From Augmentation to Ecological Aesthetics

Spring 2022 – CMA seminar

Week 9 - Julian Stadon: From Augmentation to Ecological Aesthetics

Time: 29th March 2022 4:30PM HKT

Zoom Meeting Information:

CMA seminar - Spring2022 - w9 - Julian Stadon

Time: Mar 29, 2022 04:30 PM Hong Kong SAR

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Meeting ID: 990 6865 5239

Passcode: cma

Abstract:

This seminar offers an overview of seventeen years of artistic research in the fields of Augmentation and Ecological Aesthetics, along with an introduction to the recently developed TeleAgriCulture Platform, and the subsequent projects that were developed using it. It argues that, through the convergence of both Augmentation and Ecological Aesthetics and biodigital systems in Art, we can better understand our complex and multi-scalar relationships within these systems and therefore plan our Post-Anthropocenic futures more appropriately. Following an overview of Augmentation and Ecological Aesthetics, this talk will present a journey through several practice-based research projects that situate in these liminal, yet traversing fields, including a mixed reality organ trade network that includes biometric scanning and DIY organ farming, a video surveillance based real time tracking system for both protozoan cells and people that presents itself in mixed reality social settings, set to a musical score, a photosynthetic t-shirt developed for Stella McCartney, an ongoing collaboration, that uses remote atmospheric data hubs for post-anthropocenic algorave performance, and most recently, the TeleAgriCulture platform.

Through the presentation of these projects, this seminar will argue that transdisciplinary artistic practice requires a departure from merely articulating ecological issues and presenting, discussing, or speculating on them, towards a situation where we are more actively developing solutions for these issues and embedding these in everyday scenarios, beyond galleries and traditional modes of artistic presentation. Furthermore, that Augmentation Aesthetics can, through participation in embodied bio-digital systems, merge with Ecological Aesthetics to allow for wider audiences to gain deeper understandings and therefore more empathetic responses to these issues.

Speaker Bio:

Julian Stadon is a subjective realist, artist, designer, curator, researcher, and educator originally from Ngarluma country in North Western Australia . His nomadic

practice-based research interfaces art, bio-digital entanglements, identity, embodied interactivity, food ecologies, sustainability, culture and society. His PhD thesis examines Post-Biological Identity and Augmentation Aesthetics through the Data Body Trader project, the establishment of The Mixed and Augmented Reality Art Organisation and the iterative processes, outcomes and conclusions resulting from these endeavours. Stadon haspresented and his work and been academically active for nearly twenty years across five continents and currently teaches on the Interface Cultures program at Kunstuniversität Linz. He also runs an experimental agriculture project TeleAgriCulture and often works with Stadtwerkstatt, V2_, Donautics and Scwhemmland.