INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM

november 8 to 10, 2007

Praha, Tchek Republic

The conference aims to enquire into the major mutations that are impinging on the future of our world, on the evolution of human beings and the societies they constitute and consequently on human modes of knowledge, expression and communication. It intends to rely on the convergences and interactions presently being proposed by artistic, scientific and technological practices in order to foster imaginative experiments as well as visionary, anticipatory and symbolic activities.

MutaMorphosis tends to become an effective tool for analysis and action based on a multiplication of perspectives and the quality and the diversity of the conference’s participants-artists, scientists, engineers, researchers, theoreticians-as well as the pertinence of the themes that will be discussed. In particular, the conference will concentrate on the growing interest the worlds of the arts, sciences and technologies are showing in EXTREME AND HOSTILE MILIEUS. These milieus appear as symptomatic indicators of the mutations that are taking place, as potential vectors that make possible an awareness of the different problems that are at the origin of the disturbances that threaten the ensemble of the Earth’s eco-systemic balances.

MEETINGS

ART HANDICAP TECHONOLOGIES COGNITIVE SCIENCES

october 31 to november 3, 2007

MONTREAL - QUEBEC

CYPRES, since its creation in 1992, axis its reflexions and work on the exploration of the relations arts/sciences/technologies, and more particularly on the technological and artistic projections in direction of the person suffering from a physical, mental or social disability. The meeting with Louise Poissant* and her team at the time of manifestations such as Interfaces and sensoriality (2003) and Arts and Biotechnologies (2004), reveals the urgency to treat the problems of deficiency in its forms the most varied like one of the factors major in the inventiveness and the creativity of the means of substitution which are exerted in many fields : medicine, therapeuticy, technology, robotic, but also communication, cognition and art.

It seems important to evaluate the contributions of technologies and biotechnologies on the conditions of viability, autonomy and incapacity of the human beings and to observe the signs of new evolutions which would testify to the widening of their cognitive, mental, imaginary and symbolic capacities.

Mobile Immobilisé project proposes, at the time of meetings and workshops, to wonder about these new technological specific cultures, by joining together many scientific and technological researches undertaken in direction of the disability and the artistic experiments, using concepts and average analogues, treating of the same whole of problems and objectives, like those of virtual realities, the interactive devices, of the sound, linguistic, gestural and iconic expressions.

The meeting of these fields then generates several topics of reflexion as diversified as innumerable and the artistic experiments are posed then like a complementary and essential interrogation in the field of the expression (Multimodality, Behavior, Instrumentality and access machine, culture), of the communication (knowledge, sensoriality, cognition), in the field of the experimentation (construction of tools) and in the field therapeutic (support with the care).

In addition to the objective to stress the importance of the complementarity of research in direction of the world of deficiency, Mobile Immobilisé makes a point of showing that the artistic practices are not confined in the medium of art with properly spoken, but that there is a true appropriation of the current company, by artists carrying out of the reflexions as well to the technological, biotechnological plan, as on the political, economic, ecological and ethical level.

* The majority of research of Louise Poissant revolve around the Group of research in media arts which it directs since her foundation in 1989. The GRAM concentrates its research on the effect of new technologies in the field of art and the culture in general. " We work tools which in their turn work us " McLuhan said. This reflexion nourishes the research undertaken to the GRAM. Processes, techniques, instruments, critical and aesthetic concepts, finally a whole culture emerges from this immense workshop-laboratory which are media arts. The analysis of all these practices aims at determining the parameters of new forms of sensoriality and tries to say what is yet only experimental and, to many regards, in search of identity.

The european project named LOCUS proposes to explore the different locations, actions, and thoughts, that have been developed by the past, or which are conducted right now in the EU countries around the Utopia concept. The purposes of this project are :
  to itemize the different elements of the utopian patrimony by mapping out a synergy between the organisms that carry on the european utopias
  to initiate a communication device in order to organize some collaborations between the locations of utopias
  to develop accesses to a large audience for sharing the history, the strength, and the relevance of such european utopias
  to observe the emergence of contemporary utopias and to create the conditions of their spreading. With this defined background, CYPRES researches are specially orientated on the emergence of contemporary utopias connected to the transformations and the manipulations of the Living as a recurring and (at the same time) contemporary utopian project.

More information available in French

The european project ALTERNE, developed under the heading of the RDT-IST (Research and Development-Scientific and Technological Innovations), will end in February 2005. ARAPUCA, worked out by CYPRES, is built on 3 experimental projects which are also in a finishing stage : the Upokrinomenological Aberrations, the Stimutalogists / Electrifish, the Chromatologists / Chromatophorical Bestiary

These projects are matching up with the general orientations and the diverse specific levels at the core of the ALTERNE project, and considering the axis of research based on an alternative reality through the qualitative physic and carried out on the processing and the use of a virtual platform (a dolly ?), as a result of the convergence of digital technologies and therefor their use in terms of 3-D models, the interactivity, the immersion in virtual environments and mixed realities, the network connections...

Read more Modelling the Upokrinomena : Artificial Physiology for Artificial Life