hi all
I'm Andy Gracie, and i'm excited to be invited to join in with this
discussion.
I'm just nearing the end of a thrilling two weeks in Brighton, where
I was leading the 'laboratory life' project with Lighthouse and The
Arts Catalyst. This project was based on the Interactivos model
devised by Media-Lab Prado in Madrid and featured 5 lead artists
whose practice engages with science, and 17 collaborators drawn from
various artistic and scientific fields.
I think that the things that have been going on here reflect pretty
much all of the themes that have been outlined for this discussion.
We have had home made performative human centrifuges, challenging
probes into the legality of our own bodies and those of the people
being used as human test beds, dressmaking with micro-biological
dyes, realtime scientific interpretations through automatic drawing,
the construction of a functioning and operative sterile laboratory
using items from hardware and gardening stores, and hacker/craft
constructions of astrobiological simulators with custom bred fruit
flies. The fact that all this was being carried out under the intense
scrutiny of the public eye ensured that the performative and
challenging aspects of each project were to the fore.
One of the beautiful qualities of all this inter-disciplinary,
hybrid, analogue meets digital, craft meets bioart, function meets
theatre process was that it was completely and utterly fluid and
improvised. And all completely complimentary. I like to see it as
evidence that it is when we decide to push the analysis of media and
approach to one side we can really begin to let our hair down and
generate ideas, projects and collaborations that produce results that
are always fresh, always innovative and always thought provoking.
best
andy
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