Synthetic Aesthetics Salon

Future natures in a culture of synthetic biology

Salon Thursday October 28, 8 pm, with Sascha Pohflepp, Sheref Mansy, Lucy McRay and Koert van Mensvoort. Science and technology are moving closer to adding living organisms to our cultural toolkit. Microbes are already making insulin and soon they may produce the world's fuel supply. Their potential is limited only by our imagination.

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Emulsion - Bas van den Broeke

The emerging field of synthetic biology aims to transform biology as we know it into a discipline of engineering. The top-down BioBricks approach prefers to hack existing organisms. The more research-oriented field of so-called protocells aims to create minimal living machines and may on the way discover the nature of life itself. What both technosciences share is that, if successful, they will profoundly shift or even erase our distinction between nature and culture. After the first truly artificial life form has been created and employed, everything can potentially become technology.

This Salon will be exploring why our notions of nature and technology may need to change and look closer at work in both art and science. From the body as architecture to the soft systems of the future and scientific research focussing on artificial cells as life-like machines.

More information

Synthetic Aesthetics, Thursday 28 October 2010. Mediamatic Bank, Vijzelstraat 68. Starting at 8 pm. Free entrance. www.syntheticaesthetics.org. Please RSVP.