Hybrid Futures:
Of Algos, Plants and the Vegetariat
Špela Petrič
20.01.2021
By recognising our common embeddedness within the logic of algorithms, Špela Petrič's recent work examines the potential of machine learning, AI, and robotics to create compelling new ways of caring for Earth’s creatures and habitats.
In the Plant-Machine Project an interdisciplinary team of scientists, artists, programmers, and engineers work towards making a machine that thinks itself a plant. What emerges at the nexus of art, computation, and vegetal beings hopefully formulates new possibilities of interspecies relations, therefore recuperating algorithms from the grasp of surveillance capitalism.
In the Plant-Machine Project an interdisciplinary team of scientists, artists, programmers, and engineers work towards making a machine that thinks itself a plant. What emerges at the nexus of art, computation, and vegetal beings hopefully formulates new possibilities of interspecies relations, therefore recuperating algorithms from the grasp of surveillance capitalism.
Špela Petrič
Špela Petrič is a Ljubljana and Amsterdam based new media artist who has been trained in the natural sciences and holds a PhD in biology. Her artistic practice combines the natural sciences, wet biomedia practices, performance, and critically examines the limits of anthropocentrism via multi-species endeavours. She envisions artistic experiments that enact strange relations to reveal the ontological and epistemological underpinnings of our (bio)technological societies. Her work revolves around the reconstruction and re-appropriation of scientific methodology in the context of cultural phenomena, while working towards an egalitarian and critical discourse between the professional and public spheres. Petrič received several awards, such as the White Aphroid for outstanding artistic achievement (Slovenia), the Bioart and Design Award (Netherlands), and an Award of Distinction at Prix Ars Electronica (Austria)https://www.spelapetric.org/
https://www.spelapetric.org/apetric
.org/
Špela Petrič is a Ljubljana and Amsterdam based new media artist who has been trained in the natural sciences and holds a PhD in biology. Her artistic practice combines the natural sciences, wet biomedia practices, performance, and critically examines the limits of anthropocentrism via multi-species endeavours. She envisions artistic experiments that enact strange relations to reveal the ontological and epistemological underpinnings of our (bio)technological societies. Her work revolves around the reconstruction and re-appropriation of scientific methodology in the context of cultural phenomena, while working towards an egalitarian and critical discourse between the professional and public spheres. Petrič received several awards, such as the White Aphroid for outstanding artistic achievement (Slovenia), the Bioart and Design Award (Netherlands), and an Award of Distinction at Prix Ars Electronica (Austria)https://www.spelapetric.org/
https://www.spelapetric.org/apetric
.org/
Wednesday 20th January
Start time – 6:30pm
Theme: Bio-tech ecosystems of the human and the non-human
HYBRID FUTURES: Hosting a series of critical talks with leading-edge practitioners and thinkers around the interaction between humans and machines, curated and led by Dr Betti Marenko, Reader in Design and Techno-Digital Futures at the University of the Arts London, Central Saint Martins. Learn More
Start time – 6:30pm
Theme: Bio-tech ecosystems of the human and the non-human
HYBRID FUTURES: Hosting a series of critical talks with leading-edge practitioners and thinkers around the interaction between humans and machines, curated and led by Dr Betti Marenko, Reader in Design and Techno-Digital Futures at the University of the Arts London, Central Saint Martins. Learn More
