Alter Nature: Designing Nature – Designing Human Life – Owning Life

"If you change a living organism's properties, you could also change its interactions with the environment or the human body." (The Guardian)

Recent developments in bioscience and technology announce a biological revolution. This revolution would succeed the digital one and would make the latter look like childsplay. However, regardless of whether these announcements with regards to the biological revolution are merely to be understood as discourse or not, developments that pertain to the altering, manipulating and designing of nature raise questions. What could these new technologies imply? What might the impact of existing technologies when applied to different fields mean? These questions are raised in science, but also in business, policy, art and design.

Z33 – house for contemporary art in Hasselt, VIB, Hasselt University and LifeTechLimburg have joined forces for the first time in the organization of the symposium titled Alter Nature: Designing Nature – Designing Human Life – Owning Life. 15 international speakers will join the debate in three different sessions about the ability to design nature, the ability to design human life and questions of ownership. Every session consists of a keynote, followed by three short presentations and a moderated Q & A. The symposium will be conducted in English.

PROGRAM
OVERVIEW SPEAKERS
ABSTRACTS SPEAKERS

Z33, VIB, UHasselt and LifeTechLimburg wish to invite every scientist, artist, policymaker and collaborator, student or interested party to this symposium.

Friday 18 February 2011 – 9 am - 7.30 pm
UHasselt – Agoralaan Diepenbeek, Gebouw D (aula H6) map

Registration via via www.uhasselt.be/alter-nature. Registrations are closed.
Free entrance, registration required.

Alter Nature: Designing Nature – Designing Human Life – Owning Life is part of Alter Nature, an overarching project by Z33, the Hasselt Fashion Museum and CIAP in collaboration with the MAD-faculty, the University of Hasselt, the Flemish Institute for Biotechnology (VIB), KULeuven University and bioSCENTer.

Alter Nature symposium - abstracts speakers