Marie Munk is an interdisciplinary artist, working with sculpture, installation, video and performance. She examines the materiality of physical interaction and artificial simulation of intimacy. Using silicone as a metaphor for the bodily, Munk creates alternative realities, which questions current tendencies in society.
“Our artworks investigate human futures and evolutionary paths influenced by emerging and disruptive technologies. So our work is not so much a prediction of the future or solution to issues of the day, but instead invites audiences into a space to explore the endless opportunities that can shift according to our desires and dreams.”
Based in London, Burton Nitta is an interdisciplinary art and design studio collaborating with science and technology to investigate our future world and human evolution.
When photography captures the Earth’s topography, vegetation often obfuscates the fine details. Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) allows the solid surface to be viewed in a new light. I have applied LiDAR technology to research the “Carolina bays”, ovoid basins found by the tens of thousands in the USA.
“I observe how human interactions happen and how the body moves through space, the motion and gestures associated with different activity. I also question why we move the way we do and how may we change those habits. In addition, I am extremely interested in how these natural interactions are effected by digital technology and artificial futures.”
Betty Zhang is an interaction designer and interdisciplinary artist creating sensory experiences that are immersive and interactive in both digital and non-digital media. Currently, she is exploring wearable technology, gestural interactions, biofeedback, and sound installations. Her work deals mainly with the body as a multi-functioning interface and performative medium.
“I build interactive tools and design experiences that make human-computer interaction more tangible, divergent and meaningful. I work in this manner to investigate how computation could be unveiled and brought out into the real world, thus rendering it accessible to the diverse forms of distributed and embodied cognition that humans have always been using to live and act on this planet.”
Raul Altosaar is an infradisciplinary artist, technician and researcher. He leverages his foundational skills in computer graphics and extended realities to design spatial experiences and interactive tools.
“Color, light and science are my areas of artistic interest. My work explores both the abstract interactions of color and light as well as science in art. Whether I create a work of pure abstraction or one developed from a scientific concept, creating art holds an endless fascination for me. It is the excitement of discovering the unknown that I find moving.”
Valeriya N-Georg is an artist inspired from Neuroscience, Psychology and Consciousness studies, who works with a range of media: drawing, printmaking, mixed media and sculpture.
“My principal interest is Neuroscience, as a system of exploring the relationship between the human body and the embodied self. I use fragments of physical anatomy to visually represent the inexpressible experience of inhabiting a body; the boundaries between the inner and outer self; between the physical and metaphysical; tangible and intangible, the tactile and the optical.”
“In general relativity, reason and imagination combine to synthesise a whole that neither alone could achieve.”
Margaret Wertheim is a writer, curator and artist whose work focuses on relations between science and the wider cultural landscape. A two-fold perspective animates her work: on the one hand science can be seen a set of conceptual enchantments that delight our minds and senses; on the other hand science is a socially embedded activity intersecting with philosophy, culture and politics.
“Creative imagination” is what we normally consider to be creativity with a large C – composing an opera or discovering something groundbreaking. This is different from everyday creativity, such as coming up with imaginative solutions to household problems or making crafts.
Creative inspiration is notoriously elusive. Being able to train creativity or induce a state of creativity has therefore long been the aim of many artists and scientists.
But is it possible?
Michael Strauss is a professor of astrophysical sciences at Princeton University in New Jersey. He is the author of Welcome to the Universe: An Astrophysical Tour (2016), co-written with Neil deGrasse Tyson and J Richard Gott.