Experimenta Social #44:
Future Nature Future City
Sun 20 Aug, 5.00 – 6.30pm
Free event | Booking essential
Experimenta Social and Melbourne Conversations, in collaboration with Library at the Dock, present two special conversations as part of the Now or Never Art Trail.
The discussions investigate how we connect and care for one another and how we might collectively thrive across physical and digital realms, now and into the future.
Future Nature Future City reimagines our relationship to sustainability and place through the lens of art, technology and architecture. The conversation places emphasis on the relationship between human beings, non-human intelligence, natural habitats, and the built environment.
Future Nature Future City responds to concepts investigated within Jon McCormack’s commission Holon, presented at Docklands 17-20 August as part of the Now or Never Art Trail. Holon is an responsive, audio-visual artwork that explores emergent collective intelligence and artificial life.
Speakers: Commissioned artist Jon McCormack, landscape architect Jock Gilbert and Boon Wurrung senior elder and founder of the Boon Wurrung Foundation N’arweet Carolyn Briggs.
Details:
Sun 20 Aug, 5.00 – 6.30pm
Library at the Dock, Level 1 Gallery
Access: Auslan interpretation
Co-presented by Melbourne Conversations and Experimenta Social.
About the Speakers
Jon McCormack
Jon McCormack is an Australian-based artist working at the nexus of art, technology and society. His experimental practice is driven by an enduring interest and research in computing.
Jon McCormackBoonwurrung Country
Melbourne, VIC, Australia
Jon McCormack is an artist based in Boonwurrung Country, Melbourne, Australia who works at the nexus of art, technology and society.
McCormack’s experimental practice is driven by an enduring interest in computing and incorporates generative art, music and sound art, evolutionary systems, computer creativity, physical computing and artificial intelligence. Inspired by the complexity and wonder of the natural world, his work is concerned with electronic ‘after natures’: alternate forms of artificial life which, due to unfettered human progress and development, may one day replace a lost biological nature.
Jon is also the founder and director of SensiLab, a creative technologies research laboratory based at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.
CONNECT
Jock Gilbert
Jock Gilbert is an academic, Program Manager of the Bachelor of Landscape Architectural Design at RMIT University and co-leader of RMIT University’s Yulendj Weelam Lab.
Jock GilbertWurundjeri Country
Melbourne, VIC, Australia
Jock Gilbert is an academic, Program Manager of the Bachelor of Landscape Architectural Design at RMIT University and co-leader of RMIT University’s Yulendj Weelam Lab. Jock’s research interests lie in community engagement, regenerative practice and Indigenous-led design research, focused on the convergence of concepts of place, Country and landscape. This interest has been developed through projects in western New South Wales, with particular attention to the References Biographies relationship between land-use, water and community culture through the lens of the Murray-Darling Basin.
N'arweet Carolyn Briggs
N'arweet Carolyn BriggsBoon Wurrung Country
VIC
Carolyn is a Boon Wurrung senior elder and is the chairperson and founder of the Boon Wurrung Foundation.
A descendant of the First Peoples of Melbourne, the Yaluk-ut Weelam clan of the Boon Wurrung, she is the great-granddaughter of Louisa Briggs, a Boon Wurrung woman born near Melbourne in the 1830’s.
Carolyn has been involved in developing and supporting opportunities for Indigenous youth and Boon Wurrung culture for over 40 years.
In 2005, she established the Boon Wurrung Foundation, which has been responsible for significant work in cultural research, including restoration of the Boon Wurrung language. The Foundation also helps connect Aboriginal youth to their heritage.
Carolyn has worked across numerous communities for over 40 years and is currently completing her Doctorate in Philosophy researching assisting urban indigenous youth to understand indigenous knowledge.
Her cultural knowledge and experience has been recognised by communities throughout Australia. These achievements have been recognised by:
- Being Awarded the National Aboriginal Elder of the Year in 2011 by the National NAIDOC Committee;
- Being inducted into the Victorian Honour Roll of Women in 2005;
- Being entered into the 2012 and 2013 “Who’s Who Australia”;
- Being appointed an Elders in Residence at RMIT University 2017;
- Being inducted into the 2017 Victorian Aboriginal Honour Roll.
She is the author of “Journey Cycles of the Boon Wurrung: Stories with Boonwurrung Language”.