LIVING TECHNOLOGIES / Renewable Futures (RF) Network Living Technologies: RF THEMATIC KEYNOTE PANEL (Plenary Session) Kristin BERGAUST / Hege TAPIO / Maria CASTELLANOS / Stefano NICHELE / Jens HAUSER Moderator: Rasa SMITE

Splintered Realities Art Science festival 2022 RIXC GALLERY Riga https://festival2022.rixc.org/

Kristin BERGAUST. Living Technologies / Oslofjord Ecologies

FeLT, Futures of Living Technologies engages in the relations and intersections that occur between human beings, living organisms, environments and machines, relations that might evoke a sense of the uncanny. Following artistic sensibilities and concerns, artistic methods can provide entrance points that open new questions and speculation in artistic and public discourse. Fast advancement in life-sciences and life-technologies heightens the importance of moving beyond dichotomies: the locked discourses that on one end create unreflected technophilia and on the other a standstill of technophobia. We strive for diversity, addressing complex issues in complex manners, while not looking for unified aesthetics or styles. However, framing the work in an ecological discourse has been a main driver and common denomination.

The FeLT project emerged from the work of individuals who invested their time and research interests for art and science, embodied through practices of contemporary art, humanities, computer science, human-computer interaction, neuroscience and experimental pedagogy.

Three tracks of research are identified within FeLT: Making with: multispecies communication and co-creation. Practices of communication and co-creation with living organisms – such as microorganisms, plants or animals – might involve working with technologically complex systems as well as agriculture or indigenous knowledges and traditions. Living technologies: living environments, humans, machines, intelligence, life and emotions, including how complex structures and functions of living organisms have entered the hybrid and synthetic technologies. Sensorium: how we experience, interpret and develop applied aesthetics today. How can the sensorium as an expanded aesthetics provide new modalities for connecting with natural environments?

FeLT started from educational activities in the first place. Now, a new round of critical questioning is needed: How can we undertake the next step from an artistic transdisciplinary research environment to enter an educational reality and institutional framework? What can our contribution be to different levels of education and to different professional trajectories? What possible educational needs can be identified for the future of such trajectories and levels? Could we develop education to change the institution?

Kristin Bergaust is educated at the University of Oslo and at the National Academy of Fine Art in Oslo. She works as an artist, researcher and educator. She is a professor at the Faculty of Technology, Art and Design in OsloMet, Oslo since 2008. She was formerly professor and head of Intermedia at Trondheim Academy of Fine Arts, NTNU (2001-2008) and artistic director of Atelier Nord media lab for artists (1997 to 2001). Currently, she is interested in transdisciplinary efforts to contribute to ecological and transcultural processes in urban contexts through artistic research methods and technological developments. She leads FeLT Futures of Living Technologies https://www.feltproject.no. Further projects and documentation of research and artistic work at https://www.kristinbergaust.com

Hege TAPIO. Caring Futures Today, questions of technology, future sustainability, care and welfare services are inevitably entangled. According to Norwegian Public Paper Innovation in care (NOU 2011:11), welfare technology is defined as “technological assistance that contributes to increased safety, security, social participation, mobility and physical and cultural activity, that strengthens the individual’s ability to manage themselves in everyday life despite illness and social, psychological or physical disability”. If we follow this definition, welfare technology is an undivided benefit for us citizens. But what is at stake if welfare technology also contributes to insecurity, confusion, and loneliness? This is the starting point for the interdisciplinary research project Caring Futures: Developing care ethics for technology-mediated care practices at the University of Stavanger, funded by the Norwegian Research Council. This project examines tensions between society’s need for new technology on the one hand, and relational and professional care cultures on the other. How do we experience, recognise and understand care, humanity and vulnerability under new technological regimes? The overall aim of the project is to contribute radically interdisciplinary research that can ensure quality in technology-mediated care practices, and safeguard care ethical perspectives in relational work. This has implications for both practice, policy and education. As part of this interdisciplinary approach, we have incorporated the art exhibition CARING FUTURES into our project. In collaboration with artist, curator and researcher Hege Tapio (i/o/lab, OsloMet), we have invited eight artists who, in different ways, pose critical, creative and speculative questions about humanity and care in our time characterized by rapid changes and technological solutions to challenges in society. With the art exhibition CARING FUTURES, we hope to take care ethics and it’s emphasis on social and collective processes seriously. Our aim for the art exhibition is to facilitate creative spaces for reflection and understanding of what is happening around us today, both socially, culturally and politically.

Hege Tapio is an artist and a curator based in Stavanger, Norway. Her interest in emerging media interconnecting art, new technology and science, led to the foundation of i/o/lab – Center for Future Art since 2001, where she established and curated Article biennial – a festival for the electronic and unstable art. Tapio is currently pursuing her artistic research as Phd fellow at FeLT – Futures of Living Technologies at OsloMet. Tapio is also involved as curator in the research project Caring futures: developing new care ethics for technology-mediated care practices (QUALITECH) at the University of Stavanger. And part of the team of NOBA – Norwegian Bioart Arena, developing and programming the Norwegian hub for Bioart located at Vitenparken by Campus Ås, Norway. Ingvil Hellstrand is associate professor in gender studies at the Department for Caring and Ethics, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Stavanger, Norway (UiS). Her research interests are storytelling practices and knowledge production, science fiction and the posthuman. Ingvil is currently involved in the interdisciplinary research project Caring Futures: Developing Care Ethics for Technology-Mediated Care Practices as lead of the work package Imaginaries of the Care Robot, bringing together science fiction as method, care and technologies of care, and posthuman ethics. Ingvil is a member of The posthumanities hub, and a founding member of The Monster Network.

Maria CASTELLANOS. Other Intelligences. Plant-Human Interspecies Dialogues Other intelligences is an artistic research that aims to explore the communication between plants remotely by using AI tools. Through this project we seek to know more about the plants’ language and behavior and try to understand a better these living beings with we co-habit in the Earth. Through the use of technology as a tool, we have created a network of plants connected to the Internet. A network analogous to the network of roots and mycelia of fungi that take place in the forest that the Professor of Forest Ecology Suzanne Simard began to study almost three decades ago. This woods’ network allows trees and plants to communicate with each other by sharing information and nutrients. In Other Intelligences, our network, is made up of data, algorithms and actuators, and it allows us to investigate alternative relationships with nature and technology through the use of artistic methodologies.

Maria CASTELLANOS. is an artist and researcher working at the intersection of art, science, technology and society. She is currently working as a postdoc researcher at Oslo Metropolitan University, in the framework of FeLT Project –Futures of Living Technologies– She holds a Bachelor’s degree and a Doctorate in Contemporary Arts Practices from the University of Vigo (SP), with an Extraordinary Phd Award 2016. Her dissertation entitled “The bionic skin. Technological Membranes as Body Interfaces in Artistic Practice” focuses on technological prosthesis, more specifically in hybridizations between cyborgs and wearables as a paradigm of extending human sensorial capabilities. Her artistic practice focuses primarily on the research about human sensory boundaries and the creation of complex systems that promote the communication and the understanding between humans and non human beings.

Stefano NICHELE. Towards Living Technologies and Artificial General Intelligence Abstract: Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming more and more pervasive as it is deployed in a wide variety of domains that impact our everyday life. While such AIs are “narrow”, meaning that they can only perform very specific tasks, they may still produce decisions that are biased, discriminating, not transparent, and with possibilities of misuse. AI research is now transitioning towards more general artificial intelligence, that is AIs that are able to generalize to different domains like humans do. The success of AGI will transform our society into a hybrid ecosystem of biological organisms and living technologies. Such transition poses new ethical, moral, and social challenges.