Super-natural
Wednesday 19 September 2012

14:00 – 16:00hrs

Sneha Solanki with Dr. Wendy Smith

Venue
Fine Art Seminar Room
School of Arts and Cultures
The Quadrangle
Newcastle University


fed brain and heart
kept warm and wet
digested, extracted and ligated
heat-shocked, frozen and transformed


Artist Sneha Solanki will talk about her recent project- Super-natural, a work which makes a connection between two points in time, the peak in witchcraft from the cusp of the enlightenment period in Western history and the emergent molecular genetic sciences of today, both periods signaling the onset of revolutionary bio-political change.

In the first installment of this project Sneha constructed the central protaganist- 'Tituba'1. in a bacterial cell biology laboratory following synthetic biology2. protocols under the direction of researcher Dr. Wendy Smith.

Sneha will be joined by Dr. Wendy to discuss Synthetic Biology, a new and emerging area in molecular and genetic biology.

Super-natural is an ongoing project, initiated during an artist’s residency at the research 'Center for Bacterial Cell Biology' (CBCB), Newcastle University between 2011 - 2012 with the 'Synthetic Biology Research Group' and exhibited at the AV12 Festival, March 2012.

Further information
http://Super-natural- http://www.super-naturalproject.org/

1. Synthetic biology can be defined as the creation of new life using either existing or non-existing molecules which are developed to behave naturally as in nature, or to act un-naturally.

2. Tituba, a slave was the first to be accused of witchcraft during the Salem witchcraft trials,Massachusetts, USA in 1692.


Sneha Solanki is an artist and often works with technology and science to investigate and work in parallel to technological determinism, regularly employing methods of cultural agency, citizen science and surveillance. She has made works from the invisible signals from military bases, with plants and with computer viruses. For over 10 years and until early 2012, Sneha also co-directed an artists led organisation - Polytechnic which emphasised open and distributed approaches to art & technology.

Exhibitions include; Test Tube Food, Cultivation Field, Reading, UK; Super-natural, AV Festival, Newcastle-upon-tyne; Cultivation Lab, Our Land is Your Land, CCA, Glasgow, UK; Reclaiming the Nostalgia of Kitchen Science, for Open_Sauces at Fo.am, Brussels, BE; Field Recordings, Spectropia, Riga, LV; Reclaiming the Nostalgia of Kitchen Science, Open_Sauces, Brussels, BE; The_Lovers, Museum of Modern Art, Belgrade, CS and Brown University Watson Institute, Boston, USA .

http://electronicartist.net/solanki/
http://www.super-naturalproject.org/


Dr. Wendy Smith Synthetic Biology Research Group
The 'Synthetic Biology Research Group', part of 'Neuroscience and Computers' (BNC) includes researchers and students from a wide variety of disciplines, including Computing Science, Molecular Biology, Microbiology, Genetics and Engineering. The group won a Gold Medal for the 1998 iGEM (international Genetically Engineered Machines) competition, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA and are one of the few undertaking research in this area. Led by Prof. Anil Wipat, the group work at the world’s first major research centre on the molecular and cellular biology of bacterial cells- the 'Centre for Bacterial Cell Biology', a category 3 laboratory at Newcastle University.

http://research.ncl.ac.uk/synthetic_biology/
http://bio-nexus.ncl.ac.uk/pages/lab.html
http://bio-nexus.ncl.ac.uk/pages/projects.html
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/cbcb/about/