BIO//LOGIC: Do Biota Want to Collaborate? LASER Auckland | School of Future Environments Thought Leadership Series

Live Stream Link https://vimeo.com/event/6108707

Do biota want to collaborate?

➔    Critical questions around relationality and difference emerge for artist-scientists, scientist-artists and ecological activists working with or against biotechnology and AI (ancestral intelligence/ artificial intelligence) in their creative research.

➔    Chaired/Moderated by: Janine Randerson and Ziggy Lever

Critical questions around relationality and difference emerge for artist-scientists, scientist-artists and ecological activists working with or against biotechnology and AI (ancestral intelligence/ artificial intelligence) in their creative research. From whakapapa ties to te taiao (the environment) to how a CPU parallels a clamshell, mycelium uses sound, live performance meets taonga plants or colonizing weeds, or quail bones generate robot infrastructures. When human agents engage with other living beings, speculatively, or at a cellular level, we ask whether a non-extractive approach to interspecies communion is possible.The panelists discuss what we can learn from more-than-human biota for our planetary futures, and how we might account for time scales that are faster or slower than human life spans; and ultimately whether more-than-human entities can desire collaboration at all.

Dr Alizée Armet is an artist-researcher at the boundary of biotechnology and Machine Learning.  She creates hybrid installations at the intersection of plastic, technology and biolog to demystify our anthropocentric conceptions through a practice derived from biomedia.

Yitong Tseo (they/them) is a biorobotics researcher and gaia-artist deeply dissatisfied with how human-centric humans have become. Coming from MIT to Auckland on a year-long Fulbright fellowship, Yitong busies themself with connecting pieces of our world that have never met before - whether that’s giving worms a taste of Shakespeare, turning chicken wings into robots, or reading clams into poetry.

Dr Mark Harvey (Taranaki Whānaui) is an artist and researcher working with public performance, ecology and environmental perspectives, community approaches, mātauranga Māori, and notions of activism. He is a graduate from the AUT School of Art and Design and teaches at Waipapa Taumata Rau, The University of Auckland.  

Dr Jo Burzynska is a crossmodal artist, researcher, and writer working at the intersection of hearing, taste, smell and touch, researching sensory interactions and their creative application. Through a focus on embodied and nonvisual sensory knowledge and aesthetics, she is interested in exploring the different understandings this can bring to connections between people, culture, nature, and place.

Free Event
Registration essential.

Presented as part of the School of Future Environments Thought Leadership Series, this event is hosted in partnership with the Embassy of France in New Zealand, Villa Antipode/Te Ataata, AUT Visual Arts Practice-led Research Institute, and LASER Auckland.

Who should attend?

Artists • Designers • Architects • Scientists • Engineers • Researchers • Students • Creative practitioners • Industry • Anyone interested in art, science, ecology and emerging technologies.

Proudly presented by

• Auckland University of Technology

• School of Future Environments

• AUT Visual Arts Practice-led Research Institute

• LASER Auckland

• Embassy of France in New Zealand

• Villa Antipode