111th metaPhorest Seminar: BCL / Georg Tremmel + Henri Tan
Friday, October 17th, 2025, 19:00-20:40
ONLINE
This seminar will be held online. Zoom Link
BCL / Georg Tremmel: From Inter-actions to Intra-actions - Artistic Research into BioMedia
Georg will give an introduction to his Artistic Research and Practice in relation to biological art/biomedia. He will talk about his journey from Media Art to Bio+Media Art.
About Georg Tremmel
Georg studied Media Art at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna with Peter Weibel and Interaction Design at the Royal College of Art (RCA) in London with Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby. Georg also has a background in Computer Science and worked at the Laboratory for DNA Information Analysis at University of Tokyo on the Information Visualization of Cancer Genomics. He formed the Artistic Research Frame BCL (Biological Computer Lab) as both a reference and continuation of Heinz von Foerster’s original BCL. Georg is long-term Artist-in-Residence & Visiting Researcher at metaPhorest/Hideo Iwasaki Lab at Waseda. He initiated the BioClub Tokyo, Japan’s nicest BioCommunity and Open Bio Lab, where he is leading the synbio education programmes like the BioHack Academy and HTGAA (How to Grow Almost Anything). Georg is also currently pursuing his PhD in Artistic Research at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna.
English
Georg's talk will be in English.
Henry Tan: Pillars of Creation 1.0
About Henry Tan
Henry, member of FREAK Lab Thailand, metaPhorest Japan, and 2024 resident artist at CGSB, NYUAD, Henry explores the boundaries between life and simulation. He investigates how emerging technologies like synthetic biology, mixed reality an .brain stimulation.
About the talk
Pillars of Creation is an interpretation of the four-armed god of creation, Brahma, embodies the cyborgian nature of the present human being. Today, our bodies are transformed by technology that operates on us, in us, and with us. Tan’s Brahma sculpture holds aloft in each of his four hands a symbolic artifact, variously representing knowledge, as a DNA printer and synthesizer; cosmic energy, as a clinostat and brain organoid on a chip; time, as a a “dementia” tourbillon clock; and finally sacrifice, as a cultivated yeast or bacteria. Each of these objects tell a story about the future that human society is crafting for itself–will we become gods or machines?
English
Henri's talk will be in Japanese.