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Ethics 2
2) A second type of ethics concern was raised by a number of arists involved in the exhibition “Transbiotics” and by scholars working at the intersection between art and research.
A problem that has been widely discussed (see the recent book Tactical Biopolitics 2008, MIT press ) but that won’t be solved any time soon is: how does the artist/researcher deal with the problem of exhibiting a work that engages with controversial and easily instrumentalized biomaterial and biotechnologies? How can the artist stir a critical discussion when her work is often seen as an embellishment, as an annoyance for the scientist she is working with (Kathy High), or her work is shut down by popular (and often wrong )assumptions (Tagny Duff)? In addition, a lot of artists/researchers do most of their work in labs. However, most of this process will never be experienced by the audience, who will have to rely on documentation and pictures that simplifies the whole research and gravely limits it to mere artifact, or gallery object. while attempts to transfer entire labs into the gallery have been successfully accomplished, they are still rare, as the artist is left to fight against health and safety and ethical committees.
Ethics 1
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1) ethics in pondering the figure of the hybrid, the entanglement of zoe and bio, the intersection of bio and info.
In the first case, Zylinska suggests that we are at an impasse after Haraway’s definition of the cyborg. In fact, in this implosion of organic and inorganic, human and machine, where do we locate the animal? And how do we define our coexistence and interspersing with the animal without maintaining an anthropocentric view?
Monika Bakke for instance asks us to think of the bioengineering of plants: recently, there has been a move to acknowledge that plants are sensitive beings responding to the external environment in a more intricate way than we think. However, what does it do to us in terms of our anthropocentric thinking? Bakke proposes two case studies that expose the long-history of human plant domestications (as human domination over plants) and their patenting (a form of colonization)
In the art intervention Common Flowers the "moon dust carnations" bioengineered by the company suntory and relocated in SouthAmerica were illegally reproduced by the artists using very simple recipes and then released into the territory in a case of reverse biopiracy.
Bakke reminds us of a controversial swiss ruling that revendicated the dignity of plants
See two articles that document the episode
http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080423/full/452919a.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122359549477921201.html
in both cases, the question is not : do plant have dignity of their own? But it is rather : is there a way in which we can speak of plants without always approaching them as other than our own and in a fashion that avoids instrumentalization, ownership, reproductive ability, patenting etc?
the same issue was also raised by Oron Catts about the alleged semi-status of the semi-living entities. Would our behavior in the lab change if we didn’t manipulate objects that we don’t see, cells that we approach only by wearing protections and through the distance of the microscope lenses in a sterilized, sanitized environment ?
finally, another ethics concern was raised during the Symbiotica workshop when we realized how much waste it is involved in working in the lab. how many pipettes, how many gloves, how much material is disposed to assure that every process is properly sterilized and doesn't incur in any type of contamination?
tissue culture of informatics and biology
If aesthetic conventions and assumptions contribute to the shaping of the object, then also the technologies that allow us to "see" or "visualize" the object contribute to it. In my presentation on visualization of viruses, which in a timely manner followed Steinman's, I observed how when it is visualized, a microscopic object like the virus becomes a multilayered entity and a complex hybrid. in fact, being substantially invisible, the virus can be only seen through layering and transforming tools such as electron microscope, data software and 3D software. Thus, the virus effectively manifests as an “implosion of informatics and biologics," one that is “not born, but it is made,” as Haraway so elegantly put it. once again, the resulting "object" is a texture of diverse forms and processes: it doesn't exist as a single well-constrained entity, but as a dynamic texture.
following the unexplainable ban of her installation " living viral tattoos" at ISEA 2009 and the electron microscope and cryogenically preserved sculptures 'cryomemories" , Tagny Duff appears to focus on the issue of viruses and microbial substances as entities that always exceed or escape the ontology of cell biology (going beyond the level of cellular metabolism), visualization (as hybrid of information and biology ), in other words, as vectors of more than biology, and as entities than not only encapsulate, but also produce meaning.
Duff's latest installation , the "Cryobook Archive" ( documented step by step in the most precise details )captures (and exceeds, like her viruses) the concepts she developed in the previous installations
blurring the boundaries: ideas and implications
During a panel dedicated to "sensations in worlds…" Thomas Lamarre paraphrased Gabriel Tarde regarding the issue of social textures and, in particular, the divide between things in the world and things of the mind: in opposition to Durkheim, who posited a preexisting divide between individual and society that must be mediated through exchange,Tarde advocated "modes of individuation in which individual and society are already entangled." of course, this interpretation poses a challenge, as in order to examine the individual or society, we can no longer rely on the pre-established separations by categories, as individual and society, nature and nurture, biology and informatics, animal and human, human and machine intersect and overlap.
The above issue emerged during the conference and the exhibition over and over again since the very first presentation: Dolores Steinman, focusing on the connection and relationships between medical imagery (in particular models of blood flow), the scientific community made of several individuals with diverse range of interests, perspectives and education (medical doctors, clinicians, technicians, lab scientists and anatomists), and the public at large (the patient, or the lay person trying to make sense of medical models and imagery.
Steinman asked: what is an accurate representation of an organ? what is the perception of the lay public? is it possible to portray an accurate "picture" that bypasses all ambiguities and coveys the same message to the family doctor, the anatomist, the lab scientist and the patient?
her skepticism is historically grounded, as she observed that this particular issue of representation has always been a challenge since the early days when representation became crucial to science. Changes in the human ability to process the information acquired, in the skills required for representing this information as well as the technology at hand, have often been a challenge. While the models produced (today rigorously computer generated) may all reflect different understandings and scientific goals, they are, to put it with Steinman's words, "fold in the large canvas of body representations and we feel responsible for the layered meanings that get woven into the visual popular culture"
Figure: Evolution of virtual representations of blood flow in a simulated brain aneurysm, starting from
corresponding patient angiogram.
the Fold
As Daina Tainina claimed early on during her intervention, it is not sufficient to write about the intersection of meanings, words and material. Rather, it is necessary to make these intersections happen, by concretely practicing or experiencing such intersections, in the same way Leibniz did with calculus, an attempt at creating a universal method to determine symbolic calculation.
Tainina spoke of her attempts to represent non-euclidian geometry, in particular the hyperbolic plane, by evoking the Deleuzian notion of the Fold, which manifests as simultaneously form and process that intersect and correspond and cannot be separated. Rather than working with mere models, she tried to reproduce hyperbolic planes as crocheted objects. This process is not unlike exploring the (physical) folds of Sta Teresa's dress in Bernini's Ecstasy.
This practice also reveals unexpected intricacies and complications that lie underneath the rather smooth and perfected theoretical assumptions that make computer models and simulations. when we observe computer model, we cannot avoid noticing their smoothness, their precisions of contour. this is definitely not the case when we try to reproduce such model with our own hands, or in the case of Tainina, by crochet-ing it.
Her experience reflects Anna Munster's conception of information aesthetics where...
“The digital conceived as part of a baroque flow, now unfolds genealogically out of the baroque articulation of the differential relations between embodiment and technics.. . in this baroque unfolding, the binary pairs that have populated the understanding of digital culture and new media technologies, can be seen to impinge upon each other rather than be mutually exclusive (from A. Munster, Materializing new media, 2006).”
textures, textile, tecnologies and the skin
Remaining in the field of textiles, two further works provided diverse approaches that departed from the simple notion of tissue = skin, or skin =textile, to demonstrate not only the connections, but also the ethical issues that underpin the use of such logical analogy. For instance the work of Seçil Uğur , “Social Skin: Between Textile and Technology” explored the clothes as second skin, and developed this concept to the limit with a project that uses technologies to shape garments after the body's emotional inputs when immersed in a social context. the issues here are profoundly ethical, as clothes are often used to hide emotions, rather than to externalize them.
in a different way, Mili John Tharakan, from the Singaporean CUTE lab explores he economies that revolve around the world of textiles as tradition and search new ways to encourage the new generations to get involved with a textile community that has become stagnant. In India, craft comes form sanscrit शिल्प, zilpa, standing for "any art that uses color."
craft is rooted into the culture of India and was hereditary, regulated by the chaste system . it was not about the individual creativity, but about translating concepts into something material. While craft people never had a formal education, things have now changed. however, traditions have been strangely maintained.
generations upon generations craftsmen have been producing the same things. However, now they have realized that there are more options for crafts. following a wave of migration of younger generations into the big metropolis in search of more rewarding High tech jobs, and policies that regulate the production of textiles in a rather conservative fashion, craftsmanship seems to disappear and remain into the domain of tradition or, worse, mere tourism. Tharakan organizes workshops that introduce smart materials and new technologies into local textile communities. this, she believes, would inject some much needed innovation, and would turn this activity into a much more rewarding and appealing profession, especially for those younger generations interested in technological artifacts.
tissue as fabric
Despite the broad and multilayered notion of tissue and tissue culture, a number of participants in the conference and the exhibition interpreted the term as a synonym of skin, as a text, as fabric. However, all the explorations revealed a much deeper and complicated understanding of the above notion.
Zane Berzina's work on skin and textiles is already widely known (see her projects here). For Transbiotics she decided to go beyond the surface of the skin, and its relationship with texture and textiles, by exposing and bringing to visibility hidden and often inadvertently produced electric charges produced by people interacting with materials.
the installation, E-Static Shadows, part of Transbiotics and produced in collaboration with Jackson Tan, revealed exactly that: a monumental cloth structure containing LED, miniature transistors and woven electronic circuits were stimulated by electromagnetic fields produced through the interaction of individuals.
Tissue Culture
As Joanna Zylinska noted during her introduction to the "tissue culture" stream, " tissue economy is also a very important voice in the economy of tissue." Unavoidably, the resulting tissue exchange(s) are very material and multitextual, raising a number of ethical, ontological and epistemological questions. in her project "If it reads it bleeds" about blogging and social network as "tissue" she asks: "To what extent is the pressure to be connected experienced by many bloggers and social networkers more than just a neoliberalist imperative…? Can blogging and social networking be positioned as a form of life, a vital practice of becoming with, and which pulsation and distributed bodies, flickering particles of electricity, and under-ocean cables constitute a different form of tissue culture?"
a collage composed of juxtaposed screenshots of selected blogs, "If it reads, it bleeds" lays bare the materiality that constitutes a blog or social network site. focused on the content, we tend too often to ignore such materiality.
Transbiotics- exhibition
as anticipated, conference and exhibitions were nicely coordinated. discussions and artistic interventions appered to responded to each other creating a strong thematic continuum. The exhibition and the performances were widely documented through videos and blogs. you can see Garret Lynch's blog here with a description, a brief commentary and some useful links .
here is a collection of pictures taken during the opening of the exhibition
and here are a few videos taken during the performances
mucilaneous omniverse by Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand
Materia Obscura by Jurgen Reble and Thomas Koener
SLSA Textures-Riga and Transbiotics
I am back from a week of intense work and discussion in Riga, where I was given the chance to "double-dip" in two joint events: "Textures," the sixth European meeting of the society for literature, science and the arts, as well as Art + Communication, the 12th International Festival of New Media Culture. The latter featured a series of exhibitions and performances organized by RIXC (the Center for New Media Culture) and taking place at Kim? at Spikeri (beautiful neighborhood just off the railway station and the massive city market), as well as the RIXC space itself ( performances ). the series of events culminated in the major exhibition "Transbiotics. Temporal Stability Points," which focused on the "emerging biotechnologies as means for artistic expression" and challenged the ever-changing notion of "materiality" in the arts. A series of other events enriched the already busy schedule of events: an installation at the of Latvian National library by Brigita Ozolins and the exhibition "Patterns of Relationships by Latvian artist Gundega Strautmane. Finally, Symbiotica and the department of biology at the university of Latvia offered a one day Tissue culture engineering workshop. Garrett Lynch documented the whole workshop in his blog, so I won't upload my pictures as they might be a bit redundant.
The conference program was packed with concurrent lectures and panels classified under a number of main streams, "networks of sustainability" "tissue Culture" Biopalimpsests" „Art as Research”" architextures". While the streams overlapped (biopalimpsests was sometimes hardly distinguishable from "tissue culture" , and thus it was possible to catch a general glimpse of the themes discussed during the conference,my experience of the conference is rather partial, as I was jumping back and forth between biopalimpsests and tissue culture sections, with seldom attendance of the "arts and research" stream. Following are a few of the themes that seemed to recur across sessions, which in turn greatly resonated with the entirety of the festival and the topics explored by the exhibition.
Adam Zaretsky drops a bomb
If Emma Master appeared almost resigned and at peace with the possible loss of diversity, bio-performance-comedian(etc&hellip artist Adam Zaretsky is committed to recuperate some of the lost diversity
…in quite creative ways….
using the motto "reuse, rewild and recycle", Zaretsky suggests that in order to preserve diversity we have to "become wild" (well, we need to become a lot of things, according to the long list he provided, see below) and not be afraid to use all of the arts that use life to achieve that goal. porn, improbable unions men/machines, and self-extinction for the sake of animals are two more than legitimate options.
it is always very entertaining watching his presentations. it is also thought provoking, if you listen carefully and take some minutes to think about what he says: his ideas might be at times a bit controversial, but they incorporate some serious political thinking that question given approaches to life, the predominance of human species over animals and nature and challenge our too comfortable way of life in favor of a more balanced existence.
for subtle technologies, Zaretsky organized a "seed bombing" workshop. performed before in Amsterdam, this workshop asks participants to literally "get their hands--and feet--dirty" and mix, mold and disseminate seed bombs and sculptures made of clay, manure, soil and various seeds (caraway, fennel, mixed flowers, wheat grass and poppy seeds). these "bombs" are then thrown at buildings and dropped in various places around the city, so that one day flowers and herbs will grow, making our surrounding environment made of concrete and glass a bit more green.
here is a video of the workshop in Amsterdam
http://vimeo.com/8968774 </embed>" />http://vimeo.com/8968774 </embed>" width="100" height="100">
and here are some pictures of the workshop .
Mixing the dough..
getting your hands dirtythe poet gets a new hairdo
...and the building gets decorated
sustainability and diversity
When we think about sustainability, we are also immediately asked to reflect on diversity, or the gradual loss of it. with the millions of species of organisms existing on earth (if we include both the macro and the micro worlds) we could be guaranteed an impressive diversity. however, how is this diversity going to be maintained when genetic manipulation allows us to tie organisms to particular functions, or to perform particular tasks for our consumption or our benefits?
a controversial topic, genetic manipulation, as Emma Master puts it, is the product of an incredible amount of innovation in chemical engineering that someone has defined as the "golden age of biology". In fact, the technology available today allows us to capture the composition of both entities and community of entities. however, such technological capacity might have consequences that unfortunately we won't see until much later.
art technology environment: geography and the voice of the people
in order to record or to examine issues related with sustainability, artists and activists have often resorted to the use of locative media. armed with recorders, camera and often requesting the help and involvement of the community, these practitioners often accomplish more than they had expected. for instance, while the involvement of the community is expected, the outcomes, and the degree of such involvement often depend on many factors. often, the projects become fascinating explorations of a territory as well as precious instruments of research or material that can be used to the community's benefit.
according to Nancy Nisbet, who joined Subtle technologies remotely from Banff, where she is leading a multi-project on locative media, artists tend to turn to the city as the target of their inquiries. however, as the project conducted by Juan Freire and Karla Brunet demonstrate, working with small communities can be often very rewarding too. in their case, the intervention of teen agers as major actors in the collection of data facilitated the relations with a community very keen to speak with the younger generations.
combining artistic mapping and recording produced by the community, Juan Freire and Karla Brunet set to create digital narratives with the participation of, and produced by the local knowledge of the city of Garapua' Cairu', Brazil. the crew composed by a group of media savvy teen agers moved to the small centre and conducted workshops, interviews and collected material with the help of the local community. in turn, the community was included in the project and was encouraged to intervene in the management of its own ecosystem, producing new and unpublished information about the territory as well as about its natural resources. Free to work with the medium of their choice and to explore their own special topic, the young protagonists were nonetheless able to produce a comprehensive (visual, oral) map of the territory that included the whole ecosystem of the region (fisheries and the economic activities, infrastructures, communication and access to water)
as the website that documents their project is in Spanish and Portuguese, here is a slideshow they apploaded for the symposium
http://www.slideshare.net/ecoarte/digitalnarrativesecomedia
Mainly working with sound recordings, Fereshteh Toosi's audio documentary "Up the Creek" has mapped and evoked memories about the Onondaga Creek in Syracuse since 2008. In the past decades, the life of the creek has radically changed. people might not know that the creek might be there. collecting historical memories as well as recollections of communities struggles regarding the construction of a controversial waste water system in a poor neighborhood of Syracuse, Toosi's project draw attention not only to the existence and the need to preserve the creek, but also to the human activity that has shaped the area.
the end ofdichotomies?
But how to overcome these dichotomies without creating new ones? relying on the principle of responsibility, evidence based design etc.., as he suggests, is desirable, but rather dangerous, as it gives room to instrumentalization. In fact, this type of thinking has been championed by neoliberalism for several decades and it has only produced--paradoxically--more divisions and dichotomies. the dichotomy people vs state has been substituted by another, possibly more oppressive, series of private, for-profit entities. Dumping the responsibility on the shoulders of individuals might eliminate the need for a sovereign entity that regulates them, but other forms of power will come to impart their control. in addition, our societies are regulated on an outcome basis, that is, any project or enterprise is always tied to a specific and carefully predicted outcome. even the most distributed and wildly growing entity, the Internet, has not been able to escape control, as protocols, the discourse on net neutrality and other projects aiming at shaping and ruling the network of networks demonstrate.
it would be really fantastic if we could eliminate sidewalks for pedestrians and bike lanes, as Schroeder suggests to provide evidence to the feasibility of this project, to see that car drivers become more aware of the road and of the people surrounding them. I have no doubt that this model has been successfully experimented in the Netherlands. however, the Netherlands is a country where an extensive education concerning road traffic is already built-in. maybe if there is anything missing in Schroeder's otherwise uplifting speech is the role of "education." only then, can we (maybe? but when? how?) hope to enjoy the utopian world he is so enthusiastically describing.
The City in a glass of water
when I think about water, a number of images come to mind: water is everywhere and yet we fight for it. water is associated with the image of purity, cleansing, renewal, yet it is not always possible to find it in such pristine form.
This suggests that water is not only nature, but also culture.
Zainub Varjee's talk spoke to this double significance of "water" in the context of urbanity. Recently, there has been an enormous migration of populations towards the cities. Thus, reflecting on the sanitization and the cultural understanding of water in our cities may not only help us shed a new light on the dichotomy between nature and society but it also help us reveal how the understanding of water in the cities has transformed its role and meaning beyond the cities themselves.
Urban water shapes the socioeconomic systems of our cities: historically, the building of functional water systems brought a sharp distinction between "good water" (unsanitized) and "bad water"(sanitized, purified and drinkable water). furthermore, it intensified class separations: new technologies such as "flushing" could be afforded by the more affluent population, while exclusion and lack of access to water characterized the poor.
However, as Varjee reminds us by mentioning the infamous "Great Stink" ), building a sanitization system in the city has become also a way to rescue the city from the casualties of "nature" (the "great stink" affected the whole city of London, also the more affluent).
unfortunately, if improving the sanitization system is of great benefit to the city, it also causes great increase in consumption , an increase in the amount of contaminated sewage water and a further dichotomy between what is perceived as good and what is considered bad water. it is interesting to see how in our contemporary cities, despite various discussions on sustainability, we keep flushing our toilets and washing ourhandswhile the tap is running wild, while we send pee poo bags to third world countries and we have a hard time thinking of methods of sanitation that might go against our good vs bad water beliefs (see for instance how countries like Singapore seem to have gone beyond this dichotomy)
Varjee then asks:
is sustainability an ideology? a method? sure our politics of sanitization are entrenched in our socio-cultural customs.
Indigenous knowledge and sustainability
Subtle technologies kicked off with a look at the above issue with a terse talk by Deborah Mc Gregor (see one of her articles ).
An associate professor at the university of toronto, and, most importantly, an anishinaabe woman , McGregor explores the way in which traditional knowledge and indigenous knowledge about environmental science can be re-introduced in our governments agendas to eventually produce epistemic changes towards sustainability.
Issues of contested territory, sovereignty and a painful history of colonization have made the relation between first nations and the government quite challenging: indigenous people are often considered as a problem to be solved. nonetheless, indigenous people can be considered as part of the solution and can be important actors in the discourse on legislation regarding sustainability.
In addition, issues related to "defining knowledge and sustainability" as a series of specific practices and actions instead of a general philosophical behavior that yet profoundly relies on practice are obstacles in the participation in the discourse.
Drawing from the origin story of creation, McGregor illustrated how the whole apparatus of knowledge of the anishinaabe is based on a particularly powerful notion of sustainability. the story greatly resembles the biblical story of Noah in the Judeo-Christian tradition. But the outcomes, and the protagonists (animals and humans) are different: the creator has a vision. but people stop listening to the conduct taught. there is a great flood, a cleanse. sky woman is floating on a log and she is going to have a baby. the water creatures, (the loon, the beaver) try to find land for sky woman but they fail. Only the muskrat succeeds and creates Turtle Island for the sky island. the Muskrat has made the ultimate sacrifice to save Sky Woman .
According to McGregor, this simple story encapsulates, among other, the notion of sustainability as "making provisions for the next generations." In fact, according to the elders, sustainability is not about "what we take" , but "what we can give back to creation"
In this simple notion that sounds so much like a small detail lies, instead, a great gap between what we usually mean by "sustainability" and what indigenous knowledge implies. Certain that this type of discourse will resurface during the entire symposium, I am glad that it constituted the topic of the first talk. In fact, this notion of sustainability not only makes us reflect on our notions of knowledge, but also begs the question: is it sufficient to mend our past mistakes and failure to live according to sustainable principles, or do we actually need a deeper change that affects our systemic and epistemic knowledge?
If you are interested in reading more about this issue, here is a link to Camille Turner's blog that provides a few more reflections and a more thorough context of the issues at stake
Friday June 4, 2010: Challenging sustainability: indigenous challenges and assumed notions.
When we in the Western world think about sustainability, we usually deal with consumption and waste. we tend to focus on ways to reduce such consumption and yet, maintain our own privileges and comfortable lives (which prompt even more consumption …and waste). We end up in a never ending circle that doesn't see any end. even when we try to find an answer in technologies (new types of fuels that will allow us to move freely without having to renounce our cars, new technologies that reduce e-waste and the impact they have on those countries to which we like to ship out electronic waste), we usually end up creating more trouble (corn and soy anyone?)
Seldom are we reflecting on reflecting on ancestors' traditions, indigenous knowledge, or just revisiting our notion of comfort, cleanliness and our conceptions of "use." The first two presenters were a case in point. while Deborah McGregor illustrated the important message of change that indigenous knowledge deliver and underlined the need for its adoption within Canadian sustainability legislation, Zainub Varjee focused her attention on the role and the significance of primary resources (wtare, gas, etc..) in our urban environments. We have become so much accustomed to them, that we have come to take such precious resources for granted. Focusing on "water" in the urban environment, Varjee looks at how its use in the very urban environment has led to a number of conceptual assumptions that inevitably cause a number of issues spanning way beyond the city limits.
Subtle Technologies, June 4-6, 2010
Subtle Technologies Festival this year will be antirely dedicated to the theme of "Sustainability".
While the topics it proposed have always been timely and very relevant, this edition seems to have tackled probably one of the few possible discourses we could think of in these days.
Just a few days after the BP oil spill, one of the worst environmental disasters perpetrated by human kind against Nature, and in a country like Canada, home of the infamous "Tar Sands," and witness to another disastrous oil spill (the Exxon Valdes spill, in 1989 ) which destroyed fish, birds and other precious resources in the Northern portion of the Pacific coast, sustainability is a topic that we can't dismiss anymore.
As June 4, the first day of the symposium, approaches, I am brought to reflect on this timely issue which spans all aspects of life. I can't think of Sustainability without pairing it with "responsibility" I think about the ever present Frankenstein Syndrome, a theme that has afflicted and, at the same time, fascinated generations of writers (science fiction and non), scientists, artists, thinkers, etc… : in the prescient novel "Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley, dr. Frankenstein devises a way to "recreate life" . faced with the product of his "experiment", a creature he defines "hideous," he abandons his creation and pretends that the it will just "disappear". the unfortunate act causes his life and that of his closest relatives to be forever distroyed, as the creature comes back "with a vengeance."
Shelley's brilliant message was clear: we can no longer create "monsters" and then abandon them without taking responsibilities for our actions. we cannot think of progress, scientific and technological advancement without thinking about the consequences (positive or negative) they will bring us in a near or not so near future.
how could art, science and technologies strike alliances to raise awareness about sustainability; to promote sustainability; to think of progress in a more sustainable way?
while I keep reflecting on these questions, my expectations of this year's festival keep building up. Stay tuned, as I frantically try to listen, participate, and populate this blog in "quasi-real time".
Here are some of the features of this year:
COMMUNITY DAY - Renewable energy for kids, talks, garden tours (June 5)
SUSTAINABILITY EXHIBITION - contingent ecologies :: investigations at the edge (May 22 - June 12)
JUNK TO JUICE WORKSHOP - Create your own mini wind-powered generator from trash (May 29-30) SUBTLE TECHNOLOGIES IN WATER COLOURS - Art and science cruise on Lake Ontario (June 5)
It is worth visiting Camille Turner's blog. As the curator of the exhibition "Contingent Ecologies", she has collected lots of material on the exhibition and has provided a series of comments and ideas about the festival
Facebook events:
Junk to Juice workshop (May 29-30)
Art & Science Cruise (June 5)
Free Community Day events (June 6)
Contingent ecologies exhibition (May 22 - June 12)
