Benjamin Bacon & Vivian Xu
Thursday March 25,
10 AM EDT, 2 PM GST, 10 PM CST
This public event is hosted and supported by the NewONE (New College, University of Toronto) and is part of the Fields Institute ArtSci Salon series and Leonardo LASER
Description
This ArtSci Salon /LASER morning event is inspired by the NewONE, Learning without borders, a program at the University of Toronto dedicated to interdisciplinary pedagogies and ecological learning experiences. Art technology and science are waved together and inform each other. The arts here are not simply used to illustrate or to narrate, but to transmit, and make sense of complexity without falling into given disciplinary and instrumental containers. The artistic medium becomes simultaneously a catalyst for interrogating nature and a new research tools able to display and communicate its complexity.
With this event, we welcome interdisciplinary artists Benjamin Bacon and Vivian Xu.
Their transdisciplinary design lab, the Dogma Lab (http://dogma.org/), not only combines a diverse range of mediums (including software, hardware, networked systems, online platforms, raw data, biomaterials and living organisms), but also considers “the entanglement of technological systems with other realities, including
surveillance, sensory, bodily, environmental, and living systems. They are interested in complex hybrid networks that bridge the digital with the physical and biological realms, speculating on possible synthesized futures”.
Their research outcomes both individually and collectively have taken the form of interfaces, wearables, toolkits, machines, musical instruments, compositions and performances, public installations, architectural spectacles and educational programs.
Situated in China, they have an invested interest in understanding and participating in local design, technology and societal discourse, as well how China as a local actor affects the dynamic of the larger global system.
Please, register here to join us on Zoom
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Bios
Benjamin Bacon is an inter-disciplinary artist, designer and musician that works at the intersection of computational design, networked systems, data, sound, installation and mechanical sculpture. He is currently Associate Professor of Media and Art and Director of Signature Work at Duke Kunshan University. He is also a lifetime fellow at V2_ Lab for the Unstable Media in Rotterdam, Netherlands.
He has exhibited or performed his work in the USA, Europe, Iran, and China such as the National Art Museum of China (Beijing), Gallery Ho (NYC), Wave Gotik Treffen (Germany), Chelsea Museum (NYC), Millennium Museum (Beijing), Plug-In Gallery (Switzerland), Beijing Design Week, Shenzhen Bay Science Technology and Arts Festival, the Shanghai Symphony Hall. Most recently his mechanical life and AI sculpture PROBE – AVERSO SPECILLO DI DUCENDUM was collected by the UNArt Center in Shanghai, China.
https://www.benjaminbacon.studio/
Vivian Xu is a Beijing-born media artist, designer, researcher and educator. Her work explores the boundaries between bio and electronic media in creating new forms of machine logic, speculative life and sensory systems often taking the form of objects, machines, installations and wearable. Her work has been presented at various institutions in China, the US, Europe and Australia.
She is an Assistant Professor of Media and Arts at Duke Kunshan University. She has lectured, held research positions at various institutions including Parsons New School for Design, New York University Shanghai, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen).
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