College Art Association Annual Conference: February 9-12, 2011

Bio-Art, Boundaries, and Borders

Panel Chair: Jennifer Johung

In recent years, the intersections between biotechnology and art have wielded a range of experiments that seek to reproduce or reconfigure living organisms, to examine mutual interactions between them and their environment, and to catalyze living systems on both micro and macro levels.  This panel seeks to explore the re-imagination of boundaries proposed by bio-artists and architects, and the ethical and political issues that are raised once the borders within and between bodies begin to be challenged.  In addition to exploring the body’s own permeability on a cellular level, this panel will also address the reshaping of spatial borders by those practicing across or theorizing the intersections between biotechnology, art and architecture.  Papers and presentations will explore various experimentations with porous membranes and tissue culture, as well as biologically-engineered living spaces and the use of biological components in structural design and building.

• Linda Weintraub (Art Now Publications): “Bio-Art Left out of the Bio-Art Debate”

• Meredith Hoy (UMass Boston): “Eco-Locative: Media Art and Sustainability Practices”

• Kelly Rafferty (Arizona State University): “Regeneration: Tissue Engineering, Maintenance, and Gendered Infrastructures”

• Nathaniel Stern and Yevgenia Kaganovich (UW-Milwaukee): artist presentation on Falling Still

more information: conference.collegeart.org/2011/

An International Conference on Urban and ExtraUrban Studies

Los Angeles, December 4-5, 2010

“Take Two: Learning from Second Life”

Paper presentation by Jennifer Johung

Second Life users have primarily focused on the specific articulation of their avatars that are capable of teleporting instantly from place to place. Although the careful attention to bodily construction has rendered the design of spatial sites almost negligible, this trend seems to be changing, as architects and urban planners begin to re-imagine the infinite possibilities of constructing within virtual space. The paper focuses on two sets of projects within Second Life, both undertaken in 2007 and both that insist upon temporary, unstable, and changing forms of spatial situation and planning. First, I consider the designs of Stockholm-based LOL Architects, the world’s largest virtual architecture office, which include Magnus Nilson’s wearable Yurt++, Alpar Asztalos’ parasitical structures that momentarily latch onto existing virtual properties, and Erik Andren’s instant rooms that appear when avatars enter and disappear when they leave. In addition, I examine the four winning designs from the First Annual Architecture and Design Competition in Second Life, which are a cloud that can be inhabited, a virtual museum, an interactive sound-scape, and a palace of discarded objects. I ask how these experiments and interactions undertaken virtually can be imported back into real-world scenarios and physically material spaces. Yet even if Second Life’s spatial structures and programs cannot be re-interpreted materially for first life scenarios and experiences, I propose that Second Life’s symbolic function reveals a socially embedded practice, not only focused on how spaces are constructed and used, but also on how bodies are to be perceived and legitimatized, which can in turn challenge us to identify social-spatial continuities and discontinuities occurring in our first lives.

more information: spacesandflows.com