Research Catalogue

Growing Likeness, a study in biological authored portraiture and bioart experiment in the aesthetics and value of bio-facial construction, challenging the sustainability of growing human-like structures in a deep-rooted vision. A mapping of intelligence systems disguised as human, this research strikes a visual analogy to the science and the system matrix of crop roots. The aesthetics and symbolic resemblance to the human head is a creative and philosophical query, provoking the viewer to challenge their perception, if in fact any, likeness to human identity. How is the biological intervention of the plant seedlings aiding the construct and metaphorical meaning of being human? Simple experiments with seeds, are in fact, a means to expand knowledge of leading science and technology research whilst communicating this knowledge through art. https://www.ecu.edu.au/schools/arts-and-humanities/ecu-galleries/past-exhibitions/related-content/exhibitions/2024/growing-likeness

In our exploration of the spatiality of language and, specifically, the activation of the site where writing "makes" rather than takes place, we propose a multilayered experience of the book as an object, as well as a geometrical, topological, and especially performative space, which we understand as an "ecology of the book". Extending this practice beyond the book's margins, yet simultaneously embedding it within the material and technical affordances of the book’s medial articulations, we evoke a "new" ecology—one unfolding alongside the interaction-landscape and its actual and invented inhabitants, as well as the techniques of its production. Texts, drawings, figures, figurations, methods, and both human and non-human authors weave together the heterogeneous texture of the book’s "new" ecology. In our monographs, "Fauna. Language Arts and the New Order of Imaginary Animals" (2018), "Flora. Language Arts in the Age of Information" (2020), and "Fiction Fiction. Language Arts and the Practice of Spatial Storytelling" (2023, De Gruyter/Edition Angewandte), we explore and map the territory of language arts. This approach manifests, on the one hand, through the transgression of traditional scientific methodologies and a shift in models—from thinking-of-the-other toward thinking-with-the-other, and on the other hand, through the agency of our eponymous characters, Fauna and Flora, who not only title our books but also act as conceptual operators—figures that navigate, perform, and activate the very spaces our texts explore. Applying Michel Serres' methodology of thinking by inventing personae, these characters move within and percolate through the margins of text (written, figural) and space (concrete, fictional), reconfiguring the notion of authorship and placing literary texts and digital drawings within the frame(less) collective of more-than-human and more-than-organic actants.

This conference will explore how emerging technologies—especially generative AI and blockchain—reimagine the current notions of creative agency. Conveners: Adam Łukawski, Martin Zeilinger Artificial intelligence (AI), with its learning algorithms operating at scale, can mimic human creative agency, and blockchain technologies, through smart contracts, can augment works of art with more or less autonomous behaviours that correspond to the agency of human participants in socio-economic interactions. While such developments can destabilise traditional notions of ownership, provenance, and agency in musical practices, they can also empower artists. Those working creatively with sound and music are today increasingly becoming system-builders and curators of musical ecosystems, turning their focus from the creation of singular, standalone musical works (in any traditional sense of the term) to the design of systems capable of generating artworks. This suggests an evolving role of music-producing systems today: from fixed intellectual constructs and creative expressions to dynamic, more-than-human technological networks that not only actively participate in the production of artworks with increasing levels of agency, but which can themselves be considered as artworks that constitute generative, expressive assemblages. This shift is further emphasised in distributed contexts, where varying levels of automation blur the boundaries between human and non-human contributions, creating environments where agency is negotiated and shared across diverse actants.

This exposition contains documentation of the artistic result of Magnhild Øen Nordahls artistic research PhD project Unmaking Abstractions. The exposition also contains the artistic reflection for the same project. On the exposition's landing page the reader can access its different components by clicking different sides of the unfolded cube. The rotating cube in the upper right corner will bring the reader back to the landing page.

PhD Candidate: Sidsel Christensen Project title: INTERDIMENSIONAL ARTISTIC REFLECTION: Speculative movements through Spatial, Digital and Narrative Media Period: 2020 - 2024 Host institution: The Art Academy – Department of Contemporary Art, Faculty of Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen PhD supervisors: Brandon LaBelle, Frans Jacobi and Sher Doruff

This exposition brings together the epistemologies of art-making and translation. It presents a series of artworks the curators commissioned for a travelling exhibition on ‘Experiential Translation’ (2022-2025). Many of the works were created under the auspices of the Experiential Translation Network, which facilitates collaboration and exchange between translators, writers, poets, artists and scholars from across the globe. The concept of ‘experiential translation’ as elaborated by Campbell and Vidal (2019, 2024, 2025), highlights embodied, multimodal communication as a performative inquiry into meaning-making. Blending art and translation practices, experiential translation values materiality, participation, and co-creation. Rather than mere transfer of meaning, translation is seen as a process of discovery, research, and knowledge production, embracing the unknown and exploring that which escapes language. Encouraging a rhizomatic viewing experience, the exposition is structured into three interconnected thematic 'rooms', Serial Metamorphosis, (Un)repetition and Ludic Translation, which can be visited in any order, or even simultaneously. The exposition includes video art, performance, (interactive) installation, sound art, poetry, painting and photography. This work was supported by the AHRC under Grant AH/V008234/1, awarded to Ricarda Vidal (PI) and Madeleine Campbell (Co-I) . Ethical Clearance Reference Number (King’s College London): MRA-22/23-34543