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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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This talk covers the work of The Tissue Culture & Art project (TC&A) that began in 1996 as an R&D project into the use of tissue technologies as a medium for artistic expression. Some of TC&A's projects include the Pig Wings, Semi-living Worry Dolls, Disembodied Cuisine (the first time that tissue engineered meat have been grown and eaten), victimless Leather and Extra Ear 1/4 Scale (in collaboration with Stelarc). The talk will also present SymbioticA, A unique laboratory dedicated to the research and critic of the life sciences form an artistic perspective, located at the School of Anatomy & Human Biology, University of Western Australia.
Bio: Oron Catts is an artist, researcher and curator whose work with the Tissue Culture and Art Project has won numerous international awards. In 2000 he co-founded SymbioticA, an artistic research laboratory housed within the biological science department at the University of Western Australia. Under Oron¹s leadership SymbioticA has gone on to win the Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica in Hybrid Art (2007) and became a Centre for Excellence in 2008. In April 2009 Oron was recognised by Icon Magazine (UK) as one of its top 20 Designers, “making the future and transforming the way we work”.
SymbioticA is a unique artistic laboratory within a biological science department where artists can carry out hands-on artistic research into the life sciences. It is based at The School of Anatomy & Human Biology at the University of Western Australia in Perth, and has become a centre of excellence in 2008, offering a thriving residency, academic and hands-on workshop programmes. The artist Oron Catts co-founded SymbioticA in 2000 and is its current director. In collaboration with Ionat Zurr, he forms The Tissue Culture and Art Project. Oron Catts discusses biotechnological art works such as Victimless Leather and NoArk. These installations stage co-cultured cells in techno-scientific bodies, thus engaging with the taxonomical crisis of cultural and scientific perception of life, manifested by the existence of semi-living, lab grown life.