Expert Seminars
Speakers
Oron Catts
Born in Finland, Oron Catts currently lives and works in Western Australia. Oron is a tissue engineering artist and cofounder and Artistic Director of SymbioticA, the Art & Science Collaborative Research Laboratory, School of Anatomy and Human Biology, UWA. SymbioticA is an artistic laboratory dedicated to the research, learning and critique of life sciences. It is the first research laboratory of its kind, in that it enables artists to engage in wet biology practices in a biological science department.
Oron also founded the Tissue Culture & Art Project/TC&A (1996). He was Research Fellow at the Tissue Engineering and Organ Fabrication Laboratory, Harvard Medical School (2000-2001). Oron trained in product design and specialized in the future interaction of design and biological derived technologies.
Jens Hauser
Originally from Germany, Jens Hauser is a Paris based independent curator, writer and artist. Author of documentary films, radio art and sound environments shown at international festivals and museums. Jens has a background in media and film theory, psychology and scientific journalism (Münster, Bochum, Tours). Since 1992 he has been a regular contributor to the European Culture Television arte, and the cultural programmess of the German broadcasting stations WDR, NDR, SWR, Deutschlandfunk, Deutschlandradio and ZDF. Jens has published widely and has given papers about the interaction of film culture, art and video games, and on contemporary music.
In 2003 Jens curated L'Art Biotech – the first festival of biotechnological art at the National Arts and Culture Centre Le Lieu Unique, Nantes/France. Currently involved in two long-term film projects about bioart. His forthcoming curated exhibitions deal with the paradigm of ‘skin as a technological interface’.
Andy Miah
Andy Miah is a reader in New Media & Bioethics at the University of the West of Scotland and Fellow in Visions of Utopia and Dystopia, Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. Andy’s research is informed by an interest in applied philosophy, technology, and culture and he writes broadly about emerging technological cultures, particularly the development of human enhancement technologies. This includes the implications of pervasive wireless connectivity and the convergence of technological systems and the modification of biological matter through nanotechnology and gene transfer.
Andy’s work draws from literature in a range of areas, including law, philosophy, art & design, cultural studies, sociology and a range of sciences. He has published over 80 solo-authored academic articles in refereed journals, books, e-zines, and national media press on the subjects of cyberculture, medicine, technology, and the Olympics. Recent publications include the Public Understanding of Science, Journal of Medical Ethics, CTHEORY, Culture Machine and Research in Philosophy, Technology. Also writing for leading newspapers, including The Observer, Le Monde, and the Times Higher Education Supplement.
Andy is also Associate Editor for the BEP journal Studies in Ethics, Law and Technology, and an Editorial Board Member for Genomics, Society & Policy and Health Care Analysis (Springer).
Jon Turney
Jon Turney is a science writer, editor and reviewer of many years' standing, during which he has worked as a science reporter, features editor, (briefly) a civil servant, an academic and a publisher. Jon currently spends part of his time as science consultant for Penguin Press, for whom he occasionally edits UK-authored popular books.
Jon’s main focus aside from that is writing his own books, and leading the MSc in Creative Non-fiction Writing at Imperial College. Besides this he writes and edits on assignment, especially around life science, science and society and policy issues.
Jon’s latest book is the Rough Guide to Genetics (with Jess Buxton), published in 2007 and is currently working on the next called The Rough Guide to the Future, due in 2009.
Anthony Dunne
Anthony Dunne is a partner in the design practice Dunne & Raby. He studied Industrial Design at the RCA before working at Sony Design in Tokyo. On returning to London he completed a PhD in Computer Related Design at the RCA. He was a founding member of the CRD Research Studio where he worked as a Senior Research Fellow. He also taught in Design Products where he jointly led Platform 3 between 1998 - 2004. His work with Fiona Raby uses design as a medium to stimulate discussion and debate amongst designers, industry and the public about the social, cultural and ethical implications of emerging technologies.
Their projects have been exhibited and published internationally and is in the permanent collection of MoMA and the Victoria & Albert Museum. In 2005 they curated PopNoir at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. He is currently working on BioLand, a fictitious shopping centre and laboratory devoted to meeting birth, death and marriage needs in a genetically modified world.
Sandra Kemp
Sandra Kemp’s research has always explored the connections between individual identity and philosophical, cultural and aesthetic concerns. Her recent work investigated multiple readings of the face as a 3D barcode of identity and the impact of advances in science and technology on both appearance and identity. Her exhibition, Future Face, was at the London Science Museum from 2005-6 and toured South-East Asia in 2006-7. Her current research continues her investigation of the cultural centrality of the human image and its extraordinary expressive repertoire through an exploration of the issues relating to human enhancement. How will new, complex relationships between biology, ethics and technology, challenge received notions of identity and self- perception?
Sandra Kemp is Director of Research at the Royal College of Art. She studied at Oxford University, and has held Senior Research posts at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. She is currently leading the RCA in its international research development in Europe, the USA and South East Asia. She is a panel member of RAE2008.
Onkar Singh
Kular Onkar Singh Kular, born 1974 in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, studied Product and Furniture Design at Kingston University before going on to the Royal College of Art to complete a masters in Design Products. Onkar uses design as a medium to engage with a broad range of social and cultural issues, from the quest for domestic perfection to baking super functional bread.
His work has been exhibited internationally in London, Tokyo, Jerusalem, Rotterdam and Barnsley and is sold and distributed by Droog Design in Holland and Trico in Tokyo. He is currently a research fellow in the Design Interactions department at the RCA working with the Tussauds Group. Onkar also teaches Product Design at Kingston University and Architecture at the London Metropolitan University.
Noam Toran Born in Las Cruces, New Mexico, Noam Toran studied fine art and combined commissions with set designs for theatre and film before receiving an MA in design at the Royal College of Art in London. Noam creates films and installations which use the language of products and their distinctive position in culture as a means with which to investigate anomalies in human behaviour; anomalies which specifically reflect a retaliation against imposed social conformity. Often the products are developed for individuals as vehicles for self-expression and a celebration of uniqueness based on personal “quirks”, desires and fantasies.
The work serves to simultaneously expand upon the conflict between citizens, corporations and popular culture and to question the role of objects (and their designers) as protagonists of conventionality. In almost all his work there is a darkly humorous conflict: What types of identity do we project onto objects? How and why do we subvert objects in order for them to achieve more complex functionality? What does this reveal about the human condition and the systems that organize society? His recent work has been exhibited in London, Tokyo, Stockholm, Berlin, Paris and Jerusalem and has been published internationally. He currently teaches at the Royal College of Art.