Leonardo Laser Linz - Lab Songs Vol. I

September 6, 2024, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Danube river bank around the Salonschiff Florentine & Kunsthalle Linz

Leonardo LASER Linz as part of Interface Cultures' participation in the Ars Electronica Festival 2024

You are welcome to our Leonardo LASER Linz event, to learn together with others and enjoy our Solar cooking pop-up workshop, pop-up exhibition and series of talks and discussions about other ways to rethink and experience new Laboratory formats. 

Scientific revolutions are characterized not only by discoveries but also by changes in their practices, goals, protocols, and evaluation methods. The laboratory, originally dedicated to scientific work and characterized by rigor and dedication to experimentation, now resonates across disciplines, promoting creativity and collaboration. Through our guests' experiences and songs, we will explore the laboratory as a heterotopic space capable of generating new agendas and structures for collective creation.

LASER CHAIRS: Christa Sommerer (AT) & Fabricio Lamoncha (ES/AT)

Full program

11am-3pm - Solar cooking workshop
Pop up cantina solar by Solar Manufaktur (Irene Lucas)

3pm-5pm - Leonardo LASER Linz - Lab Songs Vol. I
- Laura Benítez Valero - "Laboratory Philosophy: The Construction of Situated Knowledge" 
- Vanessa Lorenzo Toquero (aka Hybridoa) - "Hybrid media ecologies in times of digital and ecological transition"
- Irene Lucas Fernández - "Cantina Solar, a mobile art research work, touching and thinking about learning communities through solar cooking dispositves"

5pm - Kunsthalle exhibition opening 
"Ecology of Fire" by Volkan Dinçer

About the Program

Leonardo LASER Talks is a program of international gatherings that bring together artists, scientists, humanists, and technologists for informal presentations, performances, and conversations with the wider public. The mission of LASER is to contribute to the cultural environment of a region by fostering interdisciplinary dialogue and community-building opportunities in over 50 cities across 5 continents worldwide.
leonardo.info/event
leonardo.info/laser-talks

- A great circle of Taste, Culture & Cuisine on Complexity, a mobile research labor, conceived as a platform to cook, eat and built together. The Pop up Cantina Solar develops a quality space for low energy food processes, from cooked to raw and fermented, through the collective to the individual needs., the participants, can taste the energy of the sun, the richness and simplicity of low-tech inventions and the playfulness of the way that materials inspire us, dealing with solar cooking prototyping out of upcycling materials.
solarmanufaktur.at

-"Ecology of Fire" is displaying a bonfire GIF on a small screen powered by a solar panel.

It explores entropy and organization, likening the energy harvester and converter to an organism as a display of a bonfire. It reflects on humanity's technological evolution and relation to environment elements, portraying energy as a cycle of harvesting, converting, and controlling.
volkandincer.com

Speakers & Artists Bios

Laura Benitez has a Ph.D. in Philosophy and is a researcher, and university lecturer. Her research connects philosophy, art(s), and technoscience. She is an associate professor at the Department of Philosophy at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. She also teaches at Elisava. She has served as the coordinator of the Theory area in the Arts and Design Degree at Massana, where she has taught Critical and Cultural Studies. She has been a visiting researcher at the Ars Electronica Center and the Center for Studies and Documentation of MACBA. She has also collaborated with international institutions such as Interface Cultures Kunstuniversität Linz, Sónar Festival (Barcelona/Hong Kong), Royal Academy of Arts London, and the University of Puerto Rico. Between 2019 and 2021, she directed Biofriction, a European project (Creative Europe) on bioart and biohacking practices, led by Hangar in collaboration with the Bioart Society, Kersnikova, and Cultivamos Cultura. She is co-director of the Master on Design For Emergent Futures (MDEF).

Vanessa's experience spans industrial design engineering, trans-disciplinary artistic research and workshopology combining speculative design on emerging technologies, biomedia practices, transfeminism and open source philosophy. She has worked extensively with the European cultural and Swiss biohacking communities such as Hackteria, Utopiana Geneva, and Hackuarium. Currently based in Bilbao, Vanessa is coordinating a STEAM pilot project in the metropolitan area, aiming to create synergies among the local industrial tissue and the innovative global scene.
www.hybridoa.org

Irene Lucas is a visual artist working at the interrelation of science, art and technology. relating common territories of critical art practice, combining methods of nature, art and play pedagogy, The Expanded Garden in Vienna with the artist Christoph Euler or Corridor Breaks at Manifesta 8, in Murcia are some examples. She is the founder of the Solarmanufaktur and the art space toZOMIA.

Volkan Dinçer works focus on inter-system relations and ecological questions within a board research field ranging from perception tendencies to symbiotic relationship. Dinçer primarily produces his own electronic systems using various digital tools such as low level electronic, video, animation and sometimes combines them with living materials usually for blurring the boundaries between the systems and producing some questions in this way.