TransNatural is a series of four exhibitions and symposiums which presents interesting attempts from art, design, and science to fuse technology with nature. A glimpse of a new world with work of articulate media artists, speculative designers, product designers, avant-garde businesses and bleeding edge researchers.
In TN 02: Becoming TransNatural they show work between life and technology with images, experiences and intuitions from a TransNatural culture that will feed and contextualize each other. In the TransNatural culture technology plays by the dynamic rules of nature without ramshackling the planet. But what can we think and how should we act to become TransNatural?
At the symposium speakers will offer a varied introduction to workshops that will explore the theme in roughly three different area’s: economy, aesthetics, and everyday life. With workshop and lectures by: James Auger & Jimmy Loizeau (UK), Sascha Pohflepp (UK), Arne Hendriks (NL), Christina Stadlbauer (AT) / The Human and Apian Foraging Network en TU Delft/ iGEM (NL).
Participants exhibition: James Auger & Jimmy Loizeau (UK), Arne Hendriks (NL), Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg & James King (UK), David Benqué (UK), Sascha Pohflepp (UK/ GER), Frederik de Wilde (BE), Windowfarms (USA), Sonja Bäumel (AUT), Thomas Lommee (BE), Mike Thompson (UK/ NL), Jorinde Voigt (GER), Thomas Thwaites (UK), Walewijn den Boer (NL), RepRap / Ultimaker 3D printer, Erik de Bruijn (NL)
Transnatural Symposium Saturday 12 March
James Auger & Jimmy Loizeau (UK)
Lecture / Workshop
James Auger & Jimmy Loizeau are artists and critical designers that develop objects and processes by which they question current and upcoming relations between society and technology. Their Carnivorous Domestic Entertainment Robots putexisting notions on the role of robots and their relations with living creatures in a radically different context. ~ In their workshop participants work towards design proposals for alternative ways in which robots may enter the household.
http://www.auger-loizeau.com
Sascha Pohflepp (DE / UK)
Lecture / Workshop
Sascha is an artist and designer who is interested in past and future technologies, notions of art, business and idealism, and how they inform which worlds come true and which worlds are discarded. He participates in the Synthetic Aesthetics project that brings together synthetic biologists, designers, artists and social scientists to explore collaborations between synthetic biology, art and design. ~ In his workshop participants will do long-term narrative exploration on how the human future continues the past through new technologies.
http://www.pohflepp.com
Sheref Mansy (USA/ skype session)
is leading a laboratory for synthetic and biology at the University ofTrento. He researches the making, growth and multiplication of protocells: life-like systems without DNA that may emerge spontaneously under the right chemical circumstances. He works with Sascha Pohflepp in the Synthetic Aesthetics project.
http:// www.smansy.org
Arne Hendriks (NL)
Lecture / Workshop
The Incredible Shrinking Man project suggests to downsize the human species to better fit the earth. It brings together evolutionary insights, Space colonisation research, fossil findings, speculative design, literature and film. Hendriks presents his research and its bio-historical, scientific and conceptual components. ~ In his hands-on workshop participants map out the spatial and cultural effects of shrinking by redesigning space, food, and objects.
http://www.the-incredible-shrinking-man.net
Christina Stadlbauer (AT) / The Human and Apian Foraging Network
Lecture / Workshop
Stadlbauer is a scientist, artist and urban bee keeper, developing new mutually beneficial combinations of culture, technology and nature. She is part of the Herbologies / Foraging Network that combines the cultural traditions and knowledge around edible and medicinal plants with the possibilities of online networks and open-source methods. Her talk is an exploration on behaviour and strategies of bees and men driven by the quest for urban edibles. In the workshop Bee-o-Logical Housing participants investigate hands-on *out of the box* bee-hive-design.
http://www.herbologies-foraging.net
Nadine Bongaerts en Eva Brinkman, TU Delft iGEM Team (NL)
Lecture / Workshop
iGEM is a yearly competition run by the MIT, for synthetic biology using BioBricks: standardized DNA components that can give living cells new behaviors. The TU-Delft team won the iGEM competition in2010. They present their work with iGEM and BioBricks. ~ In their workshop participants get to learn the basics of working with BioBricks by designing a bacteria that produces keratin – aversatile organic substance that is fully biodegradable and that can replace plastics in a lot of applications.
http://2010.igem.org