Art and Protocell Residency
Call for Artist in Residence at Synthetic Biology Lab
The Center for Fundamental Living Technology (FLinT), University of Southern Denmark is inviting an artist in residence for up to six weeks during 2015. The two-part residency will start in the spring and conclude in the summer/fall of 2015.
As an artist in residence, you will actively engage with the scientists while working on a Synthetic Biology related artwork. There is no prior definition of, nor restriction to, specific genres and we welcome applications from artists, designers, writers, biohackers, or other cultural practitioners.
The stipend of a total of up to 7200 € is provided by the EU research project SYNENERGENE (Responsible Research and Innovation in Synthetic Biology), executed by the FLinT Center (University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark) and Biofaction (Vienna, Austria). It covers travel and local expenses, living allowance as well as partial support for the production and showcasing of the artistic prototype or finished work.
This residency program is established:
Objectives
• to explore arts or alternative cultural practice’s potential with regards to the visions, challenges, philosophical, aesthetic, and ethical aspects of bottom-up Synthetic Biology, such as protocells research;
• to add a complementary outside-the-box perspective to bottom-up SynBio, its societal ramifications and cultural aspects;
• to help envision the potential long-term changes bottom-up SynBio might bring to society.
FLinT’s scientific mission is to analyze and understand the creative forces in natural, as well as in human-made systems. This is mainly achieved through the study of self-organizing processes. Our main focus is to assemble the components of minimal living systems. In physico-chemical systems, this means to assemble protocells bottom-up from inorganic and organic materials. In hardware systems, we investigate implementation of e.g. 3D printers able to print themselves, while in computational systems we study the emergence of replicators. Our long-term technological vision is to develop the foundation for a living and intelligent technology characterized by robustness, autonomy, energy efficiency, sustainability, local intelligence, self-repairing capacities, adaptation, self-replication and evolution – all properties that current technology lack, but living systems possess. For more details, please see http://flint.sdu.dk
Our research center
SYNENERGENE: Artist in residence at FLinT, University of Southern Denmark
We imagine you spend minimum two periods with us. Initially, you are with us for a few weeks, getting hands-on experience in the laboratory, observing or discussing with us, to explore and define your concrete project focus. At successive visit(s), perhaps a months or two later, you present and discuss your artwork draft with us and continue to develop it after the completed residence period.
Your stay with us
Together with our numerous partners, we may be able to help explore exhibition possibilities for the completed artwork.
Some of the issues we imagine could be of interest include, but are not restricted
to:
• Creating physicochemical artificial life from scratch in the laboratory.
• Living and intelligent processes supported by non-biological materials (e.g. computers, robots and 3D printers).
• Visions, challenges and societal impact of the emerging BINC technology convergence (the convergence of Bio-, Information-, Nano- and Cognitive technologies)
The application deadline is January 4th, 2015, all applicants will receive response by February 15th, and the first part of the residence can begin March 1st. Please provide a biography (100-300 words), a CV and a short project draft (max. 500 words). Weblinks and one pdf portfolio can also be submitted, but are not mandatory.
The candidate selection is done by the international jury composed of Jens Hauser (curator), Laura Beloff (artist) and Steen Rasmussen (scientist).