News – The Cultural Negotiation of Science

Loading…

News

c_n_o_s_

Our member Helen Knowles is looking for participan

Our member Helen Knowles is looking for participants to take part in a Psychedelic Integration Group exploring entity encounter. Trust the Medicine is a long-form participatory 360 artist video installation and game engine, featuring AI-generated entities.The work seeks to unpick relationships where psychedelic intelligences look after human health. Through documenting a staged psychedelic integration (IG) group of real volunteers led by a real psychotherapist which focuses on entity encounter, the project will explore the possibility of medicine working as an autonomous being. Can we go as far as to claim the relationship constitutes an allyship with intelligence? Or, is entity encounter just a projection of our internal dialogues? This is an artist-led project by Helen Knowles. @hercules_road_ Gallery's forthcoming exhibition, 'Blake's Old Haunt' are joining forces with the Trust the Medicine project to stage two Psychedelic Integration Groups. They will be led by psychotherapists, Raquel Sheid and Alan Wildsmith.
Venue: Park Plaza Hotel Waterloo, 6 Hercules Rd, London SE1 7DP
Date: 30th April 2023
Time: 15.00-17.00 / 18.00-20.00 To book a place in the Integration Group and take part in the performance or as a member of the audience email: helen.r.knowles@northumbria.ac.uk
For more info: www.helenknowles.com This work is being developed in collaboration with curator, Bi Xin, the Psychoactive Trials Team, the Maudsley Psychedelic Integration Group, King's College, London and Northumbria University. @psychedelic_press @psychedelicsuk @kcl_psychsoc @psychedelicstudiesimperial

Weighting Time is a survey exhibition across two v

Weighting Time is a survey exhibition across two venues - exploring 30 years of work by British artist Fiona Crisp. Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens
& Mowbray Park
1 April – 3 June 2023 Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art (NGCA)
6 May – 3 September 2023 From the subterranean world of dark-matter laboratories to the midnight sun of the Nordic summer, Crisp’s work explores how we might connect to spaces and ideas beyond our own experience. Her practice interrogates the ontology of the photographic image – a branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being - to reveal new understandings of our changing relationships to space, place and time. Across the two venues, Weighting Time will reconfigure and recontextualize elements of Crisp’s large-scale installations from the last three decades, using bespoke seating to encourage viewers into a physical encounter with her powerfully sculptural photographic and film objects. Included will be works made in the Early Christian catacombs of Rome, a Second World War underground military hospital in the Channel Islands and a Dark Matter Laboratory sited deep underneath the bed of the North Sea. Projects undertaken at these and other sites of historic or scientific significance will be brought together with a new large-scale public commission made by Crisp for Sunderland’s Mowbray Park. Belvedere (Mowbray Park) is a photographic work made at Lanthwaite Hill in the English Lake District where the artist JMW Turner worked. This site was purchased by the National Trust in 2019 as the first acquisition made by the charity specifically for a view. You are invited to an Exhibition Special View:
Thursday 11th May 2023
Sunderland Museum & Winter Garden 4.00-5.30pm, including an exhibition tour with Fiona Crisp at 5.00pm, and Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art 6.00-8.00pm For more information please see the @sunderlandculture website, and follow @ngcasunderland1 + @sunderlandmuseum Image: Belvedere (Mowbray Park) 2023. Detail. Digital print on vinyl banner. 400 x 500 cm. Image courtesy of the artist and @mattsgallerylondon

On Saturday 25 February Daksha Patel will be prese

On Saturday 25 February Daksha Patel will be presenting on her Exchanges project as part of Art & Science: Connections & Interactions Conference in Dundee. Link in @daksha9art’s bio for the full programme. @dundeeuni @djcad_uod @uodmuseums @scottishsocietyforarthistory

LAST CALL: Prof. Fiona Crisp is seeking expression

LAST CALL: Prof. Fiona Crisp is seeking expressions of interest in a practice-based, inter-disciplinary PhD studentship — Remote Sensing: Negotiating Radically Remote Space Science through Art Practice Humanity, and the technology supporting 21st Century activities, is rapidly expanding into our space environment. Space science and space exploration supports this endeavour and allows us to discover the richness of different worlds and environments throughout the solar system, as well as address questions of our cosmic origins. Quotidian technology is increasingly reliant upon space-based infrastructure, but space remains a remote environment not directly experienced by humans. This practice-based, inter-disciplinary PhD studentship will draw on research from across the arts, humanities, science and technology to innovate novel approaches to the cultural negotiation of space science as a field of practice characterised by vertiginous scalar extremes and remote sensing technology. Led by an arts-based, practice-as-research methodology, the studentship will address the urgent need for new models of inter-disciplinary working to be developed at the triangulated interface of art, space science and publics. To this end, one of the key questions that will frame the research will be: In an era of increasing public dislocation from the scales, speeds and technologies of scientific advance, how might big science (in the words of American astronomer, Roger Malina) be made ‘intimate’? The full call out can be found on the link below, or via the FindAPhD reference: IDRT23/ADSS/SPA/CRISP For informal queries, please contact Fiona.crisp@northumbria.ac.uk. For all other enquiries relating to eligibility or application process please use the contact form on the FindAPhD web page to contact Admissions. Deadline for applications: 27 January 2023 Start date: October 2023 https://www.findaphd.com/phds/project/remote-sensing-negotiating-radically-remote-space-science-through-art-practice-idrt23-adss-spa-crisp/?p152742

Calling artists, curators, critical theorists.. Th

Calling artists, curators, critical theorists.. There’s a specific opportunity to work with CNoS member Prof. Fiona Crisp and space scientists on a funded PhD project. Check out the @FindAPhD listing (IDRT23/ADSS/SPA/CRISP) - Deadline 27 Jan 2023

Opening today in Beijing! Our member Helen Knowles

Opening today in Beijing! Our member Helen Knowles is showing her work 'Trickle Down, A New Vertical Sovereignty' as part of 'Time After Time: The Polychronicity in Blockchain' at Hyundai Motorstudio. The installation, which was premiered at arebyte Gallery in February 2020, (just before the first lockdown and the pandemic swept the globe) was shown for 6 weeks. Then, for the past two years, Helen has been in conversation with the brilliant curator, Bi Xin from CAC Shanghai, who has persevered to bring Trickle Down all the way to Beijing, despite many lockdowns, phone-code groundhog days and an epic install, it is finally there. 'Time After Time: The Polychronicity in Blockchain'
2022.11.17 – 2023.3.31
Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing
Artists:César Escudero Andaluz & Martín Nadal, Simon Denny in collaboration with GuileTwardowski and Cosmographia, eeefff, GUO Cheng, Helen Knowles, Lee Tzu-tung, LIUChuang, Nascent (Paul Seidler & Max Hampshire) in cooperation with Amy Ireland, Yuri Pattison, SHI Ruini Curated by BI Xin
Technology Lead: CAO Daxu
Exhibition Design: CAO Daxu Trickle Down, A New Vertical Sovereignty is a tokenised four-screen video installation and generative soundscape attached to the blockchain, which explores value systems and wealth disparity. The artwork is composed of auction scenes, performances and choral interludes by different communities such as prisoners, blockchain technology employees, market sellers, and Sotheby’s auction bidders. Trickle Down, A New Vertical Sovereignty draws on technological and financial power structures which traditionally scaffold the disparity between a wealthy elite and everyday working people but looks to re-imagine our vertically stacked digital ecosystem to horizontally distribute wealth. The installation commences when a visitor drops a pound coin into a machine designed to expose the mechanisms needed to convert fiat currency into crypto-currency. Each and every member of the Trickle Down community, who has helped the work come to fruition, will receive a share of the ETH via a smart contract on the blockchain. Exhibition images by David Oates, taken at @arebyte Gallery

Paul Dolan’s Upstream Image at Gallery North is

Paul Dolan’s Upstream Image at Gallery North is an immersive installation that experiments with the potential of re-purposing excess computer heat to germinate plants. Through reconfiguring and amplifying the direct and indirect functions of image making technology, Dolan both recognises the environmental footprint that underpins the technology and proposes new ecological solutions for the re-application of these capacities. Open Thursdays and Fridays 12-4 and Saturdays 10-2, and by appointment. Contact matthew.j.hearn@northumbria.ac.uk Install shots by the artist.

Opening this Thursday - an exhibition by CNoS memb

Opening this Thursday - an exhibition by CNoS member Paul Dolan at Gallery North. Dolan is an artist based in Newcastle, and an Assistant Professor in Animation at Northumbria University. What happens in the life span of an image before it momentarily appears on our screens? Upstream Image has been developed from fieldwork and photographic documentation gathered from data centre sites across Europe. Highlighting the growing dependency of digital image production and its infrastructure, Upstream Image invites an engagement with the digital image as directly connected to the geopolitics of energy and finite material resources. In using 3D modelling and real-time computer simulation Dolan re-renders these locations, deploying their technological capacities and infrastructure in the production of the work itself. For Gallery North Upstream Image will be expanded as an immersive installation. Experimenting with the potential of re-purposing excess computer heat to germinate plants, Dolan reconfigures image making systems to amplify their material elements. The exhibition continues until Saturday 22nd October. Artist in Conversation with Dr Pete Howson, Assistant Professor of Environmental Science, Tuesday 18th October, 1-2pm at @gallerynorthumbria Upstream Image is the second exhibition in Gallery North’s Autumn season of exhibitions curated around the theme of Constructions.

This weekend! Annie Carpentress is part of PARA-LA

This weekend! Annie Carpentress is part of PARA-LAB REPORT 2022, the second annual exhibition showcasing research and artefacts from various ongoing long-term collaborations between artists and scientists (www.para-lab.org).
Opening event: Friday 23rd September, 17.30 - 19.30 - open to all.
Exhibition continues: Saturday 24th and Sunday 25th September, 11.00 - 15.00
Symposium: Saturday 24th September, 15.00 - 17.00 The symposium is free, please book tickets via @paralabmcr
Featuring John-Paul Brown, Philippa Browning, Annie Carpenter, Nicola Ellis, Philipp Frankel, Emma Gowen, Antony Hall, Michelle Harrison, Sam Hay, Matthias Heil, Maria Jedryszek, Aidan Keith, Sophy King, Hannah Leighton-Boyce, Margaret O'Brien, Helen Park, Yvonne Peters, Ellen Poliakoff, Aled Deakin Roberts, Aoife Taylor, Anastasia Vasileiou, Sunny Vowles and Andrew Wilson.
Kindly supported by the EPSRC Programme Grant ‘MIDAS’ (EP/S01702X/1), at the University of Manchester.

CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS: Helen Knowles is running Sm

CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS: Helen Knowles is running Smartphone Filmmaking Workshops as part of her project More Than Human Healthcare Tuesday 27 September 2022, 17:00-19:00 @ Science Gallery, London Please come and join a community of fellow researchers, artists and interested individuals who are concerned with tranformations in healthcare which employ artificial
intelligence (AI) and plant intelligences to care and are at the cusp of redefining human and non-human relationships. This practical session will provide you with a space to create, speculate and collaboratively generate filmic material to the project More-Than-Human Healthcare (MTHH). Drawing on your own practice and experience, you will learn how to make short films on a mobile phone. You will become part of a wider international community by sharing and reflecting on your work and others, over the private MTHH Discord Channel. Communities involved in this project include: Intermundos Arts, Colombia, Medical Imaging and London AI Centre for Value Based Healthcare, King’s College, London. The Pacer Project, Oslo Met and Psilocybin Trials, & Psychedelic Integration group,
King’s College, London. Together we will look to develop a new film aesthetic to decenter the human by recognising and animating the voice of intelligent non-human objects, actors and entities, who care, bringing them on a par with ourselves. As a group we will collaboratively generate urgent new perspectives on sentience and unpick cosmologies embedded in diverse tools of care which arise from different geographical localities and histories in AI and Psychedelic / Plant medicine practices. The space for the workshop is kindly provided by @scigallerylon. This project is funded by @northumbriauni More details in our Stories, email: helen.r.knowles@northumbria.ac.uk to confirm your place or join the mailing list. In October @helenknowles001 will takeover the @c_n_o_s_ account to share updates from her trip to Colombia. Stay tuned!

We were very excited to hear this week that Rona L

We were very excited to hear this week that Rona Lee’s LITHIC ENTANGLEMENTS, a research project exploring post human / post natural history persepectives on the geology collections of the Sedgwick, Lapworth and Manchester Museums has been funded by an @aceagrams DYCP award #geology #posthuman #rocks #minerals #museums #lithic #womanartist #contemporaryart #postnature #postnaturalhistory #artwork #artistsoninstagram #artenvironment image - work in progress 2022 ‘Extraction’ reworked book plates ‘The World of Minerals’ pub Orbis 1972

Two exciting updates from Daksha Patel (@daksha9ar

Two exciting updates from Daksha Patel (@daksha9art) Video 1 - 25 drawings based on psychological / physical symptoms of Parkinson’s, and scientific research. A visual resource / game for scientists, people with Parkinson’s, carers, families and nurses to connect. Made as part of EXCHANGES project with @dundeeuni and @mrcppu Video 2 - Patel’s film Modelling Morecambe Bay has been selected for Raw Science Festival, Bristol Science Film Festival (@brisscifilm) and shortlisted for a Jean Golding Institute science film prize. The artist film was made in 2021, commissioned by Environmental Modelling researchers at @lancasteruni

A warm welcome to new CNoS member Alis Oldfield, a

A warm welcome to new CNoS member Alis Oldfield, an artist, educator based in Birmingham. In October 2022 she will begin her practice-based PhD studentship at the University of Northumbria, under the guidance of Christine Borland, Fiona Crisp and Jeff Warbuton. Interested in ecology, magic and technology, Alis’ practice is situated in the blurry boundaries between these things. Her research project imagines the internet as a landscape with ecological systems, as a way to diagnose its health. Not only does the infrastructure and energy demand of the internet have an ecological cost but its creeping monoculturalism limits meaningful interaction, the spread of vital information and the impact of grassroots organisation that could mobilise the fight against climate catastrophe. The project will question whether the soil of the internet is sick, adopting a fiction-as-method art practice to ask how ecological thinking can help create a vital, life-sustaining future in-terra-net. Recent projects include; Elan Valley Residency Programme (Aug – Aug 2022)
As artist-in-residence, Alis is learning about water management, conservation and ecology, making parallels to our use of and rights to data online. Funded by Arts Council Wales & The National Lottery. In partnership with Elan Valley Trust, Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water, Community Arts Rhayader and District.
Cut Copy Remix at @vividprojectsuk and Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery; artists Alis Oldfield, Rosa Francesca and Leanne O’Connor – were co-commissioned alongside artist Mixed Milk to explore the creative potential of Birmingham Museums Trust’s Digital Image Resource. And a series of workshops and activities organised by Black Hole Club & Ikon Young People held on diverse online platforms. These were gathered and presented as a game of ping pong between groups in a poster series. These posters were available across the city and installed on @ikongallery ‘s Slow Boat in August 2021. Image captions:
1. Rewilding ARP(L)ANET, 2020, Cut Copy Remix, Vivid Projects
2. Mother, Digital Image, 2020
3. Planet Phantastic, Installation Image, Royal College of Art 2016
4. Planet Phantastic, Film Still, as above

Introducing new CNoS member Annie Carpenter, an ar

Introducing new CNoS member Annie Carpenter, an artist and academic based in the South Pennines. Her studio practice employs amateur labour in a haptic-driven pursuit of scientific knowledge, often in the form of mechanical sculptures. She periodically brings these DIY methods into performative ‘demonstrations’, giving the viewer an intimate, two-way encounter with the themes behind her work. She is a Lecturer in Fine Art at Leeds Beckett University and co-director of para-lab, an organisation facilitating experimental methods of collaboration between artists and scientists, running in parallel to academic institutions. For her practice-based PhD with CNoS, Carpenter is addressing the normative cultures of collaboration between art and science which have produced unhelpful asymmetries of exchange where art is instrumentalised for the public understanding of science. The project will critically co-opt methodologies drawn from the natural sciences and sociology, using research-driven art practice to disrupt the standard terrains (physical and social) of the working cultures surrounding both art and science to provide new models of science outreach. Employing fieldwork ‘excursions’, amateur labour and intimate performance, the project will respond to scientist and philosopher Isabelle Stengers’ urgent call to replace public engagement with a ‘public intelligence’ of science. Image captions:
1. Central Engine Maintenance Performance
2. ‘Testing the Field’ cross-disciplinary field trip
3. Concept Model #1
4. Still from Guarding Work
5. Para-lab field trip

Two of our members are in the current exhibition a

Two of our members are in the current exhibition at @newbridgeproject in Shieldfield. Habit, Ability! opened early this month, and the exhibition continues until 23rd September 2022, it's open 12-5pm Wednesday-Friday, and some Saturdays. Check the website for further details and one-off related events. Habit, Ability! explores ways to learn from and ‘be in’ nature. Head to The NewBridge Project to learn about survival strategies found in landscapes considered uninhabitable by humans. How might we continue to inhabit a damaged planet? How can we learn collectively from nature's methods of survival and transformation? Louise Mackenzie is presenting some works and participatory events developed through the BioDwelling Network, that explores how we relate to biotechnological bodies from microbes to mycelium. BioDwelling explores the future of biotechnological innovation in the built environment, inviting members of the public to interact with, and share their views on living with, biological materials through artist-led activities. Laura Harrington presents diss/onance (ecotone) - a new 6 channel sound installation, recorded in a Teesdale Nature Reserve, composed of two voices and a sike (stream), that explores being in relation interpersonally and with a particular landscape. Laura will also host a workshop and film screening that relates to her recent Fieldworking project. Other artists involved include Angharad Davies & Éliane Radigue, Carrie Ayagaduk Ojanenm Dani Admiss & Luiza Prado de O Martins, Dwellbeing & Sara Cooper, For Solidarity & Katie Pollard, Iris Priest & Katy Cole, Michele Allen, Michelle Williams Gamaker, Paul Stewart & Christo Wallers and Rob Smith Habit, Ability! design by Niall Greaves

CNoS member @crystalbennes opens her first UK solo

CNoS member @crystalbennes opens her first UK solo show at @gallerynorthprojectspace this week. HERMES & THE VEIL
Crystal Bennes
20.01.22 - 05.02.22 On the reverse side of the Nobel Medal for Physics, awarded to a man every year bar three since 1901, appears an unusual image: ‘Science unveiling Nature’. One female figure (the personification of Science) lifts a veil to reveal the nude torso of a second female figure (that of Nature). The inscription stretching around the edge reads, Inventas vitam iuvat excoluisse per artes or ‘it is good to improve (human) life through arts’. This image, and its ongoing dissemination, is one point of departure for the show. The exhibition consists of work produced in the last three years across a range of media as part of the artist's practice-based PhD at Northumbria University. Influenced by feminist critiques of science, Bennes explores gendered representations of nature and pervasive problems with sexism in scientific research culture, particularly physics. Throughout the exhibition, Bennes seeks to circumnavigate longstanding ‘two cultures’ debates in which arts and sciences are defined either as oppositional or complementary. Instead, she self-consciously acts as a Hermes-like figure, moving between two worlds. Through extensive research and field trips to particle physics laboratories, Bennes brings together multiple questions relating to materiality and surface, representation and ethical agency in both art and science. This exhibition is open at Gallery North, Ground Floor Sandyford Building, City Campus NE1 8QE: Tuesday - Friday 12.30pm-4.30pm, and Saturday 10am - 2pm. More detail on the artist and her research can be found on our website.

Interested in applying to become part of CNoS and

Interested in applying to become part of CNoS and study at Northumbria? Competitive funding for PhD study is available that covers fees and living costs (c. £15k per year). These are highly competitive funds shared across multiple universities and subjects. There are no set allocations. The two funding routes are:
• AHRC Northern Bridge Consortium
• Researcher Development Fund (RDF) (@northumbriauni) Application windows for these schemes are usually from October to January each academic year, to start in October the following year. We strongly recommend that you contact us prior to application for feedback on the viability and timeliness of your project. Please get in touch with either Professor Fiona Crisp or Professor Christine Borland as CNoS Research Group leads as soon as possible. We can then put you in contact with an appropriate supervisor to look over a draft of your proposal. Specific support is available for applying to the Northern Bridge Open Competition (internal deadline 10th December) through online Applicant masterclasses on 9th and 11th of November. Prospective supervisors may also find the sessions useful. https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/ahrc-northern-bridge-consortium-application-masterclass-tickets-186564047087 Slides will be posted on the website afterwards for those who can’t attend. Get in Touch:
Departments of Arts, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
cnos.update@gmail.com Image: Paul Goodfellow - Duddo Stones (2017-2019). Published as part of 'Reframing the Horizon within the Algorithmic Landscape of Northern Britain' - Goodfellow's paper from a special issue of the journal Arts dedicated to northern British edgelands.

Applications are currently open for new PhD Studen

Applications are currently open for new PhD Students at Northumbria University, supported as part of the CNoS Research Group. PhD proposals that lead to a practice-based research portfolio with complementary writing (c. 40,000 words) or written 80,000-word thesis on history or theory themes within the remit of CNoS supervision are welcomed. We are happy to receive proposals which include cross-disciplinary, cross Faculty and cross-institutional supervisory teams. To apply, you will need to provide a research proposal outlining your research area, methods, and initial literature review. To aid this process, we recommend that you use our PhD Proposal Template (see our website), which includes guidance on what to include. We strongly recommend that you contact either Professor Fiona Crisp or Professor Christine Borland as CNoS Research Group leads before applying. We can then put you in contact with an appropriate supervisor to look over a draft of your proposal. CNoS focuses on the cultural negotiation of the bio-medical, natural, environmental, computer and information sciences as a broad theme; supervisory expertise includes but is not limited to: •Ecological-systems thinking •Digital/data embodiment •The histories of art and technology •Psychedelic and counter-cultural engagements with technologies
•Media materiality
•Media and environment
•Real-Time simulations •New Materialism •Subjectivity, diversity and gender in science •Science fiction, speculative fabulation & folklore at the intersection of art and ecology •Intangible & embodied knowledge •Human & other than human synergies of care Get in Touch:
Departments of Arts, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
cnos.update@gmail.com See our website for further details, funding routes, and profiles of our current PhD Students.

BE THE SEA - Developing empathy with the coastal s

BE THE SEA - Developing empathy with the coastal seascape through sound. On Saturday 16 October CNoS member Louise Mackenzie is running a workshop with @hayley.jenkins_composer and @durhamwildlife. Starting at Roker Pier in the morning, and ending with a risograph workshop at @sunderlanduni in the afternoon. BE THE SEA is a project commissioned by #SeaAIR and part of #seascapescolab the creative and engagement project for Seascapes: Tyne to Tees Shores to Seas (@tynetotees) that asks how we can become more capable of living with and not just on the coast - in ways that are mutually sustainable with fellow human and non-human beings? There are several additional events throughout November, which allow participants to learn how to connect to the coastal seascape through sound art. You will learn skills in acoustic ecology, deep listening, field recording and expanded collage. For more info and to sign up, see the link in @louisekmackenzie’s bio. @sunderlandcreative @colabsunderland

You can now preorder Klara and the Bomb - a photob

You can now preorder Klara and the Bomb - a photobook about nuclear weapons, military photography, women programmers & the invention of modern computing by our member Crystal Bennes (@crystalbennes). “Klara and the Bomb is a photobook that charts connecting threads between the United States’ nuclear weapons research, women programmers and physicists, the invention of modern computers and computer simulations, military photography and nuclear colonialism. The book’s central figure is Klara von Neumann, or Klari as she was known to friends and family. Born in 1911 to a wealthy Jewish family in Budapest, Klara married the noted Hungarian-American mathematician John von Neumann in 1938 and emigrated to the United States the following year. Klara died in 1963. Her body was found on the beach not far from her home in La Jolla California. The coroner’s report stated that she committed suicide by drowning.” The book is sourced from many declassified documents and photographs from archives across the US, and it illustrates the militaristic and colonial connections of computing technology. It depicts the often unattributed roles women have played in both computing and nuclear weapons development, using Klara’s little-known life story as a lens through which the other histories are told. Find out more about this fascinating topic, and pledge your support for this presentation of Crystal’s research, at the link in her bio.

Load More… Follow on Instagram

Tweets by c_n_o_s

Newsletter – May 2021 Link

Events Archive