Semipermeable series - Seminar with Symbiotica -2

Semipermeable Seminar Series

SymbioticA and the Institute of Advanced Studies at UWA are please to present the Semipermeable public lecture series.

Just like a Semipermeable membrane, SymbioticA- The Centre of Excellence in Biological Arts, offers exchange between art and the life sciences. Based at the school of Anatomy, Physiology & Human Biology, The University of Western Australia (UWA), SymbioticA is developing a new research project entitled Semipermeable, which will be facilitated through a multiplicity of artistic and scientific approaches. This “quarantine” will allow for controlled hybridisation and will act as a membrane for cultural production.

21 March 2012
6-7pm
Webb Lecture Theatre (G21)
Ground floor Geography Building UWA
Alien Agencies: Research-Creation and Ethnographies of the Nonhuman Dr. Christopher Salter, Director, Hexagram Concordia Centre for Research-Creation in Media Art and Technology, Associate Professor, Design + Computation Arts, Concordia University, Montréal, Canada and Artist/Researcher in Residence, SymbioticA, UWA (2012)

What does it mean that nonhuman matter “performs”? How can contemporary techno-scientifically influenced and produced artworks be understood under the term “new materialism” – the increased interest in the acts of nonhuman objects, processes and matter itself promoted by such scholars as Donna Haraway, Bruno Latour, Karen Barad and Andrew Pickering? What can fields and practices fields such as Science, Technology and Society (STS), anthropology and sociology offer to current technologically moulded practices in the area of “research-creation,” the Canadian term for creative practices that are informed by the methods and frameworks of the humanities and social sciences?
Dr. Christopher Salter internationally recognized artist, author of the 2010 MIT Press book Entangled: Technology and the Transformation of Performance and current SymbioticA artist/researcher in residence aims to take on these questions in his IAS talk and in his current research project entitled “Alien Agency: Ethnographies of the Nonhuman.” Salter will discuss not only new ways of thinking about performativity that bypasses anthropocentric world views while also exploring contemporary art works that challenge long standing notions of subject/object, human and nonhuman and the nature of aesthetic experience itself.

Biography
Dr. Christopher L. Salter is an artist, Director of the Hexagram Concordia Centre for Research-Creation in Media Art and Technology and Associate Professor for Design + Computation Arts, both housed at Concordia University in Montreal. Salter studied economics and philosophy at Emory University and received his Ph.D. in the areas of theater and computer-generated sound at Stanford University working with Bertolt Brecht assistant Carl Weber and inventors of the digital synthesis such as John Chowning and Max Matthews. He was also visiting professor at Brown University, the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and the Kunsthochschule für Medien, Cologne, Germany.
Salter's artistic and research interests revolve around the development and production of real time, computationally-augmented responsive performance environments fusing space, sound, image, architectural material and newly developed sensor-based technologies. After collaborating with Peter Sellars and William Forsythe/Ballett Frankfurt, he co-founded the art and research organization Sponge, whose works have stretched between the arenas of performance, installation, scientific research and publications and have toured internationally to festivals, exhibitions and venues.

His work with Sponge as well as solo projects has been seen at major international exhibitions and presentation venues in over a dozen countries including the Venice Architecture Biennale (Venice), Ars Electronica (Linz), Villette Numerique (Paris), the National Art Museum of China, CTM-Berlin, Todays Art, EMPAC (USA), Metamorf (Trondheim, Norway), Transmediale (Berlin), EXIT Festival (Maison des Arts, Creteil-Paris), Place des Arts (Montréal), Venice Biennale, Elektra (Montréal), Shanghai Dance Festival (Shanghai), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), the Banff Center (Banff), Dance Theater Workshop (New York), V2 (Rotterdam), SIGGRAPH 2001 (New Orleans), Mediaterra (Athens) and the Exploratorium (San Francisco), among others.
Salter’s work have been written about in the New York Times, ID Magazine, Leonardo and Decouvrir and received major grants from SSHRC, FQRSC, Hexagram, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Daniel Langlois Foundation, the Creative Work Fund/San Francisco and the LEF Foundation, among others. He is a regular presenter at national and international conferences, has given invited talks at universities and festivals worldwide and has sat on numerous juries including NIME, ISEA and the Prix Ars Electronica.

In addition to his artistic production, Dr. Salter is the author of numerous publications in the areas of technology and performance, the senses and technology, real time responsive environments, mobile real time media and cultural politics. His first book Entangled: Technology and the Transformation of Performance was published in Spring 2010 from MIT Press and he is currently working on a follow up entitled Alien Agency: Ethnographies of Nonhuman Performance, also for MIT Press.