materials for art. This does not mean that if you only have experience in painting or photography or microscopy, we don't want you to attend. We want people with as many different backgrounds as possible - we are just choosing to focus on work that can't be done solo, and is more "of" biology than "about" biology.

We want to form a group streamlined for taking people's visions and getting them built. The functional picture we have is that someone will come in with a proposal, present it, and then assemble a small team from the larger group to work on it. We hope to have three or four projects going on at once, perhaps in teams of four or five people. Most likely each project will be led by its originator. But within each team we'll need people to help with design, research, lab access, problem solving, component-building, assembly, and so on.

The idea is that the function of the larger group would be primarily to serve as a pool from which to form these teams, and to expose everyone to all the projects so that we can make the best use of everyone's skills and resources. And also so that we can get people thinking about what projects to start next. The larger collective should also eventually be able to work on funding for projects, and support for housing, transporting, and exhibiting finished work. We'll also want to find people willing to do work for the collective that's not specifically part of any of the individual projects, such as maintaining a website/blog, research into legal issues, funding, etc.

We have a few projects already in mind, and we hope to come up with more before we settle on a which ones to begin with. But here's a short list of skills or resources we already know we need:

- cell migration techniques
- experience with power supplies and UV safety
- video microscopy skills
- programming skills, especially with genetic algorithms
- knowledge of evolutionary dynamics and population genetics
- mechanical engineering and construction skills
- knowledge of bioethics, legal issues, etc.

We hope to see you at our first meeting!

** To join the mailing list, please visit http://groups.google.com/group/bioart-ny and click "apply for group membership" on the right **

Eric + Mowgli


[size=11]Eric Forman is a New York based artist whose work focuses on responsive installations and robotic sculpture. Eric is currently an Adjunct Professor in the Graduate Digital+Media MFA department at RISD, and has taught and been a Visiting Artist or Guest Critic at many other institutions including Columbia University, NYU, Pratt, Parsons, MICA, and SIGGRAPH. He received his Masters in 2002 from ITP at Tisch School of the Arts (NYU), and his B.A. from Vassar College in 1995 where he developed his own interdisciplinary program called The Philosophical Ramifications of Computer Technology.

Mowgli Holmes is a bioscientist living in Brooklyn, NY, and finishing his PhD in the department of Microbiology at Columbia University. His thesis research is aimed at ways to block HIV despite the rapid evolution of the virus. His Masters thesis was on the design technique known as directed molecular evolution. His undergraduate philosophy thesis was entitled: “Heidegger: Nostalgia, Anarchy, and the Cyborg”. [/size]


For some background on bio-art, see the links below:

Joe Davis (MIT artist in residence):
http://www.viewingspace.com/genetics_culture/pages_genetics_culture/gc_w03/davis_joe.htm

Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr (The Tissue Culture and Art Project):
http://www.tca.uwa.edu.au/

NYC bioart exhibition at ExitArt:
http://www.exitart.org/site/pub/exhibition_programs/corpus_extremus/

sk-interfaces exhibition:
http://www.phoresis.org/images/stories/skin_gall/skin_gallery_guide.pdf

bioluminescent portraiture:
http://annebrodie.co.uk/bioluminescent-project/

Adam Zaretsky:
http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2009/01/-yes-its-true-im.php

Stelarc:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stelarc

Marta de Menezes:
http://www.martademenezes.com/

MEART - The Semi Living Artist:
http://www.fishandchips.uwa.edu.au/

Alicia King:
http://aliciaking.net/home.html

Anne Brodie Bioluminscent Project:
http://annebrodie.wordpress.com/bioluminescent-project/