This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694
STARTS Symposium BOZAR, Brussels 22-23 June 2015
On June 22-23rd, a STARTS symposium was held at BOZAR in Brussels. Theme is the possible collaboration between Science & Technology and the Arts. The Symposium was organised as part of the work of the ICT ART CNECT study, a project launched by the European Commission in order to characterize and connect artistic communities of ICT researchers at all levels, including institutions, companies and individuals. The study is creating a map of individuals and institutions engaged in artistic practices within ICT research projects in Europe and world-wide. It is analysing best practices to enhance interaction between artists-researchers and other IT experts and to increase the impact of these interactions on innovation and creativity in Europe. It is identifing also requirements and demands.
From this analysis, recommendations will be drawn for a DG CONNECT strategy to engage more broadly with the arts in H2020.
Indeed, the aim of the ICT ART CNECT is to thereby contribute to enhancing creativity and innovation in society, technology, science, education, and business and to more gracefully better embedding science and technology in society.
ICT ART CNECT is organizing a number of round-tables in the most relevant conferences in the field and this symposium is a part of these events.
A series of top speakers were invite to deliver a keynote:
Gerfried Stocker from Ars Electronica, Austria; Nick Ervink, artist and Fried Vancraen, CEO of Materialise, Belgium; Laura Beloff, Head of Culture and Games ITU Copenhagen, Denmark; Mehdi Tayoubi, VP Stratégie interactive Dassault Systems, France; Hugues Vinet, Director R&D at IRCAM, France and Roger Malina, Executive Editor of Leonardo Publications at M.I.T Press, USA.
This was without any doubt the most interesting part of the programme, as each of these keynotes demonstrated the full potential of integrating Arts in Scientific projects. Gerfried Stocker was particularly well placed to address “How Can Artistic Practices Be Best Brought into Innovation in Industry?” given Ars Electronica’s track record. He also highlighted how Ars Electronica evolved and transformed over the years to become what it is now, in constant dialogue with innovations and ideas.
Artist Nick Ervink and Fried Vancraen, CEO of Materialise, a world-renowned Belgian 3D-printing company helped us to understand the enormous potential of creative ideas combined with the unimaginable possibilities of 3D printing. BOZAR held an expo “Making a difference / A difference in the making” which participants could visit, showing some of these breathtaking artworks.
Laura Beloff of ITU Copenhagen zoomed in on the fact of being an artist embedded in a scientific team, while Mehdi Tayoubi (Dassault) and Hugues Vinet (IRCAM), showed that also very large high-tech industries can benefit from interaction with the Arts.
For us, the highlight was however the intervention by our collegue Roger Malina, the well known editor of Leonardo Publications. The Leonardo journals are those in which many publications from Civic Epistemologies member KU Leuven are published. Roger brought to bear his tremendous pedigree in collaborating between science and arts to bring a very convincing appeal for new research.
In the afternoon there were parallel workshops. In the workshop on Data and Society, the many worries about privacy online quickly became prominent. But also the positive aspect, the fact that citizens can contribute to science and knowledge was brought to the fore and we were able to make reference to CIVIC epistemologies.
In the evening of the first day, there was also the opportunity to visit the exhibition ‘MAKING A DIFFERENCE / A DIFFERENCE IN MAKING’: a BOZAR exhibition of a series of 3D printed works from the arts, science, design and engineering, involving the Belgian 3D-company materialise.
Agenda and other information are available here: http://ictartconnect.eu/resource/id/55683c2cfda147b677efcf8a
See a report on : http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/news/starts-symposium
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