Rethinking nature, life and biology under the impact of artworks that engage with scientific knowledge to bring together nature and new technologies. An exciting confrontation with works of bioart and biotechnological art and the new flora of a next nature as discussed in Gianna Maria Gatti's 'The Technological Herbarium'.

The lecture is organized by the The Arts & Genomics Centre in collaboration with Scheltema voor actuele kunst, as part of the Leiden University Honours programme.

the_technological_herbarium.pdf
Scheltema press release (in Dutch)

About the book:
Gianna Maria Gatti's book "The Technological Herbarium" (subtitled: "Vegetable Nature and New Technologies in Art Between the Second and Third Millennia") is a study of 'interdisciplinary' works of art that exemplify the increasing importance of science and technology in artistic creation. Her analysis, however, goes beyond that of a journalistic or curatorial survey of artworks. Her work embodies the invention of a strong philosophical concept that enables the glimpsing - in the coming together of nature and new technologies in the domain of art - of a new real.
Read more about the book...

About the speaker:
Alan N. Shapiro is a trans-disciplinary thinker and futurist who studied science-technology at MIT and philosophy-history-literature at Cornell University. He is the author of Star Trek: Technologies of Disappearance (Berlin: AVINUS Verlag, 2004), widely recognized as a seminal work in science fiction studies and the conception of futuristic technoscience. He is the editor and translator of "The Technological Herbarium" by Gianna Maria Gatti (Berlin: AVINUS Verlag, 2010), a major study of art and technology. He is a practicing software developer. Alan has worked as a consultant to many large companies in several European countries. He is the co-inventor, with Alexis Clancy, of the "New Computer Science," which promises to be something like a new Manhattan Project. His dream is to found a pragmatic-utopian high-tech company called Shapiro Technologies, which will be based on the principles of friendship and "not working." He is recognized as one of the leading experts on the philosophy and cultural theory of Jean Baudrillard.