Bio Silvia Casini

Senior Lecturer in Film and Visual Culture at the University of Aberdeen (UK) where she teaches courses to students in the humanities and in the life sciences. Her work is situated at the crossroad of visual culture, science and technology studies, and the medical humanities. Her research, supported by grants coming from, among others, The Leverhulme Trust, the AHRC and the Carnegie Trust features in international journals such as Configurations, Leonardo, Contemporary Aesthetics, Nuncius: Journal of the Material and Visual History of Science, The Senses and Society. Among her most recent publications there is “What counts as data and for whom? The role of the modest witness in art-science collaboration” (Routledge Handbook of Art, Science, and Technology Studies, 2021). In her curatorial work to date, she is committed to study art-science fertilization projects in their material environments (museums, laboratories, cities) to assess how the reconfigure existing forms of visibility, thinking and agency. She published two monographs: ll Ritratto-Scansione (Mimesis 2016, in Italian) and Giving Bodies back to Data (MIT Press 2021).

Abstract: Giving Bodies back to Data

Today, almost forty years after development of the world’s first clinical full body Magnetic Resonance Image scanner in John R. Mallard’s Aberdeen medical physics laboratory, biomedical images help interpret the clinical significance of biodata for patients all around the world. But what is it that the image-makers in Mallard’s lab first saw before a protocol solidified for generating images out of data, data from signal/noise, and interpretation of the data from the data-generated image? How do scientists visualise when an emerging image-generating technique is under development, when the protocol for image generation/data interpretation has not yet crystallised into a visual output? What do they see? And how is what they see reinvented? Drawing upon her recent book Giving Bodies back to Data (MIT Press 2021) Silvia Casini opens up the black box of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) technology emphasising the important but often overlooked roles played by aesthetics, imagination, and craft practice in medical visualisation. Combining history, laboratory ethnography, archival research, and collaborative art–science, Casini retrieves the multiple presences and agencies of bodies in data visualization, mapping the traces of scientists' body work and embodied imagination in data visualisation. The talk is a call to both artists and scientists to remain or become a humanist in the technologically dense world of biomedicine and neuroscience which is increasingly characterised by operational images and machine vision.  

Bio Alberto T. Estévez

(Barcelona, 1960), Architecture Ph.D. of Sciences (UPC, 1990), Art History Ph.D. of Arts (UB, 2008). With a professional office of architecture and design (Barcelona, 1983-today). Chairman-Professor in Architecture, teaching in different universities, in the knowledge’s areas of architectural design, architectural theory and art history. Founding as first Director the ESARQ School of Architecture (UIC Barcelona, 1996), as an avant-garde international school: it was then the first school in the world with an architecture curriculum including –among other things– mandatory subjects of sustainability and international cooperation, as well as laboratories for biological architecture (genetics: for first time in the history of architecture, geneticists working with architectural objectives, in a real application of genetics to architecture) and digital architecture (manufacturing). He also founded two research lines there, with two officially accredited research groups, two masters’ degrees and Ph.D. programs: “History, Architecture and Design” (UIC Barcelona, 1998- today) and “Genetic Architectures / Biodigital Architecture” (UIC Barcelona, 2000-today). As well as the Master of International Cooperation with Alex Levi and Amanda Schachter (UIC Barcelona, 2004-today). He was also the Founder and 1st Director of the UIC Barcelona PhD Program of Architecture. He has written more than two hundred publications, and has participated in a large number of exhibitions, congresses, committees and juries. He was also Vice Chancellor / General-Manager of UIC Barcelona, where he is currently the Director of iBAG-UIC Barcelona (Institute for Biodigital Architecture & Genetics) after founding it.

Abtract: The Biodigital Age: from DNA to the Planet

The Zeitgeist of the 21st century, and the signs of our time, also deserve due attention from Design, Architecture, Urbanism and Art, and how these disciplines can take advantage from the fusion with others. And at the moment in which the human being has begun to be aware of the appearance of the so-called Anthropocene, then considerations and actions are required that are already radically different from how things have been experienced up to now. And more when these have changed so much in such a short time, that there has hardly been time for a correct analysis and assimilation. Thus, while the Modern Movement of the 20th century worked to design “from the spoon to the city”, we, the inhabitants of the 21st century, in order to better face the enormous current challenges, can already transcend that work only on the surface of the things, as it had been done for millennia. Now, with the current technological possibilities, it is time to design “from DNA to the planet”. From the cell and the bit to the Solar System, passing through all intermediate scales. Some of the multiscale and transdisciplinary projects and works of Alberto T. Estévez, “from DNA to the planet”, are then shown in this lecture: briefly present some of the most singular milestones reached by architecture and design, which after all are doors to unusual frontiers of knowledge, with the hope of having served to broaden the fields and horizons of architecture and design, for the benefit of our planet and all of humanity.

Bio: Viola Rühse 

Viola Rühse  works as the head of the Center for Image Science and course director at the University for Continuing Education Krems in Austria. She studied History of Art and German Language and Literature at the universities of Hamburg and Vienna. She received her PhD with a dissertation on Siegfried Kracauer’s film writings (Viola Rühse, Film und Kino als Spiegel. Siegfried Kracauers Filmschriften aus Deutschland und Frankreich, Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter 2022). Her current main themes of research in addition to film theory are photography, modern and contemporary art, and critical theory. She also works as an artist/photographer. One of her critical essays was granted the Bazon Brock Essay Award.

Abstract: Sound patterns and voice figures: An analysis of selected sound visualisations in the 18th and 19th century from the perspective of “Bildwissenschaft” (image science)

In the late 18th century, the German physicist and inventor Ernst Florens Friedrich Chladni (1756-1827) discovered beautiful vibration figures that can be displayed with the help of small particles such as sand on a metal plate. His so-called “sound figures” continue to inspire artists, designers, and architects to this day. In my paper, I will take a detailed look at Chladni figures from the perspective of image science, and then analyse an example of the further development of Chladni patterns by Megan (Margaret) Watts Hughes (1842-1907) in the 19th century. She created colourful and special Chladni figures using pastes and liquids with her voice that show interesting parallels to early abstract art by women. I will conclude the presentation with some reflections on the interdisciplinary image science methodology that I used.

Bio Kivanç Tatar

Artist/technologist/researcher who works in the intersection of Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Music, Interactive Arts, Design, and Human-Computer Interaction. His research in musical AI has been expanding to multimodal applications that combine music with movement computation, or visual arts. His computational approaches have been integrated into musical and audiovisual performances, interactive artworks, immersive environments including virtual reality. His interdisciplinary work has been exhibited across the globe; including the notable events of the cultural program at Rio Olympics 2016, the Ars Electronica Festival 2017 and 2020, CHI 2018, Mutek Montreal 2018, and Contemporary Istanbul PlugIn 2019. 

Currently serves as an Assistant Professor in Interactive AI at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden; and a WASP-HS fellow.

Bio: Răzvan Nica

Răzvan Nica has taught architectural theory, urban sociology, and architectural design for the past 17 years. Along with inter- and transdisciplinary educational strategies that link architecture to the social and cultural context, he investigates diagrammatic representations and their usage as documentation and educational resources. In 2013, he received his PhD from Bucharest's "Ion Mincu" University of Architecture and Urban Planning for research on the morphological, psychological, and sociological connections between architecture and temporality. At the "Gheorghe Asachi" Technical University of Iaşi, he currently serves as vice dean of the "G.M. Cantacuzino" Faculty of Architecture.

Abstract: InterARCH - interdisciplinary educational practices for architecture

Today it is clear that the university curriculum needs to be modified in order to define a wider cultural horizon for future architects. This goal can also be attained through extracurricular activities that link architectural education and design to the contemporary global culture. The ability to involve experts from a variety of academic disciplines, including architecture, literature, philosophy, psychology, and sociology, is the main benefit of these initiatives. So, by exchanging research and project development approaches, we can learn more about the function that architecture plays in modern society. In this regard, the "G.M. Cantacuzino” Faculty of Architecture organized two events: the National Symposium on "Psychologies, Dwellings, and Architectures in Romanian Prose of Yesterday and Today" and the workshop on "SF(a) - Society. Film. Architecture," which brought together students and lecturers from a wide range of disciplines. Today, it is critical to employ a hermeneutical framework, to approach each project from various angles, to test and challenge the current cultural and architectural boundaries, as well as to use transdisciplinary research techniques. By doing so, we can blur the borders between art, architecture, urban planning, and social sciences through the interdisciplinary approach to any task, regardless of scale. Complementary to working in teams with very diverse backgrounds, such interdisciplinary activities also have several additional objectives – the development of critical thinking and synthesis capacity, the familiarization with new study methods, and the borrowing of research tools from other fields. Through such activities that complete the curriculum of higher education, the role of architecture as an essential part of contemporary culture is redefined.

Bio Ioana Moldovan:

Architect, PhD civil engineering | Associate professor of Buildings and Management, Faculty of Civil Engineering, Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Her research sits at the intersection of structural engineering and architecture. Currently Ioana is working on a research project where drones equipped with infrared cameras are used to map the built heritage to inform energy efficiency tools and policy in historical buildings.

Title: Mapping energy efficiency in heritage buildings