112nd metaPhorest Seminar
Friday, October 24th, 2025, 19:00–20:40
112nd metaPhorest Seminar by Kate Scardifield: (Bio)mattering by Design
This event will be primarily in English, but questions and comments in Japanese are also welcome.
The next metaPhorest Seminar on October 24th welcomes artist and researcher Dr. Kate Scardifield.
Date and Time/Location
Monday, June 22, 2026, 19:00-21:00 Waseda University Research Facility for Advanced Biomedical Sciences (TWIns), 3rd Floor, Seminar Room 3 https://maps.app.goo.gl/Wy23SqPPMo3P7V8JA
ONLINE
This seminar can also be held online. Zoom Link
(Bio)mattering by Design
This presentation traces a body of research and creative practice concerned with the material, aesthetic, and ecological entanglements of aquatic life. Through the lens of bio(mattering)—an inquiry into how matter transforms and how environments co-compose—I will discuss recent projects working with algal organisms and other marine matter, drawing on laboratory experimentation, fieldwork, and speculative prototyping. By engaging design as both a mode of inquiry and of making, bio(mattering) proposes that material practice can function as a form of ecological thinking—one that situates creative production within the dynamic metabolism of Earth’s systems and planetary boundaries.
Kate Scardifield Biography
Dr. Kate Scardifield is an artist and materials researcher living and working on Gadigal Land (Warang/Sydney, Australia). For the past 15 years, her practice has operated at the nexus of art, design, science, and technology. She undertakes expansive and collaborative projects that investigate materials in states of transformation, the transition of critical systems of production, and the possibilities for more sustainable material systems and ecologies. Her works span large-scale installations, biological materials, adaptable textiles, sculpture, and video.
Kate is the founder of Deep Blue Bio, a transdisciplinary studio and research network that designs with biological processes and complex living systems. She is an Associate Professor at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), where she serves as Co-Director of the Material Ecologies Design Lab and is a member of the Algal Biosystems and Biotechnology group in the UTS Climate Change Cluster (C3).
Recent exhibitions include Siteworks: From a Deep Valley at Bundanon Art Museum (2022–23); Pliable Planes: Expanded Textiles and Fibre Practices at UNSW Galleries and Fremantle Arts Centre (2022–2024, touring); FREE/STATE: The Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art at the Art Gallery of South Australia (2022); and The lighter a thought the more it rises at Toi Moroki Centre of Contemporary Art, Christchurch, New Zealand (2019). Her writing on new materials and material systems has appeared in a range of platforms, including Art Monthly Australasia, The Lifted Brow, and academic journals such as the Journal of Applied Phycology, Journal of Cleaner Production, and World Futures Review.