[spectre] VIDA at ISEA Istambul

[MONICA BELLO]

Dear friends,


VIDA will be in Isea Istambul with the panel "VIDA new discourses,  
tropes and modes in art and artificial life research"
please come along and join us in the discussion,

http://isea2011.sabanciuniv.edu/panel/vida


"VIDA new discourses, tropes and modes in art and artificial life  
research"
Saturday 17th September, from 9.00 to 10.30
at Sabanci Centre, Room 7, Levent


Chairs: Nell Tenhaaf, Mónica Bello
Presenters: Jose-Carlos Mariátegui, Sally-Jane Norman, Sonia Cillari,  
Paul Vanouse

For this panel, we will analyze new discourses and modes in art and  
artificial life research. This will
be placed in relation to recent outcomes of the computational sciences  
together with the most
revolutionary developments and discourses of the life sciences. The  
focus will be specifically on
creative modes engaged with dynamic living processes, that have been  
affected by simulation,
explorations in synthetic life systems, environmental visualizations,  
hybrid spaces, augmented and
mixed reality landscapes and prospective methods and devices.

The panel looks at art projects recognized by VIDA  the art and  
artificial life international awards, in
which outcomes of areas of research that synthesize computational  
methods with life sciences and
living systems are reflected. The hybrid forms of the artistic  
proposals recently submitted to VIDA,
and the transformation of the discipline of Artificial life itself,  
have prompted us to consider new
issues. VIDA has been broadening its reach to include artistic  
projects engaged with any dynamic
living process that has been affected by simulation. The panel will  
reflect this process.
The term Artificial life appeared in 1987 during the historic  
Artificial Life I symposium held at the
Los Alamos laboratory in New Mexico. Artificial life became a new  
scientific discipline that uses
computational means to create simulations of life and living systems.  
Drawing from this research,
art and artificial life art projects have a series of attributes,  
defined essentially by the fact that they
show dynamic, evolutionary behaviours, reacting to their surroundings  
and incorporating natural
and artificial elements in their physical appearance. A-life art  
projects reflect key properties of
Artificial life that are shared by living and non-living systems,  
including self-replication, self-
assembly and self-organization. VIDA has continued to reflect the  
evolution of A-life research by
opening up to bio-inspired artificial processes such as synthesized  
cells, biological substrates for
computation, or bio-engineering.

Everyday experience is increasingly subject to a volatile conception  
of what constitutes our
surroundings: the foods we consume, the pets we take care of, the  
environments we occupy, the
virtual spaces we meet in, the medicines we take, or the materials we  
use to build the computers
with which we work. We also increasingly live in a data world where  
dynamic visualizations map
the real and virtual onto each other, and entangle bodies,  
environments and networks. In the VIDA
projects discussed here, artists’ engagement with these themes and  
their choice of media have
been very open: the approach can be computational, physical, social,  
metaphorical, or any
combination of those. VIDA supports artistic processes that advance or  
challenge discourses and
artistic modes, tropes and formal systems, and that show both  
aesthetic and social relevance.


------
Mónica Bello Bugallo
Artistic Director of VIDA
Art and Artificial Life International Awards
www.fundaciontelefonica.com/vida