Seminar Series | Artificial Life, AI, Art and Altered Nature Chapter 2 Synthesis New Lives
Date:2022.8.28 (Sun.)
Time:4.00 p.m. – 5.30 p.m
Speakers:Guy Ben-Ary, Ku Kuang-Yi, Lo Yu-Chun
Language:English
Organized by: Aiiiii Art Center, Computational Media and Arts, HKUST(GZ), Chronus Art Center
Curated by: WU Ziwei, LI Xi, BI Xin, CAO Jiamin
Coordinator: Saisai Liu
The term “Artificial Life” was coined by computer scientist Christopher Langton in 1987. However, the notion and practices of “artificial life” are far predated. This topic has long been an interest of scientists and artists, who have been exploring the fundamental principles of life and attempting to think life in the context of an artificial system.
In recent times, Artificial Intelligence algorithms have been widely implemented in various interdisciplinary fields including Computational Biology and Synthetic Biology. Through synthesising or simulating hardware, software, and wetware, technology restructures and represents the characteristics of the natural living system. Meanwhile, in the increasingly participatory interactions between humans and non-human entities, the technological assemblage also behaves like a living organism, performing in the collaboration and cohabitation with environment.
How can life be reimagined in the process of the transition? What is the aesthetics in Artificial Intelligence and the realm of life? How can artificial beings perform in symbiosis with the community and even influence society and culture? How do we perceive the ethical and moral issues?
Co-organized by Chronus Art Center, Aiiiii Art Center, Computational Media and Arts, and HKUST(GZ), the seminar aims to bring artists, scientists, and scholars together to discuss from different perspectives how and why artists and scientists create Artificial Life. How was technology inspired by living things? How to understand the biological nature of technology? How have these fields entangled with nature and present themselves in another form of nature?
Chapter 2 Synthesis New Lives
Modern biotechnology could be applied to multiple disciplines as a productive, effective and creative approach and tool, for example, re-coding the DNA sequence, growing life with tissue culture, and discovering novel organisms with machine learning, etc.
However, ethical controversies have always accompanied its development. The body, in many discourses and applications of synthetic biology, seems to be considered as a reductive object in terms of its medical-anatomical values. It’s isolated, controllable, and enframed in human centric prospects.
Grounded in an artistic context, many researchers aim to create works that initiate public attention and discussion about the opportunities, challenges, and changes that biotechnology presents
Practitioners and researchers intend to explore the approach of combining computational techniques with biological materials in artworks, and investigate the ethical and moral issues in the interdisciplinary context of art and technology.The dynamics between local culture, technology, and the natural environment will also be explored.
The panel discussion will focus on the biotechnology in art. Two groups of speakers (Guy Ben-Ary, KU Kuang-Yi & LO Yu-Chun) are invited as artistic practitioners and researchers to share their thoughts on synthetic biology, wetware and artificial life in the field of Life Sciences based on the conception of their artworks.
Aiiiii Art Center (Est. 2021) is an artificial intelligence art institution based in Shanghai. The organisation seeks to support, promote, as well as incubate both international and domestic artists and projects related to intelligent algorithms. Aiiiii Art Center is committed to becoming a pioneer of artificial intelligence through the discovering of exciting possibilities afforded by the intersections of creativity and technology.
Aiiiii Art Center aims to offer insight into the many challenges, practices, and creative modes of artificial intelligence based art. Such aims will be achieved through academic conferences and published research efforts conduct
The Computational Media and Arts (CMA) Thrust of Information Hub comprises both art and technology, focusing on art creation and visual communication with advanced emerging technologies.
As an interdisciplinary program for computational and radical creativity, CMA brings together visionaries with backgrounds in art, design, science, and engineering to think critically, reach beyond convention and make innovation. Faculty and students work together across disciplines like art with augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), AI-generated art, information art and design, and data visualization. Art creation and visual communication are carried out in the exchange and collision of art and tech with social impact for the public to understand and enrich their lives, environment, and communities.
ed either independently or in collaboration with domestic and international institutions and organisations. This organisation will also actively promote and showcase the exploratory uses of artificial intelligence based art in practice.
Guy Ben-Ary
Guy Ben-Ary, is a Perth based artist and researcher. He currently works at SymbioticA at the University of Western Australia. Recognised internationally as a major artist and innovator working across science and media arts, Guy specialises in biotechnological artwork, which aims to enrich our understanding of what it means to be alive. Guy’s work has been shown across the globe at prestigious venues and festivals from the Beijing National Art Museum to San Paulo Biennale to the Moscow Biennale. His work can also be seen in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His work Bricolage won an award of excellence in the Japan media arts festival, cellF & Silent Barrage were awarded an Honorary Mention in Prix Ars Electronica (2017, 2009) and Silent Barrage also won first prize at VIDA, a significant international competition for Art and Artificial Life. Interested in how art has the potential to initiate public debate on the challenges arising from the existence of these liminal lives, Ben-Ary creates artworks designed to problematise current and emergent bio-technologies’ influence on the shifting forces that govern and determine life, death and sentience.
Ku Kuang-Yi
Ku Kuang-Yi was born and raised in Taipei, Taiwan, and has been based in the Netherlands since 2016. He is doing his PhD research at Sheffield Hallam University, UK and the research topic is the interdisciplinary practice between art, design and bioscience. He has graduated with triple master degrees with social design from Design Academy Eindhoven, dentistry from National Yang-Ming University and communication design from Shih Chien University. He is a former dentist, bio-artist and speculative designer. He also co-founded TW BioArt (Taiwan bioart community) to stimulate the fields of BioArt and Science+Art in Taiwan. His works often deal with human body, sexuality, interspecies interaction and medical technology, aiming to investigate the relationships among technology, individual and environment.
Lo Yu-Chun
Lo Yu-Chun was born in northern Taiwan, and has been based in the Netherlands since 2015. She has graduated with a bachelor degree in Man & Communication department from Design Academy Eindhoven in 2020. Many of her works focus on how people’s behavior is influenced by the inner world like; thinking, emotions, ideology and culture, and aim to get a deeper understanding of what is the essence of being a human.
Related
