GMU:Art and Biomedia

Lecturer: Theresa Schubert
Project Module
Date: Thursdays 9:15-12:30
weitere Termine: additional lectures Thursdays 19-20:30 (bi-weekly)
Venue: Marienstraße 7b, Projektraum (Room 204)
Credits: 18 SCTS

In the 1960s cybernetician Stafford Beer brought up the idea that there should be a completely new way to the construction of computing elements: finding some material with the appropriate liveliness rather than laboriously engineering dead matter. Since always observations of and in nature have inspired artists. In recent years more and more artists – often with a background in media and technology – have turned to the biological side and included living matter in search for new modes of expression and a shift to nonhuman viewpoints: the autonomy and unpredictability of organisms, a processual approach of observation and revealing, ideas of interspecies-collaboration.

This course focuses on the convergence of bioart and media art. We discuss relevant theories and philosophies. Presentations of artistic projects from the fields of bioart, media art and art+science collaborations will form the basis for the mediation of concepts. Between dirt, dust and data, fluids, cells and organic life, the creation from a non-human perspective is the aim of the project.

What happens at the intersection of art, biology and new media technologies? What are the unique features of living materials and how can they be included in an artistic context? How can ideas based on research and processes of experimentation be translated into sensual experiences?

With a focus on sensory experiences students should develop installations, interfaces, performances, objects, or video works that can be exhibited (exhibition space in Berlin is available). The project is aimed at graduate students and offers both a structured work process as well as self-directed, individual project work and a space for conceptual discussion and idea translation.

EVALUATION
– regular attendance to classes and active participation through short presentations is mandatory
– development of an individul research project / exhibitable artwork
– documentation of your project on the GMU Wiki

LITERATURE
ELECTRONIC
Ascott, Roy (1997): Introduction to Consciousness Reframed. In: Leonardo Electronic Almanac vol.5 no.6 (storage)
Banks, David (2011): A Brief Summary of Actor Network Theory. Cyborgology.
Karen Barad: Posthumanist Performativity
Bennett, Jane (2010): Vibrant matter. A political ecology of things.
Stafford beer: Designing Freedom
Thomas Dreher: Kybernetik und die Pioniere der Computerkunst
D. López del Rincón (2012): Rematerialized Tendencies in Media Art? FROM SILICON TO CARBON-BASED ART. In: Sociology and Technoscience: Special Issue: Artefacts.
Ferrando, Francesca (2012): Towards A Posthumanist Methodology. A Statement. In: Frame. Journal For Literary Studies (25.1), S. 9–18. ON Akademia or research Gate
Andy Pickering: The Science of the Unknowable: Stafford Beer's Cybernetic Informatics
Jasia Reichardt: Cybernetic Serendipity: The Computer and the Arts
Thacker, Eugene (2004): Biomedia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

BIBLIOTHEK / SEMESTERAPPARAT
Karen Barad: Agentieller Realismus ISBN 978-3518260456
Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman ISBN 978-0745641584
Dunne, Anthony; Raby, Fiona: Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, ans Social Dreaming, ISBN 978-0262019842
George Gessert: Green Light. Toward an art of evolution. ISBN 978-0262014144
Haraway, Donna: Staying with the trouble : making kin in the Chthulucene. ISBN 9780822362142
Haraway, Donna Jeanne (Hg.) (1991): Simians, cyborgs, and women. The reinvention of nature. New York: Routledge. ISBN 1853431397
Hauser, Jens (Hg.) (2008): Sk-interfaces. Exploding borders : creating membranes in art, technology and society. Liverpool: FACT; Liverpool University Press. 1846311497
Landwehr, Kuni: Home Made Bio Electronic Arts: Do-it yourself: Microscopes, Sensors, Sonifications ISBN 978-3856165673 (Introduction)
Ingeborg Reichle: Art in the Age of Technoscience: Genetic Engineering, Robotics, and Artificial Life in Contemporary Art ISBN 978-3211781609
Meyers, W. (2015): Bio art. London. ISBN 0500239320
William Myers: Bio Design, ISBN 978-0-87070-952-4
Andrew Pickering: The Cybernetic Brain ISBN 978-0226667904
Salter, Chris (2015): Alien agency. Experimental encounters with art in the making. The MIT Press. (not in library?)
Schubert, Theresa; Adamatzky A: Experiencing the unconventional: science in art. 9814656852
Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt, The mushroom at the end of the world: on the possibility of life in capitalist ruins. ISBN 9780691162751
Translife : International Triennal of New Media Art. National Art Museum of China. ISBN 9781846317460

LINKS
https://www.uni-weimar.de/kunst-und-gestaltung/wiki/GMU:Bioart_Linkliste

Online archives / Prizes
http://www.badaward.nl/artists-scientists
http://archive.aec.at/prix/ (hybrid art / interactive art)
https://vida.fundaciontelefonica.com/en/projects/vida-16/ (until 2014)

Online Journals / Blogs
http://www.clotmag.com/ (artist interviews/reviews)
http://www.antennae.org.uk/ (theory, artist presentations)

STUDENT PRESENTATIONS

STUDENT WORKS

CLASSES 11 Oktober
18 Oktober + evening lecture
25 Oktober
1 November + evening lecture
8 November with GUEST Spela Petric + evening lecture
15 November
22 November + evening lecture
29 November with GUEST Wolfgang Spahn + evening lecture
6 Dezember
13 Dezember + evening lecture
20 Dezember
10 Januar
17 Januar + evening lecture
24 Januar
31 Januar + evening lecture