Month: Saturday July 4th, 2015

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格式工厂12

Guest: Hu Jieming, Lu Xinghua, Zhao Qianfan

Date: 2014-11-01  14:00 ~ 2014-10-01  16:00

Address: Chronus Art Center (Room101, Bldg18, NO.50 Moganshan Rd, Shanghai)

Reservations via membership@chronusartcenter.org (please supply your full name, contact information, and the number of people attending)

ABOUT THE OPEN COURSE:

ABOUT THE LECTURES SERIES: 
On the Borders of New Media Art: Creation, Spectatorship, Presentation, and Collection


New media art is generating a new sociality and reaching beyond our contemporary understandings of artistic theory and basic approaches, indicating ways to interpose into reality and history, providing a more general attitude towards political intervention, suggesting the total reform of the traditional art museum, creating different modes of observation, and so on. A great number of practices encourage us to reflect on methodology and epistemology. However, the arrival of a new mode of creation and exhibition is truly pushing us to face and summarize it in theory and practice.

Through a series of discussions, art theorists, philosophers, new media artists, and associated professionals engaged in the exhibition of new media art will be invited to launch a train of discussions addressing the core concepts of new media theoretical research, including distraction, consumption, contribution, solo, chat & curiosity, gossip & imitation, new comics, the re-criticism of Internet values, resistance & surveillance, the technological subconscious of semi-group, the fan economy, etc. In the lectures and discussions we are trying to explore and generalize some underlying prerequisites of theory and the principles of practice in new media artworks and their exhibition.

ABOUT HU JIEMING
Hu Jieming, was born in 1957 in Shanghai. He is one of the pioneers of digital media and video installation art in today's China. For more than two decades, Hu continuously conducts creation and experimentation via a variety of media including photography, video and digital interactive technologies. His works are widely exhibited.

ABOUT ZHAO QIANFAN
Zhao Qianfan (1977–), Associate Professor in Philosophy, Tongji University, 2008–2009, German Chancellor Scholar of Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, in Philosophical Seminar, Hamburg University. 2013-2014, Visiting Scholar in Institute for Philosophy, Humboldt University in Berlin. Research fields: Frankfurt School (especially Adorno and Benjamin), Nietzsche, Mimesis theory.

ABOUT PLANNER OF THE LECTURE SERIES:
Lu Xinghua teaches at School of Humanities of Tongji University and at the Center of Social Thought and Contemporary Art, China Academy of Art. His research interests go across modern Chinese politics, aesthetics and Chinese contemporary art since 1985. He was member of acting committee for 2010 Shanghai Biennale. His recent works include Against Claims from Contemporary Art (2012) and The Future of Political Art (2014).

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格式工厂11

Guest: Corinne Schatz, Li Zhenhua

Date: 2014-10-19  16：00 ~ 2014-10-19  18：00

Address: Chronus Art Center (Room101, Bldg18, NO.50 Moganshan Rd, Shanghai)

LANGUAGE: German (with Chinese translation)

reservation via membership@chronusartcenter.org (please indicate your full name, contact information and the number of reservation).

About Lecture:

The Swiss artist Roman Signer (born 1938) has expanded the notion of sculpture by the element of time and transformation. In his works different objects, often taken from everyday use, like tables, boots, buckets, or bicycles meet natural and artificial energies that take a strong impact on them. There might be a poetic situation like a table carried away into the air by red balloons only to fall down back to earth and break into pieces when the the balloons burst. Buckets filled with water explode to form a fountain for only a few seconds. Film and photography play a crucial role, as his sculptures often only exist for a very short time. Thus Roman Signer actually forms time itself, the transformation of objects and materials being seen as a sculptural event at each moment of its development in time and space. In his investigations of the material world, in the little events he creates for these everyday objects humour and poetry go hand in hand, creating spectacular and humouros events just as often as touching moments of beauty – when for example a white table floats ever so lonely towards bizarre iceformations on a lake in Iceland.

About Corinne Schatz
Author of ‘Roman Signer Sculpture’

Studied art history, English literature and modern German literature at the University of Zurich. Her master’s work focused on Henri Cartier-Bresson.
From 1985 to 1996 she was a member of the curatorial team at the Kunsthalle St. Gallen, of which she was also a co-founder. From 1988 to 1995 she served as a research fellow and co-curator at the Museum of Art in St. Gallen, and, beginning in 1988, as a lecturer at the St. Gallen School of Art and Design. From 1996 to 1998 she was a co-curator at the Foto Forum in St. Gallen, and from 2002 to 2012 member of the curational team and executive board of visarte.ost  (organisation of professional artists in Eastern Switzerland). Corinne Schatz lives in St. Gallen, where she works as a writer, curator and lecturer. Her publications include works on Roman Signer, Silvie & Chérif Defraoui, Jean Odermatt, Teres Wydler, Nesa Gschwend, Josef Felix Müller, among others. She is president of the art foundation of St. Gallen (St. Gallische Kulturstiftung) and member of the board of Sitterwerk Foundation.

About Li Zhenhua (CN/CH)
Co-Curator of the exhibition ‘Roman Signer: Video & Film 1975 and Now’

Li Zhenhua has been active in the field of art since 1996. His practice mainly concerns curation, art creation, and project management. Since 2010 he has been the nominator for the Summer Academy at the Zentrum Paul Klee Bern (CH), as well as for The Prix Pictet (CH). He is a member of the international advisory board for the exhibition “Digital Revolution” to be held at the Barbican Centre in the UK in 2014. He has edited several artists’ publications (e.g. Yan Lei, Hu Jieming, and Feng Mengbo). A collection of his art reviews was published under the title “Text” in 2013.

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格式工厂10

Guest: Edward Scheer

Date: 2014-10-18  14:00 ~ 2014-10-18  16:00

Address: Chronus Art Center (Room101, Bldg18, NO.50 Moganshan Rd, Shanghai)

LANGUAGE: English (with Chinese translation)

ABOUT LECTURE:

In Scenario, (2011) a new media installation by Dennis del Favero and iCinema, spectators enter a gigantic 3-D screen space and are engaged by the humanoid inhabitants of the world they find there. These humanoids engage the spectators as witnesses and participants in an uncertain scenario. What is it? It looks like the aftermath of some horrific act, not an inadvertent or random act of nature but a deliberate tearing in the social fabric. Some kind of fairy tale gone wrong? The scenario occurs in a variety of interactive spaces and environments, in underground bunkers, empty buildings and on a frozen lake. This essay uses Scenario as a case study to explore the notion of the posthuman in performance, the ethical and aesthetic questions it raises and in the work of iCinema more generally.

ABOUT SPEAKER:

Dr. Edward Scheer is Professor in Theatre and Performance Studies in the School of the Arts and Media at the University of New South Wales. He is a founding editor of the journal Performance Paradigm and has edited a number of books including Antonin Artaud: A Critical Reader (Routledge 2004). His writing on performance art and aesthetics has appeared in TDR, PAJ, Parkett and Performance Research and in catalogue essays for the AGNSW, Documenta 12, the Biennale of Sydney 2006 and the Auckland Triennial 2012. Author of Scenario, a study of new work from the iCinema Project (UNSW Press and ZKM, 2011), his latest book is entitled Multimedia Performance (Palgrave 2012) with Rosie Klich. Scheer’s study of Mike Parr's performance art, The Infinity Machine (Schwartz City Press, 2010) is the first comprehensive account of this aspect of the artist’s practice. A former chairman of the board of directors of the Performance Space in Sydney, he was also President of PSi, Performance Studies international, the international professional association in the field of performance studies from 2007-2011. He is joint chief investigator on the ARC funded projects, Towards an Experimental Humanities, and New Media Dramaturgy and is a member of the ARC College of Experts for the Humanities and Creative Arts.

ABOUT iCinema:

The iCinema Centre for Interactive Cinema Research, established in 2002, is an interdisciplinary arts, engineering and science centre spanning the Faculties of the College of Fine Arts, Arts and Social Sciences, Engineering, Law and Science at the University of New South Wales. It brings together researchers and postgraduate students in aesthetics, artificial intelligence, atmosphere science, civil engineering, computer science, digital media, media theory, multimedia design and law. The iCinema research program focuses on research into interactive media for benchmark applications across the arts, broadcast, construction, environment, heritage, museum and visualisation sectors. In particular, it is focused on the way next generation technologies can be used to imagine new ways of living, learning, researching and working.

www.icinema.unsw.edu.au

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格式工厂7

Guest: Máté Pacsika, Iris, Cedar

Date: 2014-09-28  18:00 ~ 2014-09-28  24:00

Address: Chronus Art Center (Room101, Bldg18, NO.50 Moganshan Rd, Shanghai)

Final Presentation | 18:00 - 19:00

After-Party | 19:00 - Late

Initiated by V2_ Institute for the Unstable Media in 2009, The Summer Sessions are short-term residencies for young artists organized by a network of cultural organizations all over the world, which offers the residence artists a highly productive atmosphere in 8 weeks, with production support and expert feedback to their art practice, from concept to presentable work, ready to show.

Chronus Art Center (CAC) joined this international network since 2013. For 2014, selected and recommended by CAC, a Beijing based artist-duo I&C (Iris and Cedar) has spent their summer at V2_Lab. Meanwhile, Máté Pacsika, a young new media artist from Hungary has been enjoy his summer with CAC in Shanghai. This coming Sunday, September 28 in the afternoon, the outcome of their residency will be presented in our gallery space, and the projects will be demonstrated live, the audience will be invited to ‘test’ the artworks hands-on.

The Final Presentation and the After-Party have also been supported by Sophia Lin with BASEMENT 6 and Maker+.

Vertigo System by Máté Pacsika

Vertigo System is based on the automatization of a cinematographic technique called Dolly Zoom. Also known as Vertigo Effect named after Hitchcocks movie from 1958. Vertigo effect is an in-camera effect based on a really simple optical game. It’s a highly unsettling effect with strong emotional impact, often used to emphasize dramatic events in the storyline. By experiencing it in an automatic real time process you can suddenly find yourself in a frightfully different reality.

Máté Pacsika was born in 1987 in Budapest and grew up in Hungary, The Netherlands and France surrounded by a contemporary art ambiance thanks to his artist father. During his years at Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest he has been involved in various public and science oriented art projects as a member of the Space Detournement Working Group. In 2012 his graduation project Floatomat and its underlying theoretical research investigated the various layers of the relationship between attraction and narrative in media art. After he received his MA in Media Design he moved to Rotterdam to work for V2_ Institute for the Unstable Media and do his next research about experience based art education.

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Vertigo System by Máté Pacsika

Place-Talk by I&C (Iris and Cedar)

In Place-Talk, a box-shaped locative media device realises a dialog between online and offline users. Questions can be uploaded to a small display on the box via a website and answers are recorded, by pushing a big button on the box, and subsequently send back to the website. Leaving the box behind in public space, where it is picked up by strangers and taken elsewhere or passed on, a city and its inhabitants can be explored remotely.

The work of I&C (Iris and Cedar) combines elements of computer science, visual art and storytelling, using real-world generated data to create multi-sensory experiences. They co-curated Information in Style: information visualisation in the UK, art and design exhibition at the CAFA Art Museum in 2013, and an archive data visualisation show about Chinese contemporary art, the CCAA WOW at Power Station of Art, Shanghai in 2014. They have also exhibited internationally at venues including Victoria and Albert Museum in London, UK, Waterman Art Centre in London, UK, OCT-LOFT Art Terminal, Shenzhen, China, and Audi City Beijing, China. Cedar has a MA degree from the Central Saint Martin Collage of Art and design, University of Arts London and a MFA from the Goldsmiths Collage, University of London. Iris has a master degree from the Royal College of Art.

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Place-Talk by I&C (Iris and Cedar)

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格式工厂4

Guest: Elizabeth LeCompte, Zhao Chuan

Date: 2014-09-26  14:00 ~ 2014-09-26  16:00

Address: Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre (Drama Salon on 3F, 288 Anfu Rd. Xuhui District)

SPEAKER: Elizabeth LeCompte
MODERATOR: Zhao Chuan
LANGUAGE: English (with Chinese translation)
VENUE: Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre (Drama Salon on 3F, 288 Anfu Rd. Xuhui District)
The lecture is hosted by Chronus Art Center and Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center
Reservation via membership@chronusartcenter.org (please indicate your full name, contact information and the number of reservation).

ABOUT LECTURE
Postmodernist theatre, since its rise in America in the 1960s, had set off a new trend of thought in theatre and been maintaining its momentum. In this context, The Wooster Group was founded in 1975 and enjoyed a rapid development. Their experimental theatre has a heavy touch of western postmodernism and is constantly breaking convention and restrictions of time and space, which is considered as a pioneer of contemporary theatre.

In the process of taking various artistic explorations, The Wooster Group had put great emphasis on the spirituality, profundity and vitality of theatrical work; it tried to make theatre into a new type of multiplex art, and presented it to the audience with new ways of expression. Compared to traditional theatre, their practice is more critical and incisive. At the same time, they’ve managed to maintain their unique artistic style in such a commercial environment, subverting tradition, revolting against classics and facing the reality directly. Against a backdrop of theatrical diversification, they eventually became the mainstream of contemporary theatre development.

The lecture will be given by Elizabeth LeCompte, director of The Wooster Group, and hosted by Zhao Chuan, founder of Shanghai’s local theatre collective Grass Stage. A conversation between the two guests will also be held after the lecture.

ABOUT SPEAKER
Elizabeth LeCompte (US) is one of the founding members of The Wooster Group. Since 1975 she has constructed—choreographed, designed, and directed—all of the Group’s productions, including nineteen theater pieces, five dance pieces, and nine works for film and video. LeCompte has received numerous awards and honorary doctorates from the New School and California Institute of the Arts.

ABOUT MODERATOR
Zhao Chuan (China) founded the Shanghai theatre collective Grass Stage with his colleagues in 2005, and has since devoted himself to the promotion of new social theatre movement and the creation of non-for-profit public space and theatre aesthetics. Becoming a visible force of alternative theatre in China, he and the collective stimulate average people’s energy on stage, create theatrical works, organise cultural events, and bring about not-for-profit performances and international interactions. Zhao also writes culture and art critiques for publication in various media in China and abroad, and won many literary awards including, most notably, the Unita Prize for New Novelists. He has also been an invited participant in numerous international theatre and literary festivals.

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格式工厂2

Guest: Li Xiaofeng, Alexander Brandt, Xiaowen Zhu

Date: 2014-09-14  14:00 ~ 2014-09-14  16:00

Address: Chronus Art Center (Room101, Bldg18, NO.50 Moganshan Rd, Shanghai)

LANGUAGE: Chinese

reservation via membership@chronusartcenter.org (please indicate your full name, contact information and the number of reservation).

ABOUT PANEL DISCUSSION:
Documentary became a film genre in early 20th century defined as “a factual film which is dramatic” by the American film critic Pare Lorentz. The practices and theories of documentary filmmaking have evolved gradually over the past decades, from the traditional linear narrative that organizes a story in a both informative and entertaining way to multi-media documentary that values the viewer’s participations by creating a collaborative reality wherein the filmmaker’s role as narrator is put in question. The concepts of “negotiation of reality”, “choice and control” and “multiple reality” are thereby emphasized and explored along the lines of evolution.

In 2002, artist and scholar Mitchell Whitelaw noticed the rise of the terminology ‘interactive documentary’. He stated that digital interactive documentary is a concept yet to be defined due to the lack of writing on such subject and the fact that new media artists do not consider themselves documentary filmmakers. In today’s world, the majority of independent documentary productions are hybrid and multi-media in the sense that web, social media, Youtube, Vimeo, and other media platforms are largely incorporated in the marketing strategy and even the narrative itself (e.g. multiple versions of narratives).

How do we perceive and present reality as filmmakers and media artists in today’s world? What are the challenges and opportunities? How does digitalization, new media, and technological advancement affect the logic of documentary making? What is the future of documentary? Moreover, how do we interact with reality, mediate it through filmmaking, as it actually reflects on how we construct knowledge and beliefs around it?

ABOUT SPEAKERS:
This talk invites three speakers to discuss the topic above.

Li Xiaofeng is an experienced and renowned documentary filmmaker and educator. His practices are rooted in traditional documentary making but have spanned over non-traditional forms by facilitating academic conversations, discussions, as well as organizing film screenings over the past decade.

Alexander Brand (Fei Pingguo) is a multi-media artist. He works with unconventional and innovative media and is a pioneer in the field in Shanghai.

Xiaowen Zhu is a media artist, scholar and writer. She works with both multi-media documentary and traditional form that mix fiction and reality. She is interested in investigating how people perceive reality and their relation to it.

 格式工厂3

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Guest: Fan Junfeng

Date: 2014-09-13  14:00 ~ 2014-09-13  16:00

Address: Chronus Art Center (Room101, Bldg18, NO.50 Moganshan Rd, Shanghai)

Time: 13th Sep, 2014 14:00-16:00
SPEAKER: Fan Junfeng
LANGUAGE: Chinese

reservation via membership@chronusartcenter.org (please indicate your full name, contact information and the number of reservation)

ABOUT LECTURE:
Recent events indicate that human being is likely to enter an era with “zero privacy”. We have observed huge technological progress in ubiquitous surveillance, big data collection and data analysis. As a result, governments will be capable of monitoring every detail of a normal person and eventually reconstructing his whole life. This lecture will reveal how private information is mined, and why the efforts in protecting privacy ended up with constant failure. Although many cryptographers are still trying their best to build privacy-friendly protocols and applications, the return to their efforts are not satisfying. With the increasing development of cloud computing and wearable electronics, the users may very likely lose all their private data.
 

ABOUT THE SERIES OF LECTURES:

On the Borders of New Media Art: Creation, Spectatorship, Presentation, and Collection

New media art is generating a new sociality and reaching beyond our contemporary understandings of artistic theory and basic approaches, indicating ways to interpose into reality and history, providing a more general attitude towards political intervention, suggesting the total reform of the traditional art museum, creating different modes of observation, and so on. A great number of practices encourage us to reflect on methodology and epistemology. However, the arrival of a new mode of creation and exhibition is truly pushing us to face and summarize it in theory and practice.

Through a series of discussions, art theorists, philosophers, new media artists, and associated professionals engaged in the exhibition of new media art will be invited to launch a train of discussions addressing the core concepts of new media theoretical research, including distraction, consumption, contribution, solo, chat & curiosity, gossip & imitation, new comics, the re-criticism of Internet values, resistance & surveillance, the technological subconscious of semi-group, the fan economy, etc. In the lectures and discussions we are trying to explore and generalize some underlying prerequisites of theory and the principles of practice in new media artworks and their exhibition.

ABOUT PLANNER OF THE LECTURE SERIES:

Lu Xinghua, teaches at School of Humanities of Tongji University and at the Center of Social Thought and Contemporary Art, China Academy of Art. His research interests go across modern Chinese politics, aesthetics and Chinese contemporary art since 1985. He was member of acting committee for 2010 Shanghai Biennale. His recent works include Against Claims from Contemporary Art (2012) and The Future of Political Art (2014).

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格式工厂17

Guest: etoy.Zai (Michel Zai), Liu Yan, Gu Ling

Date: 2014-09-13  16:30 ~ 2014-09-13  18:30

Address: Chronuse Art Center (101, Bldg 18, 50 Moganshan Rd, Shanghai)

cc 2014 SIMP Project
Date: 16:30-18:30, September 13, 2014
Venue: Chronuse Art Center (101, Bldg 18, 50 Moganshan Rd, Shanghai)
Guests: etoy.Zai (Michel Zai), Liu Yan, Gu Ling
Moderator: Art Yan
Language: English (with Chinese translation) and Chinese

Reservation via membership@chronusartcenter.org (please indicate your full name, contact information and the number of reservation).

SIMP Project is originally co-initiated by curator Art Yan and new media artist Wu Juehui in June 2013 in Hangzhou, China. It attends to the ‘Situation’ that today’s original creative work faces in visual and audio art, the two-way ‘Intervention’ between artists or artist groups, the micro-ecology in the field and broad social factors, and the ‘Mapping’ of the information and analysis of the above-mentioned active intervention. And at last, the project aims to form a ‘Perspective’ for future creative work. SIMP Talk Show is the first series ‘entertainment’ program that presented by the project.

For its second season, SIMP Talk Shwo push the probe further to the foundation and sources of creativity today: how could individuals or innovation groups establish (or in-house-sharing) their own structure of the knowledge and skills which support their daily operation? How should they do self-management in the facts of finance, copyrights retention and sharing, also to establish internal order, as well as to build up the external relations, in order to protect their independence and freedom in thinking and action.

This issue, we invited three guests, they are Swiss artist etoy.Zai (Michel Zai), creative leader and social entrepreneur Liu Yan, and also Gu Ling from British Council Shanghai. The entrance to this dialogue is etoy.CORPORATION, an art collective that works in the field between art, technology, and society, which co-founded by Michel Zai. It is actually a corporate sculpture registered as a privately held company. And they never sell isolated art objects, but sells trades, and exchanges parts of itself and its brand: etoy.SHARES represent participation in etoy and the cultural value generated by etoy. Between 1999 to 2000, when multi-billion dollar company eToys.Inc., at that time the biggest online shopping mall for toys, tried to shut down the etoy.BRAND. etoy mobilized nearly 1800 lawyers, hackers, journalists, professors, business people and artists to fight a decentralized, playful war against the corporation, and finally won this so-called TOYWAR… What etoy has experienced and archived is extremely enlightening. But today, how do they look at themself, or what's the new problems or challenges that they are facing now?

About Guests:
etoy.ZAI (Michel Z) is a Swiss artist/professor and one of the co-founders of etoy. He served as CEO of etoy between 1996 and 2009. ZAI holds a master's degree in visual communication from the University of Applied Arts, Vienna. He worked as an anchorman for the Swiss National Television (SF-DRS), and in 1992 he co-founded HIRN-lein, a telephone entertainment company. Beyond his commitment for etoy.CORPORATION, etoy.ZAI works for universities and corporate clients. Between 2003 and 2009 he was professor and head of unit "Media & Interaction Design" at ECAL (University for Art and Design in Lausanne). Currently, Zai became father and leads the preparation work for etoy's first retrospective series in Asia, Europe and the USA. He also prepares a two-year research project for the Academy of Art and Design FHNW in Basel.

Liu Yan, has over 15 years of creative leadership and entrepreneurship experience working in China and the Netherlands. She served as the founder and chief catalyst of Ask Lab, a social enterprise that connects talent and idea's with business challenges through co-creation and experiential learning. Prior to this, She established Xindanwei, a Shanghai based coworking center, international innovation hub and one of the "World Top 10 Most Innovative Companies in China" listed by FastCompany. She is the author of “Coworking Manual” – a book published at App Store under Creative Commons to help entrepreneurs to set up coworking community. She also served as the jury member of Prix Ars Electronica 2011-2012, one of the most premium international award for digital art and community project.

Ling GU, A writer and translator for content and activities related to contemporary art. Now as head of digital arts in British Council China, Shanghai editor for Randian-Online (a bilingual online magazine about contemporary Chinese art). She worked for Rockbund Art Museum as manager of development and communication. Her articles are published on many arts magazines. She translated Curatorial Challenges: Correspondence Between Hou Hanru and Hans Ulrich Obrist (published in 2013). She reads, plays, cooks and enjoying yoga when she's not working. Her blog: linggu.org

About Moderator:
Art Yan, media arts curator and producer. He is now Executive Director of Chronus Art Center, since December 2013.

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格式工厂16

Guest: Oron Catts

Date: 2014-09-07  14:00 ~ 2014-09-07  16:00

Address: Chronus Art Center (Room101, Bldg18, NO.50 Moganshan Rd, Shanghai)

LANGUAGE: English (with Chinese translation)

Due to seat limitation, we reserve the right to give priority to applicants with the most relevant experience. For reservation please email to: membership@chronusartcenter.org (please indicate your full name, contact info and the number of reservation).

ABOUT WORKSHOP:
Tissue engineering and regenerative biology are usually discussed in relation to biomedical research and applications. However in the last decade we witness a shift; there is a growing interest in exploring spin off tissue engineering and regenerative biology technologies for other ends, such as consumer products, art and design. This workshop will explore these developments in areas such as in vitro meat and leather, actuators and bio machine interfaces, speculative design and contemporary artistic practices. Oron Catts will draw on his extensive experience of using tissue engineering for non-medical ends to speculate about what lead to these applications and their possible future development and applications. Avoiding utopian and dystopian postures and using the notion of the contestable, this workshop will also highlight some philosophical and ethical consideration stemming from the use of non-medical approaches to regenerative biology.

ABOUT WORKSHOP LEADER:
Oron Catts is the Director of SymbioticA, The Centre of Excellence in Biological Arts, School of Anatomy, Physiology and Human Biology, The University of Western Australia.
Oron Catts is an artist, researcher and curator whose pioneering work with the Tissue Culture and Art Project which he established in 1996 is considered a leading biological art project. In 2000 he co-founded SymbioticA, an artistic research centre housed within the School of Anatomy, Physiology and Human Biology, The University of Western Australia. Under Catts’ leadership SymbioticA has gone on to win the Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica in Hybrid Art (2007) the WA Premier Science Award (2008) and became a Centre for Excellence in 2008. In 2009 Catts was recognised by Thames & Hudson’s “60 Innovators Shaping our Creative Future” book in the category “Beyond Design”, and by Icon Magazine (UK) as one of the top 20 Designers, “making the future and transforming the way we work”.