Lisa Schonberg

Project: Human hearing is pretty mediocre – techniques for listening to hidden nonhuman soundworlds.

I will be building prototypes for interactive music composition systems with invertebrates in soil microhabitats. I am interested in nonhuman hearing perspectives and will be documenting and speculating on sonic entanglements between inter-specific, intra-specific, anthrophonic, and geophonic relations.

Bio

I am a composer, percussionist and sound artist with a background in ecology and entomology, & currently a PhD student in Electronic Arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. I make music and sound art based in ecological research with an emphasis on hidden invertebrate sound-worlds. I present my work in performance with my percussion ensemble, i, on albums, in Web-VR, in galleries & forests, and often contextualize it in print.

www.lisaschonberg.com


www.vimeo.com/lisaschonberg

www.soundcloud.com/secretdrumband

David Bowen

Project: plants and machine learning

I would like to create a series of art installations in which live plants train the computer that is responsible for caring for them.

Bio

David Bowen is a studio artist and educator whose work has been featured in numerous group and solo exhibitions nationally and internationally. Bowen’s work is concerned with aesthetics that result from interactive, reactive and generative processes as they relate to intersections between natural and mechanical systems. He is currently an Associate Professor of Sculpture and Physical Computing at the University of Minnesota.

https://www.dwbowen.com/

Harold Tay

Workshop: Make a hydrophone, listen to underwater sounds!

Record the mysterious Singing Fish that live in the lagoon!  If you made a hydrophone at the workshop, we’ll turn them into an impromptu stereo array to localise the Singing Fish! https://www.theguardian.com/environment/commentisfree/2021/apr/28/a-singing-fish-it-glows-green-during-courtship-and-looks-like-boris-johnsons-hardship-face

Bio

I’m an engineer. In past lives I’ve designed artillery, built Internet gateways for paging, banking, email, and worked on underwater acoustics and underwater robotics. Now I make passive acoustic recorders for wildlife conservation.

Betty Sargeant

Workshop

Making Weatherproof Biopolymers

Betty has been working with PluginHUMAN to develop carbon neutral and carbon negative working practices and materials. During Dinacon, Betty will continue this creative research, investigating ways of developing weatherproof, compostable biopolymers. These biopolymers can be used widely as a replacement for many commercial plastics.

Bio

Dr Betty Sargeant is an award-winning eco-tech artist from Australia. Betty is creative director of the art-tech studio PluginHUMAN. Details on @PluginHUMAN (Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/pluginhuman/) and at www.pluginhuman.com

Mónica Rikić

Week 4

Workshop: Handmade soft robots experiments (and other stuff that moves)

We will experiment with alternative materials to create soft (and whatever type) of robots that move with or without electronics. The goal is to learn about other mechanical systems and weird gears.

Bio

Electronic artists from Barcelona that likes to play with handmade robots and other mechanical systems. I also like to imagine alternative scenarios for technological worlds.