RUA ALFREDO ALLEN, 208 4200-135 PORTO, PORTUGAL

ENHANCEMENT: MAKING SENSE | Group Exhibition 25 May 2016 – 25 July 2016 curated by Maria Manuela Lopes

This exhibition attempts to bring into conscious acknowledgment some of the unseen processes of the brain/mind/body through which one perceives the world and ourselves, joining artists who in very different ways accentuate how art operates in an era of biotechnology, in a world that is organically and imperceptibly both human and non-human. One of the major factors pushing the development of enhancement devices and technologies may be the meeting of distinct research areas such as biotechnologies, nanotechnology, cognitive science and information technology. As this technology advances, humans are intersecting the technological environment in diverse and complex ways, presenting new horizons for life span, new regulatory challenges, social and ethical issues, fears, but also expectations, hopes and a wider scope of imaginary futures.

Enhancement/Making Sense does not attempt to illustrate or solve the complexities that arise from neuroenhancement procedures, the life sciences, or biotechnology, but rather proposes an interweave of discourses, representations and heterogeneous ways of acting upon material across artistic and biotechnological practices and engaging current scientific concepts.

Enhancement/Making Sense is anchored in a cultural domain and concurrently a theoretical framework through which to consider scientific research on health by approaching the mobilization of images and imaginations onto personal scenarios and contestable futures. Presented artists engage in the visual process by which their research and projects extend the concepts of images themselves, presenting multiple meanings, ambiguity and metaphors. The works in the exhibition encourage viewers to be aware of the forces of nature and memory, attention, intuition, consciousness and feelings and to question what it means to transcend the boundaries of healthy, sane, normal or human.

Nature, immortality, brain enhancement/psychoactive plants, brain waves and brain computer interfaces, tissue culture and regenerative medicine, blood wars on power and ethical debates on equity, learning and dementia, imaginary future on earth under new climatic conditions and possibility of living in another planet, self-dissolution over nonhuman boundaries, ‘enhancement by lessment and convergent neurophysiological consciousness in humans and animals are among the subjects that the works of Enhancement/Making Sense approach.

With ongoing research to unravel the mysteries of our minds and bodies, coupled with the numerous emerging technologies, we are facing the rise of the new humans. Enhancement/Making Sense proposes an understanding of the brain as a marvellous, adaptive, learning synaptic entity that extends from experience, and asks visitor to explore how art focused on the brain/body enhancement research and nature can impact the systems of the mind and also enrich self-awareness.

Maria Manuela Lopes (PT)Maria Manuela Lopes is a visual artist and researcher based in Portugal and the UK. Her

current practice is transdisciplinar and based on issues of memory and self-identity

informed by life sciences and medical research and presented in the form of time-based

installations, occasionally including biological materials. She has been working and showing

nationally and internationally and also teaching fine arts in Portugal since 1998. She has

studied fine arts - sculpture at the FBAUP-Porto, Portugal and did an MA at Goldsmiths

College in London. She has a Doctorate from Brighton University + UCA Farnham, UK

(supervised by de Kathleen Rogers, João Lobo Antunes e Judith Williamson), working

with representational strategies of Alzheimer’s disease in a neuroscience laboratory at

Hospital Santa Maria and Molecular Medicine Institute in Lisbon. She is currently involved in

a Post Doc project in University of Aveiro ID+ and University of Oporto IBMC (Institute of

Molecular and Cellular Biology) – supervised by Kathleen Rogers, Alexandre Quintanilha e

Rosa Oliveira -that extends the PhD project into a wider cultural scenario questioning what

it means to be human in a techno-enhanced society.

Maria is also assistant-Director of two residency programs: 1) ‘artists in Labs’ Ectopia -

Lisbon, and 2) Cultivamos Cultura, an ecological oriented residency program in a farm in

Alentejo.

Garden

Library

Entrance

Auditorium Corino de Andrade

Exh

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Gu

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NATUREPaulo Bernardino Bastos

Genomes of humans and some apes are really similar, but humans might be able to take charge of their evolution. What is a brain related issue and cognition? Attempts of answers vary from field to field but many puzzling, fascinating and inspiring questions prevail to this day.

Nature is an installation that assumes that men is part of nature but seams

the only species with the ability to have self awareness and question his

nature. The work promotes dialogue and inquiring by the contemplation

of an artificial animal, plasticine blue primate, which seems to observe us

or that is trying to figure out what the letters NATURE that are on the wall

ahead of him, mean.

The work appeals to an almost invisible polarization research discourse

between nature and culture, having the word nature written as ‘culture’ on

top of a man build construction building. Nature uses metaphors like the

glass dome and the reversed (?) role between observers and observed

or the title of one of the most influential scientific publications (nature) in

which nature is turned into culture and consequently enhanced men.

Installation mix media - 2015

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Paulo Bernardino Bastos (PT)

Paulo Bernardino Bastos has a doctorate (Ph.D.) in ART STUDIES and, at present,

is the director of the Post-Graduate Program (Master) in “Contemporary Artistic

Creation”, in the Department of Communication and Art at the University of Aveiro

(Portugal), where also teaches. Bastos studied sculpture at the Faculty of Fine Art

(Porto), Portugal, and received his MA-Sculpture from Royal College of Art, London.

As an artist Bastos’ explores, as a means of expression, traditional techniques

framed by the disciplines of drawing and sculpture. Attempting to articulate a

field of research between theory and practice he develops his universe of research

looking at images produced by the various technological mediations. He has been

participating in several international events as lecturer and as artist.

TACIT KNOWLEDGE EXPERIMENT #1

TACIT KNOWLEDGE EXPERIMENT #2Erwig Turk

Boundaries between learning and memory, habit and novelty or knowledge and ontology are conducted in an interweaved discourse within this video installation work that calls for our awareness that the brain constantly adjusts to context.

In both single-channel video installations, “tacit knowledge experiment 1”

and “tacit knowledge experiment 2”, the researchers themselves become

integral parts of a test set-up: using familiar objects from their daily work,

they are asked to carry out tasks that are new to them. The conventional

logic of use is thus turned on its head and the relationship between routine

and the unknown in the practice of research becomes the focus here..

Single-channel video installation, 2011

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Herwig Turk (AT)Herwig Turk lives and works in Vienna and Lisbon. His projects probe the

interconnectivity of the fields of art, technology and science. From 2010 to 2013,

he has been artist in residence at the Instituto da Medicina Molecular (IMM),

Lisbon. From 2003 to 2009, Turk worked together with Paulo Pereira, head of the

Department of Ophthalmology at IBILI (Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Life

Sciences) at the University of Coimbra. In recent years, his work has been shown at

venues such as the Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna, the Seoul Museum of Art, the

Neues Museum Weserburg in Bremen, the Media Art Laboratory TESLA, the Galerie

Georg Kargl in Vienna and the Transmediale in Berlin, to name but a view.

IMMORTALITY FOR TWOMarta de Menezes + Luis Graça

The quest for immortality is epic, but how are technologies being used in their intervention in biology for the purpose of determining physical death and for developing ways in which humans might live longer.

Immortality for two explores the concept of life extension beyond death

dealing with concepts of identity and the natural/artificial dichotomy. It is

also the first collaborative work with her partner, Luis Graca, a biomedical

researcher in the field of immunology. In this project Marta will immortalize

Luis’ white blood cells, and vice-versa. This will be achieved using a viral

vector to introduce oncogenes (cancer inducing genes) in the cells –

something that is today a standard experimental procedure. This way

two immortal cell lines containing the complete genomic information of

the two people will be generated. These cells will outlive the bodies from

where they were originally derived and, in principle, it would be possible

to clone a new body from the immortal cells. The project development,

through the action of the reciprocal immortalization of cells from two

people in love will create a poetic tension in the laboratory. This tension

derives from the fact that the laboratory is a place of exactness where love

and emotions (although present) are often neglected.

A significant part of the project will be devoted to create the conditions

for public exhibition of the live immortal cells in the absence of technical

laboratory equipment. For this the resilient nature of the immortal cells

will be an advantage. The cells will be exhibited in tissue culture flasks,

containing medium and an initial injection of CO2. The position of a light on

top of the display stand will be adjusted so that it will lead to a temperature

close to 37C in the flask. A modified inverted microscope will be hidden

within the display stand and will obtain images from the cells growing

inside the flask that will be projected live.

Therefore, the public presentation of the work will comprise two cell

culture flasks, with immortal cells from Marta and Luis, on top of a table-

like stand (see supplemental images and video). The top of the table will

act as the screen for the two live projections that overlap in the middle. The

overlapping digital images of the live cells will create a tension regarding

the isolation of the two immortal cell lines, each one inside its own flask.

Installation: living cells, light, video projection and microscopy.

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Marta de Menezes (PT)Marta de Menezes is a Portuguese artist with a degree in Fine Arts by the University

in Lisbon, a MSt in History of Art and Visual Culture by the University of Oxford, and

a PhD candidate at the University of Leiden. She has been exploring the intersection

between Art and Biology, working in research laboratories demonstrating that new

biological technologies can be used as new art medium.

In 1999 de Menezes created her first biological artwork (Nature?) by modifying

the wing patterns of live butterflies. Since then, she has used diverse biological

techniques including functional MRI of the brain to create portraits where the

mind can be visualised (Functional Portraits, 2002); fluorescent DNA probes to

create micro-sculptures in human cell nuclei (nucleArt, 2002); sculptures made of

proteins (Proteic Portrait, 2002-2007), DNA (Innercloud, 2003; The Family, 2004)

or incorporating live neurons (Tree of Knowledge, 2005) or bacteria (Decon, 2007).

Her work has been presented internationally in exhibitions, articles and lectures. She

is currently the artistic director of Ectopia, an experimental art laboratory in Lisbon,

and Director of Cultivamos Cultura in the South of Portugal.

Luís Graça (PT)Luís Graça has an MD from the University of Lisbon, Portugal; and a PhD in transplant

immunology from the University of Oxford, UK. He developed his post-doctoral

research first in Oxford and later at the Institute for Child Health Research, in Perth,

Australia. He is currently Associate Professor at the Lisbon Medical School, directing

a research group in cellular immunology at Instituto de Medicina Molecular. His

most significant scientific contributions have been related with the development

of strategies to teach the immune system not to reject transplanted organs, also

known as immune tolerance. Currently he is extending his findings to the fields

of allergy and autoimmunity (where the immune system attacks its own body).

Luis Graca is author of 52 research publications, three patents, and co-founder of

Acellera Therapeutics. Besides his scientific research he has been interested in the

intersection between art and science. In this field Luis Graca has collaborated with

several artists, including a long-term relationship with Marta de Menezes and he is

now scientific advisor for Ectopia and Cultivamos Cultura (www.cultivamoscultura.

org) – two Portuguese institutions involved in fostering art-science collaborations.

He has three publications in this field, describing the scientists’ view of art-science

interactions.

LESSMENT (fossil coral)Perdita Phillips

The brain is reorganizing itself and changing its chemistry in little every day. Attention to details and tolerance for difference is an exercise of learning that art may help us with. Living is a constant experience of passing through, being marked and to some extent being scratched by the geography of the present in the expectation of transcending the web of blind necessity through the understanding of self and grasp of others.

If you want to look forward, you should put your thinking cap on.

In these contested times we watch for signs that might show us the

way, but most of the time all we receive are fragments. What was whole

or stable is now hard to find. The artworks in this series examine self-

dissolution through and across nonhuman boundaries. If subjectivity itself

is no longer decisively contained what happens to all the thoughts and

ideas that pass us by? Do they form tangles that dog our progress, or do

they exist as a halo of half dreamed ideas?

6 digital inkjet prints. 118.9 x 84.1 cm. 2016

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Perdita Phillips (AU)Australian Environmental Artist Perdita Phillips works with works with objects,

environments and found things to create worlds where everyday entities and events

are brought out of their invisibility. Her wide-ranging and experimental conceptual

practice traverses and integrates art, science, walking, listening and the nonhuman.

Exhibitions include 2° - Global Warming and its Environmental Impact, Worldwide

site specific works curated by AININ for artCOP21 (Paris 2015), fast|slow|complex

(solo, Spectrum Project Space, Edith Cowan University, 2013), Novel Ecologies (The

Cross Arts Projects, Sydney 2013) and Visceral: The Living Art Experiment (Science

Gallery, Dublin 2011). Phillips’ PhD (2007) investigated the relationship between

scientific and artistic fieldwork. She has worked with SymbioticA (The University of

Western Australia) on two Australia Council funded projects: The Sixth Shore (2009-

2010) and Green, Grey or Dull Silver: art and the behavioural ecology of the Great

Bowerbird (2007-2008). Published works include the collaborative Lethologica

Press books birdlife (2011) and A Simple Rain (2012); and Artistic Practices and

Ecoaesthetics in Post-sustainable Worlds (2015, in An Introduction to sustainability

and aesthetics); Perdita Phillips – Sounding and thinking like an ecosystem (2013,

co-authored with Merle Patchett); Fieldwork with bowerbirds (2012) in Antennae:

The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture; Observing across scales: Broome Bird

Observatory as a site of multiple exchanges (2013, Animal Studies Journal); and

Walk ’til you run out of water (2012, Performance Research).

www.perditaphillips.com

ENCHANTED SPACEPaulo Bernardino Bastos

Sometimes the right thing to do is not something that improves and enhances a private situation. How does science and society conciliate the need to research and explore with safety and laws? What does knowledge mean if it does not transgress the understandable and consensus? With the current awareness that the brain is a multimodal and interdependent system the enchanted space plays with the notion that the expansion of one area or skill may decrease or damage the function of another.

Cages as an allegory of the mind, where conventional values (large mirror)

that are imposed on us by consciousness (multiple clocks), are questioned

(magnifying glasses) - often based on misleading beliefs of knowledge and

resemblance (synaptic teasers) that only become visible when challenged.

This installation (space) seeks to transport the viewer into a seemingly orderly

world (the world of neuroscience, psychology, psychiatry), full of disturbing

fictions (scientific) that are both compelling and frightening. However, the

cages easily earn our empathy (enchantment) and we are compelled to

look at them a little more closely and noted that the wool (colours used

in microscopy and neuroimaging) function as self-awareness of our own

imprisonment (we feel more comfortable in a protected environment). As

such, the parable remains in the confrontation between the fears of what

enhances us (the unknown - here the suspension) and the confinement to

the rules imposed by the “norm” (collective consciousness).

Multimedia installation, variable dimensions. 2016

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The COSMOPOLITICAL FUTURES – FATE MAPS - BLACK LACEKathleen Rogers

The ecology of the brain is a sustained relation of co evolution between all elements of nature.

The project presents a continuous slowly panning shot and highly magnified

collage of lace set in virtual 3D space as a scrolling scene drawn line by

line by the deflections of the scanning electron beam. The soundtrack is

composed from a granular synthesis and series of harmonics derived from

the sound of silk worms instinctively eating their way through Mulberry

leaves in preparation for their metamorphosis. Human vision involves the

register of light in the retinal nervous system and brain and the non-optical

electron materialization of the Chantilly net in the installation alludes to

enhanced human perceptions. The superfine human workings of silk

fibers of antique black Chantilly lace into their tonal transparencies and

tensions are presented as physical network to evoke the bio-synthesis

and suspension of human and insect consciousness in the contemporary

ethical planetary context. The visual resemblance of Chantilly lace to a

photographic negative, the fine working of the silk protein and the intrinsic

quantized energies and discrete processes underlying of operation the

scanning electron microscope are used to express the intrinsic mystery

of evolutionary and developmental metamorphosis co-alliances between

humans and animals in social, cultural, economic and bio-scientific

domains.

Video projection and sound Installation and photographic prints

Video: 8 minutes (loop), Black & White

Series of 6 Photographic Prints, Black & White, 594mm x 841mm

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Kathleen Rogers (UK) Kathleen Rogers is a London-based artist and researcher working with digital

media, video, sound, photography and installation. Her media art practice intersects

multiple disciplines, informed by an interest in social and political and cultural issues

in our converging technological landscape and the modification of biological matter

through nanotechnology and gene transfer. Her research interests explore affinities

between life sciences, the science of consciousness and cosmology. Her research

contributes to debates in contemporary biotechnological discourse that challenge

assumed boundaries between human and non-human entities in contemporary

science and culture. Her interest in molecular science developed from her research

in the 90’s looking at the mythical status of the maize plant in pre-scientific cultures

and making links between biotechnology, the environment and concepts of the

gene in ancient and contemporary Mayan culture and agriculture in Mexico. Her

work is exhibited nationally and internationally, including representation in the

Netherlands, Switzerland, Portugal, USA, Japan, Russia and Lithuania, Albania and

is held in international public collections the UK and Russia. She is Professor of

Media Arts and Science in the School of Fine Art and Photography, at the University

for the Creative Arts, UK.

ENHANCING THE MIND’S I (Performance and Brain Wave Jewellery)Maria Manuela Lopes/Horácio Tomé Marques/Francisco Marques Teixeira/PauloBernardino Bastos

The developing field of brain–computer interfacing (BCI) may develop useful technologies, with a potential impact on individuals and on society as a whole, but this growing technologies imply new ethical and legal challenges.

Exploring ‘drawing with the mind’ (through the body action and possibly

literally through thought and memory) by using the performer’/artist’s

memory brainwaves as tools for a new humanistic arts approach, is driven

by several questions, such as; Is it possible to measure something intangible

as memory and creativity? What can we learn from what brainwaves show

us? Will wearing an EEG device influence the drawing process? Will clinical

neuro-enhancing through neurofeedback expand the drawing capacity?

Can one translate his/her emotions/memories directly into an object as

a memory of a certain moment/place? Can new technologies allow us to

observe the acts of remembrance and memory while forming new memories

of that experience? In the performances L. produces a series of Drawings

following a neuroscientific/ psychological guideline for psychological

assessment on identity and sense of self (i.e. The TST – twenty statements

test protocol is to complete the 20 times in a row the sentence ‘I am …’).

The drawings are constructed by writing, in graphite, sentences starting

by ‘I am’. After 20 sentences there is an interruption in the flow and the

artist erases partially the resulted drawing. Immediately after that effacing

action L. counteracts enacting the procedure of writing another set of

20 sentences. Each event is performed after sessions of neurofeedback

(Figure 2) for cognitive enhancement (memory and creativity stimulation)

and while having the author’s brain being sensed for the different waves it

produces. EEG measures frequencies of L. brain activity (Alpha, Beta, Delta,

Gamma, Theta) relating to her state of ‘consciousness’ while wearing it. The

data collected from EEG is translated in real-time to the computer that uses

software to detect the brain waves and then transforms that information

into data sending it to another computer which performs further actions

(such as sending information into Processing or Arduino, which is linked with

Max/MSP to receive data and generate sound or video or even controlling

several printing and embroidering machines that produce further drawings).

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The EEG records the ‘drawings’ that L. brain is producing while thinking ‘who

she is’ (i.e. who ‘am I’) and the production of the drawing is recorded in real

time video. That video file is feed into the computer that edits it accordingly

with the coordinates dictated by the performer brainwaves while drawing.

The audience as access to the performance scenario and also to the video

images of the brain waves captured by the first computer and furthers the

projection of the final edited video.

The Performances brain waves are presented in jewellery like object (an art

object) and can be acquired by the viewers

Video documentary of the previous live performances. Live performance

and artefact.

Horácio Tomé Marques (PT)Horácio Tomé Marques - {ESMAE - Escola Superior de Música, Artes e Espetáculo;

University of Porto, Portugal; MuArts collective} is also a partner of µARTs. He is an

artist with a long and established career as a designer, performer, musician, teacher

(College of Music, Image and Performing Arts – ESMAE, Portugal) creative and

artistic director and curator. He is a researcher in 3D and 2D digital image synthesis,

multimedia technologies, interactivity, virtual and immersive environments. At

present he pursues a Phd based on the relationship between Music, Reason and

Emotion, using emergent human computer interfaces (e.g. BCI) and innovative

performative arts approaches. His thesis has a dual fundamental framework:

one, a scientific approach, that deals with brain-waves, synchronization, phase-

lock, oscillators, driven oscillations, driven synchronization, resonance, synergy

potentiation; and other, an artistic approach, where his concerns and artworks (e.g.,

live visuals) are anchored in the empirical processes of decoding the dynamics of

the electrophysiology occurring in the brain in ecological performative arts contexts.

Francisco Marques-Teixeira (PT)Francisco Marques-Teixeira {MuArts collective and Neurobios, Portugal} is a

neurofeedback researcher and a neuroscientist responsible for the Neurofeedback

department of Neurobios – a Neuroscience Institute in Porto, Portugal. He is also

one of the partners of µArts, a brain-computer-interface software and hardware

development project that have the performative arts as it´s main core purpose.

Everything that implicates technology applied to human self knowledge amuses

him. The concept of a quantified self given to us by sensing technology and big

data is what defines his path. For him, this source of knowledge about the human

mind, returned to a person by an immersive and interactive environment fulfills all

the needs that are necessary for a complete performative environment. His ultimate

research aspiration is to understand how this new media, mainly interactivity and

immersion can alter our brain and how our mind is going to adapt to this new realm

of existence that is the digital world.

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Is education or dinking coffee an advantage similar to pharmaceutical designed drugs? Will pharmaceutics improve our characters, values and emotions? Medical treatment of some declining mental conditions or body decay raises the demand for the development of restorative pharmaceutics, cosmetics and devices that are simultaneously used for the enhancement of the normal population.

With the knowledge that metabolic agents influence aspects of our

cognition Lopes proposes a multi-media, site-specific installation based

on concepts of neuroenhancement, affect and kinaesthesia, or the

relationship between plants, consciousness and bodily sensation.

In response to a technology-mediated world increasingly desensitized

to physical sensation, and the humane search for ways to augment or

alter perception and cognition, viewers are called upon to expand their

awareness of their embodied minds and the worlds they inhabit, whether

those worlds are their own memories, bodies or the spaces that surround

them.

Germination of psychoactive plants or display of grown samples combine

a variety of specimens with an imaginable scenario of a dinner set that

have been composed and constructed to trigger the senses and explore/

expand the mind.

By challenging the viewers this work demands a reflection on whether one

is seduced by the potential benefits of enhancement strategies and take a

proactive stance, or simply refute experience on account of the potential

risks involved. It presents a unique visual story that surveys our delicate

relationship with the natural world and the collective need to live within

the means of a social domain in one planet, but a constant demand to

evolve/adapt through expanding and reshaping our brains.

This modifying living set imposes a reorientation of our own sense of scale,

attention and consciousness as the viewer routes a new/familiar landscape

through the incorporation of his or her own body into an extended space.

Tecnhological and medical achievements bring promises to organize,

repair and optimize our brains allowing us to conceive leaps, the unseean

and a life continuum, in a quasi self regulatory aesthetic environment, this

multilayered installation has light and exhales oxigen and empathy in a

ENHANCINGMaria Manuela LopesA Multi-Media Installation in collaboration with Helena

Carvalho e Rubin Almeida Silva

complex patern, fragility and equilibrium that demands body awareness

and claims for self counsciousness (when viewers become aware of the

nature of the ‘garden’).

Multimedia installation with live plants and daylly performance practices,

lights and furniture. 2016

Helena Carvalho (PT)Helena Carvalho is a principal investigator from the university of Porto dedicated to

the study of plant biology. She graduated in biology at university of Porto and holds

a PhD in plant molecular biology from Faculdade de Ciências, UP. Her research was

mainly developed at the Instituto de Biologia Molecular e Celular, UP (IBMC), where

she directed a research group dedicated to the study of nitrogen assimilation in

plants. She is also an affiliated professor at Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas Abel

Salazar (ICBAS), where she teaches plant molecular biology.

Rubim Almeida (PT)Rubim Almeida da Silva is a plant taxonomist from University of Porto, and

professor at Faculty of Sciences, conducting its research at CIBIO. Rubim is

interested in Sytematics, Evolution, Phylogeny, Biogeography, Floristics, Monocots

and Functional Ecology.

Other areas of interest are Landscape Architecture, Urbanism, Photography, Plant

Anatomy and Karyology.

9 TRACE Maria Manuela Lopes

Education as therapy might be an enhancement technique. The discussion of human enhancement is characterised by broad domain with conceptual diffuseness and a lack of differentiation. Is the distinction between human enhancement and therapy reasonable enough for policy purposes? What made humans evolve, Language and Culture or a faster brain?

Synapses are the basis of contact among neurons, and are triggered

by neuronal intracerebral process and also by external stimuli. The result

of these processes is thoughts, memories and the ‘making sense’. The

stimuli from language are an important part of synapses and can be

metaphorized by conversation and writing/drawing. We learn by copying

and tracing the world and words around us. Trace was developed as a re-

enactment of neuropsychological assessment archival data of Alzheimer’s

disease patients under a clinical trial in Hospital de Santa Maria, Lisbon. The

sentences have slippages, typos and grammatical errors. Drawings also

belong to the archive of traces left by the patients when responding to

assessment guidelines. The work is created in the form of montage and has

been developed to work across a panoramic installation intended to invoke

the experience of juxtaposition and duration in the of autobiographical

memory in Alzheimer’s disease by metaphorically alluding to the process

of memory: encoding the initial absorption of sensual events imprinted as

traces in the nervous system. It may be approached as the de-enhancement

of the patients versus the enhancement of the artist/researcher.

3 channel video installation loop (with sound). 2013.

BLOOD WARSKathy High

Equity, competition and biopolitics often come to surface in the discourse of Human Enhancement. The debate on enhancement and the visions of its impact raise fundamental questions concerning our understanding of humane bodies as well as of the future of our societies. A broader debate on enhancement includes society role of medicine and the health system, with tendencies toward medicalization, normalization and commercialisation, seemingly promoting the trend toward human enhancement.

Blood Wars is an art project that looks at the biological reaction of

competing human white blood cells and also questions traits inherited

through blood. This project is a competition in an ironic simulated

tournament where different individuals’ white blood cells vie for dominance

in the petri dish. Blood Wars playfully engages with age-old debates about

blood traits and the powerful histories of blood. Designed like a series of

World Cup tournament playoffs, the cellular ‘winner’ of each round goes

on to fight another participant. Participating in Blood Wars brings a better

understanding of the processes of blood cell division, cell staining, immune

cells and the functioning of the immune system, time-lapse microscopy

and laboratory protocol. As well Blood Wars can function as a mediation

tool, used for conflict resolution, to end wars and solve entanglement.

Blood trophies are offered to the winners. Blood filled glass 3” globes are

housed in a craftsman-like box.

2 HD single channel video (screening) + 4 HD Ink Jet Prints

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Kathy High (USA)Kathy High is an interdisciplinary artist working in the areas of technology, science,

speculative fiction and art. She produces videos and installations posing queer

and feminist inquiries into areas of medicine/bio-science, and animal/interspecies

collaborations. She hosts bio/ecology+art workshops and is creating an urban

nature center in North Troy (NATURE Lab) with media organization The Sanctuary

for Independent Media. High is Professor of Video and New Media in the Department

of Arts, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY. She teaches documentary and

experimental digital video production, history and theory, as well as biological arts.

DROSOPHILA TITANUSAndy Gracie

How would the future Human live in another Planet? Are we able to conceive what post-human qualities would we have to develop in order to sustain living in Titan?

Drosophila titanus is an ongoing and long-term project which through a

process of experimentation and artificial selection aims to breed a species

of the fruit fly, drosophila, that would theoretically be capable of living

on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. While being a virtually impossible project

to complete “successfully”, Drosophila titanus sites itself as a process

within the ongoing discourse surrounding the complex relationships

between art and science. By necessity the project needs to adhere to a

rigorous scientific methodology and framework, however it endeavors

to extract artistic metaphor, poetry and ambiguity from these apparent

creative restrictions. The work embraces several interwoven narratives and

concepts related to issues of species, artificially created organisms and

the disquieting quest for biological perfection. Inherent in its discussion

are darker issues such as Social Darwinism and its ultimate expression

in eugenics. This search for biological perfection and the notion of

the ideal genome are heavily implicated in the practice of artificial

selection. Employing Drosophila melanogaster and Titan as metaphors

for the human and Earth respectively, Drosophila titanus embraces the

methodologies of experimentation, simulation and artificial selection to

explore themes of species, biological perfection, perception and future life.

Beyond the exploration of biological and evolutionary issues the project

engages with biosemiotics in questioning the nature of reality and organic

perception of environmental sensory signals. Close to the heart of the

project experiment is the study of the relationship between genotype and

phenotype, a relationship which is increasingly seen as being at the core

of evolutionary biology. The complex relationships between genome and

environment and how they become physically expressed as an organism

seeks to adapt and survive form much of the scientific foundation of the

ongoing exploration within this work.

Multimedia installation work.

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Andy Gracie (UK)Andy Gracie is an artist currently working on examinations of the relationship

between art and science. He works across various disciplines including installation,

robotics, sound, video and biological practice. Recently his work has involved

studies and reactions to the science of astrobiology; notions of the origins of life

coupled with a re-examination of its boundaries. His practice employs scientific

theory and practice to question our relationships with environment and the notion

of the “other” while simultaneously bringing into focus the very relationship between

art and science. His work has been shown internationally and has included special

commissions for new works. By utilising scientific procedures and subjects within

an artistic practice Gracie aims to reveal how metaphor, ambiguity and poetry can

be extracted from the rigorous pursuit of truth.

12 COSMOPOLITICAL FUTURES – FATE MAPS – REGENERATIVE MEDICINE Kathleen Rogers

Regenerative medicine aims at growing replacement body parts, or growing tissues that can be assembled into new body parts, using stem cells, genetic engineering, and other biotechnology and its moving in parallel with bionics for a run into routine replacements/healings of a body part. In the course of time, all body parts should be replaceable, and this will have implications for debates regarding the human lifespan.

Presented as a hyper-realistic panorama and viewed in partial darkness,

the work provides an audience with a reflective space that invokes

an emotional engagement with the medical and ethical dimensions

of regenerative, stem cell research. Stem cells offer new generative

opportunities for healing the body and touch on the most elusive aspects

of life. Bones are alive; composed of calcified connective tissues and have

many morphologies and the work was conceived alongside research

groups studying embryonic, fetal and adult stem cells in the UK. The serial

structure of the film, interprets raw biological source materials for bone and

joint regeneration to demonstrate how sensory encounters with the digital

can enhance the visual literacy of medical research. The scanning nature

of reading and visual concepts of language are interwoven with dramatic

hyper-realistic images of human donor materials passing behind layers

composed and combined with temporal repetitions, tonal variations, shifts

in scale and magnification, repeating graphic frames, virtual shadows and

the visceral pulse of a soundscape composed from abnormal mitral valve

heart beat recordings. The letters running horizontally allow a reader to

intersect and interact with the work and multiply potential meanings. The

underlying conceptual form of the work is based on theoretical work and

ethical frame-working of philosopher of science, Karen Barad.

7 channel/episode video, colour, sound installation, 22:00 minutes, loop.

13 GENETIC SEED BANK Suzanne Anker

Gene editing in laboratories are only part of the story of our future changed bodies, cognition and emotional capacities. If in one hand gene changes offer perspectives to mitigate devastating diseases affecting the brain, it also increases expectations to intervene in the brains of healthy individuals.

Gene editing in laboratories are only part of the story of our future changed

bodies, cognition and emotional capacities. If in one hand gene changes

offer perspectives to mitigate devastating diseases affecting the brain, it

also increases expectations to intervene in the brains of healthy individuals.

bBrain coral, so aptly named for its corresponding patterned convolutions to

brain tissue, is an indication of how nature can expand connections between

cells in limited space. Brain coral is in the family of corals called Mussidae

which can live up to 900 years. As stationary carnivores, brain corals catch

their preyby filtering the water that flows past them. Like the brain itself, it

is activated by passing options in a world of flux. These images were taken

on a visit to a coral reclamation laboratory in Florida, where specimens are

decoded for their genetic configurations, and then grown under laboratory

conditions before they are relocated into the wild. Coral reefs are under

severe danger of being wiped out. Like disappearing thoughts in the human

brain, particularly under the guise of brain disease, brain coral is also under

the threat of becoming rubble.

Suite of 9 inkjet prints on watercolor paper 74 x 110 cm

Suzanne Anker (USA)Suzanne Anker is a visual artist and theorist working at the intersection of art and

the biological sciences. She works in a variety of mediums ranging from digital

sculpture and installation to large-scale photography to plants grown by LED

lights. Her work has been shown both nationally and internationally in museums

and galleries. Her books include The Molecular Gaze: Art in the Genetic Age, co-

authored with the late sociologist Dorothy Nelkin, published in 2004 by Cold Spring

Harbor Laboratory Press, Visual Culture and Bioscience, co-published by University

of Maryland and the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. Her writings

have appeared in Art and America, Seed Magazine, Nature Reviews Genetics, Art

Journal, Tema Celeste and M/E/A/N/I/N/G. Her work has been the subject of

reviews and articles in the New York Times, Artforum, Art in America, Flash Art, and

Nature. She has been a speaker at Harvard University, the Royal Society in London,

Cambridge University, Yale University, the London School of Economics, the Max-

Planck Institute, Universitiy of Leiden, the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum in Berlin,

the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, Banff Art Center any many others.

14 ESPAÇO DE ENSAIO PARA TESTAR IMPULSOS VÁRIOSCarlos Marques

Is the understanding of neurons and synapses telling us the story of our human bio computer and what are we at risk of altering with neuro enhancement?

Como a forma do neurónio é uma ramificação que se desenvolve a partir

de um núcleo e a forma que pretendia era mais austera, não podia isolar o

neurónio e trabalhá-lo por si mas sim integrado numa estrutura geométrica

que apresentasse uma forma contida. O cilindro respondia ao pretendido e,

ao mesmo tempo, aproximava-se da representação de um tubo de ensaio,

instrumento tão utilizado na área da ciência.

Pensei fazer uma peça que não fosse propriamente uma escultura em

termos tradicionais, pelo menos relativamente às que costumo produzir, mas

que fosse uma peça que se pudesse enquadrar nesta exposição e pudesse

simular com grande mimetismo um tubo de ensaio – a rolha por exemplo

pode ter dado o toque necessário. Acontece que, ainda por cima existe uma

grande afinidade formal da peça com a forma dos cérebros.

Como normalmente trabalho com uma temática que identifico com espaços

de tangencia definido entre duas realidades distintas que a elas pertencem

sem existir de facto, o tubo de ensaio onde metaforicamente tudo poderá

acontecer era uma solução adequada. Então com a presença de um neurónio

essa relação dinâmica seria potenciada.

Interessava-me produzir uma peça com bastante presença e assim tive que

subverter as escalas relativas; do neurónio em relação à dimensão do tubo

de ensaio e do tubo relativamente à escala humana. Tendo em consideração

a proliferação de ramificações e o entrecruzar da trama do sistema nervoso

e da conjugação perfeita que todos estabelecem entre si, cheguei a pensar

num título extraído de um filme do Fellini como o ensaio de orquestra, mas

logo o abandonei, precisamente pela mais que evidente colagem.

Como para mim fazer escultura também tem que passar, necessaria-

mente, pelo aspecto lúdico, brincar com a função do neurónio e suas dendrites

relacionando os impulsos com as atitudes e reacções que as pessoas podem

ter perante indeterminadas situações, atribuí então um título que jogava com

as palavras e de alguma maneira fala brincando da questão.

acrílico, arame de ferro, mdf, forbo vinílico e cortiça

Carlos Marques (PT)Professor associado de escultura da Faculdade de Belas Artes do Porto na

situação de aposentado. Cofundador da ESAD Escola Superior de Artes e Design

de Matosinhos em 1989 e membro da sua Direção Administrativa. Cofundador do

Lugar do Desenho Fundação Júlio Resende em 1994.

Prémio Anual de Investigação - Escultura 83 da Academia Nacional de Belas Artes

Expõe desde 1974 e está representado em coleções particulares e oficiais tendo

obra pública em Alfandega da Fé, Amarante, Caldas da Rainha, Cidade do Mindelo,

Cuba, Esposende, Famalicão, Lisboa, Londres, Maia, Matosinhos, Monção, Pinhel,

Porto, Póvoa de Varzim, Régua, S. João da Madeira, Sintra, V. N. de Cerveira e Gaia.

Últimas exposições individuais: 2007 - Matosinhos –“A vegetação procurou na

tangencia uma estratégia do encontro” Galeria Municipal; 2012 Porto “uma Janela

para Darwin” Museu Nacional de Soares dos Reis;2013 – S. João da Madeira –

“Relicários” – Centro de Arte; 2014 – Gondomar – “Auto Retrato” ou a Influência

de um Olhar” – Lugar do Desenho, Fundação Júlio Resende; Porto – “Relicários”

– Palacete Viscondes de Balsemão; Cascais – “7 Olhares e 21 Relicários” – Centro

Cultural de Cascais, Fundação D Luís I; 2015 – Matosinhos – “33 anos de oficina ou a

memória do regresso ao quarto dos brinquedos” – Galeria Municipal.