AHA! Festival

Speakers / Performers

Alejandro Aravena

Alejandro Aravena is an innovative Chilean Architect who, along with his colleagues in the ‘Do Tank’ firm Elemental, applies a design philosophy based on making inhabitants part of the solution instead of regarding them as a problem – building bridges of trust between people, companies and governments.

Alex Berman

Alex Berman is an artist and software developer working at the intersection of art, research and technology. Through the project AI_am he investigates how dance and artificial intelligence can cross-fertilize each other. He is also Lead Developer at Talkamatic, a company developing technology for conversational interfaces.
In his presentation, Alex will discuss the risks of superintelligence in relation to his own experience of working with AI artistically. Is a creative AI also a dangerous AI? How are the risks and promises of unpredictable AI linked to each other?
http://timebend.net/

Alexander Dam

Alexander Dam (1989, Stockholm - SE) started dancing streetdance at age 11. Since 2006 he has performed and competed within several styles of streetdance on a professsional level, plus taught streetdance in dance school both in Sweden and abroad. He has won such competitions as Uk Bboy Championships (2009), Locking Up Moscow (2011) and Juste Debout (2012). In the year 2009 Alexander started practicing contemporary dance and have since then worked with choreographers like Mari Carrasco, Fredrik Benke Rydman and Erik Linghede. 2012-2013 he studied contemporary dance at Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance (SEAD). 2014 he began working with swedish contemporary circus company Cirkus Cirkör and the performance Underart, directed by Olle Strandberg. The performance ended its tour in 2017 after which he was one of the dancers in Emelie Enlunds project and performance We Love Holocene, which premiered in Dansens Hus (Stockholm) in the spring of 2017.

Allan McRobie

Allan McRobie is Reader in Engineering at Cambridge University where he teaches structural design and stability theory. His current research interests are focussed on graphic statics, a method for the visual representation of the forces in structures. Prior to returning to academia, Allan was a structural designer, mostly in Australia, where he was responsible for the design of many bridges and towers.

Ami Skånberg Dahlstedt

Ami Skånberg Dahlstedt is a Swedish performer, choreographer, filmmaker and writer. Ami often creates stage work (solo, and collaborative) on the basis of her embodied life story in a particular theme. Her 90 min solo performance A particular act of survival received a performing arts award at Scenkonstgalan in Sweden in 2015. In April 2017 her new solo piece The laugh of the Medusa premiered, and it was very well received. The slow walk suriashi is essential in Ami's practice, which she has studied since 2000 with her teacher Nishikawa Senrei in Kyoto, Japan. Since 2014, she walks in suriashi in different spaces. Ami also explores the various accents her dancing contains, where nihon buyō has been an important source of knowledge the last seventeen years. In March 2015, Ami was appointed coordinator, together with the visual artist Dr Lucy Lyons, for the Nordic Summer University Study Circle 7: Practicing Communities - Transformative societal strategies of artistic research. The study circle is organized through Nordic Summer University, a well-established twice-yearly symposium. Ami is a member of the Peer Review board of Journal of Artistic Research since February 2017.

Anna Kaczorowska

Anna is a researcher and teacher at the Department of Architecture, an urbanist with a background in architecture and city planning, practice covering a range of urban planning and design activities in mostly public settings. She believes in developing a Metalogue between society, ecology and design in an increasingly urban world, promoting integral urbanism and common concerns across disciplines met on the footing straddling both nature and culture of cities.

Anna Maria Orrù

The foundation of Anna Maria Orrù’s work is embedded in biomimicry, artistic research, food and in curating performative research, providing an alternate approach to the field of ecological urbanism, architectural-thinking, art and design. She behaves as a connective tissue, working in the interstitial spaces between disciplines by bringing a variety of approaches and talents to the table to creatively tackle issues around climate change. Her projects, and PhD research at Chalmers, cover the distinct topics of bodily engagement, food resource, architecture, senses and urbanism, explored through the study of organoleptic qualities in the choreography of urban spaces. Anna Maria Orrù has been a founding catalyst in the forming and accomplishment of the AHA festival in 2014 through 2016.
www.annamariaorru.com

Anna-Sophie Springer

Anna-Sophie Springer is an independent curator, writer, and co-founding director of K. Verlag, a publishing house based in Berlin. She is co-principal investigator of Reassembling the Natural, an exhibition-led inquiry into biodiversity loss and land use transformation funded by Germany’s Kulturstiftung des Bundes, and a founding co-editor of the intercalations: paginated exhibition series, published by K. Verlag and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in the context of Das Anthropozän Projekt. Her research-based practice merges curatorial, editorial, and artistic commitments by stimulating fluid relations among images, artifacts, and texts in order to produce new geographical, physical, and cognitive proximities, often in relation to historical archives and the book-as-exhibition.

Åsa and Carl Unander-Scharin

Åsa Unander-Scharin (PhD) is a choreographer, dancer and artist-researcher. She holds a position as professor of Innovative Art and Technology at Luleå university of technology and has been member of The Committee for Artistic Research at The Swedish Research Council. Carl Unander-Scharin is a Swedish professor, Phd, operatic tenor and composer.
As a resident soloist at the Royal Swedish Opera he has sung roles such as Count Almaviva (Rossinis) Gonzalve (Ravel) and Tamino (Mozart). Together they will be "Opera Mecanotrica" at the AHA festival.

Björn Meyer

For more than thirty years, Björn — Swedish-born and Swiss-based — has shaped a unique voice for his instrument inside the most diverse contexts. He has worked alongside Persian harpist and singer Asita Hamidi and is a long term collaborator with Tunisian oud master Anouar Brahem. He has spent more than twenty years with Swedish nyckelharpa player Johan Hedin and percussionist Fredrik Gille in Bazar Blå, co-defining the sound of contemporary Swedish folk music. For more than a decade he was a member of the minimalistic, zen-funk, groove-collective Nik Bärtsch’s Ronin. Provenance was released by ECM in 2017 and is their first, in a distinguished tradition of solo bass albums, devoted to the electric bass guitar.
His solo work is concerned with the experience of sound in acoustic spaces: “Even though the instrument is technically non-acoustic, the music is deeply influenced by the properties of the space where it is played. The many different ways in which acoustics affect my compositions and improvisations have always been sources of surprise and inspiration. There is definitely a second member in this solo project – the room!”
WEB: www.bjornmeyer.com
Written:
“.. Meyer’s immersive music has a unique musical provenance that is entirely his own.” Fred Grand - Jazz Journal
“.. Meyer has taken a unique approach to composition for solo bass guitar. It is one that will move the instrument forward as much as it will move the listener emotionally.” John Marley - Jazz Views

Bugge Wesseltoft

Since the early 1990´s Bugge Wesseltoft has made an impressive, truly post-modern transition from his ECM nordic jazz traditions. Playing and recording together with the likes of Jan Garbarek, Sidsel Endresen, Terje Rypdal, Nils Petter Molvaer, Jon Eberson to forming his own innovative New Conception Of Jazz group and exquisite label “Jazzland Recordings”.
Since 2004, Bugge has been developing a solo project. As you can expect from Bugge, his solo work covers a broad spectrum: from melodic piano parts to experimental and atonal music and noise (and even manages to find space to integrate a new version of a standard). Many rhythms and grooves, both primeval and modern, are looped and entwined, and often sounds are distorted and reshaped on the fly; the concerts have a strong free improvisational component.

David Chandler

David Chandler is Professor of International Relations, University of Westminster, and founding editor of the journal Resilience: International Policies, Practices and Discourses. His most recent monographs include: Ontopolitics in the Anthropocene: An Introduction to Mapping, Sensing and Hacking (Routledge, forthcoming 2018), Peacebuilding: The Twenty Years’ Crisis: 1997-2017 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017); The Neoliberal Subject: Resilience, Adaptation and Vulnerability (with Julian Reid) (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016) and Resilience: The Governance of Complexity (Routledge, 2014). His personal webpages can be found at: www.davidchandler.org

Delia Dumitrescu

Delia Dumitrescu is professor in textile design at the Swedish School of Textiles. Her research explores how the textile design methodology can be translated to the related design fields, e.g, product design, interiors, and architecture. Central notions of her research are patterns and transformability. Using practice-based methodology, her research develops cross-disciplinary design methods for Smart Surfaces— interactive textile surfaces as materials for body and space. Her research projects have been exhibited in different places around Europe, e.g., Salone Satellite, Milan, Responsive by Material Sense, Berlin, Hanover and Avantex, Frankfurt, CETI (Center for European Textile Innovation), France and Keller Gallery, MIT, Cambridge (MA).

Devdatt Dubhashi

Devdatt Dubhashi is Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering Chalmers, leading the machine learning group. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell University and has held positions at the Max Planck Institute for Computer Science, the University of Aarhus, and has been an expert consultant for the OECD on Data Driven Innovation.

Dougald Hine

Dougald Hine is a social thinker, writer, editor and the kickstarter of a series of organisations, including the Dark Mountain Project, which grew out of a manifesto which he wrote with Paul Kingsnorth in 2009. Since arriving in Sweden in 2012, his work has included two years as leader of artistic development at Riksteatern and roles with the Centre for Environment and Sustainable Development at Uppsala University and the Kaospilot school in Aarhus.

Etienne Turpin

Etienne Turpin is a philosopher, Research Scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Founding Director of anexact office, his atelier for design research based in Jakarta and Berlin. Together with Anna-Sophie Springer, he is a co-principal investigator of Reassembling the Natural. He is also a founding co-director of User Group Inc. LLP, a London-based, worker-owned cooperative building software for disaster response, emergency coordination, and environmental monitoring. Dr. Turpin is the co-editor of Fantasies of the Library (MIT Press, 2016), Art in the Anthropocene (Open Humanities Press, 2015), and Jakarta: Architecture + Adaptation (Universitas Indonesia Press, 2013), and editor of Architecture in the Anthropocene (Open Humanities Press, 2013).

Fabrizio Terranova

Fabrizio Terranova (b. 1971, Italy) is a filmmaker, activist, dramaturge and teacher at École de recherche graphique in Brussels, where he launched and co-runs the Master programme in Narration and Experimentation/Speculative Narration. He is also co-founder of Simili-Théâtre and a founding member of DingDingDong, an institute dedicated to raising awareness around Huntington’s disease. His 2010 experimental documentary film Josée Andrei: An Insane Portrait screened internationally and was adapted into a book published by Les Éditions du souffle. Terranova recently published the article ‘Les Enfants du compost’ in Gestes spéculatifs (Les Presses du réel, 2015).

Fredrik Norén

Fredrik Norén is a visual artist based in Malmö/Lund. His work comments our times, our view on life and the way we choose to categorize our environment. By dissolving the most well-known and commonly occurring from our close environment, he performs a gentle scraping on the surface of a conception of the world we normally perceive as evident. By working through deformation he makes new things appear, that have yet to receive a function or role. New qualities have emerged at the expense of old ones and the objects can, in their new undefined states, be perceived as both better and worse than before. His body of work often deals with patterns within production industry and consumer habits and thereby allows the works to act as contemporary symbols of a time when broken objects around us have increased in numbers.

Jasmin

Growing up in an art-loving family Jasmin is doing Watercolor painting as well as Architecture, she is running an art gallery and… “As a kid, I remember my father was always whispering old, traditional Iranian songs for himself and encouraging me to sing with him. It became a habit for both of us and cultivated the seed of a big passion in me. Later I went to a singing Institute to test my voice and assigning to its singing class. I didn’t believe that I’ve got the top score in the test that day. So I started to go the session with a kind and professional teacher and learn more and more techniques, working to get better every day. I want to sing everywhere, whenever I’m alone or with my friends. it makes me feel very good."

Jon Geib

Jon Geib is an urbanist and architect whose doctoral research at Chalmers investigates how design methods can engage the city dialogically through multiple parallel and intersecting perspectives, including the foregrounding of nonhuman agents. As a Research Fellow in the EU Marie Curie project TRADERS, he explored, through an artistic research approach and collaboration with the Gothenburg Cultural Department, artistic-cultural framings of dialogue and participation underscoring their dynamics and ambivalences, especially those related to the designer's role(s) when choosing to work with and within institutions in a post-Fordist context.

Juan Frano Violich

Juan Frano Violich has developed an interdisciplinary design practice which engages material fabrication, digital technology and the conservation of natural resources to expand the public life of buildings and cities. Recent work at KVA Matx includes a new public Ferry Terminal in New York City; a restoration and urban design plan for 8 kilometers of the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota; and a carbon neutral work/live residential development in Hamburg, Germany. KVA’s material research division Matx has worked with business leaders, cultural institutions and public agencies to design and build resilient soft infrastructure for networked cities in the US, Germany, and France and urbanizing global regions in Brazil, Mexico, Australia, India, and Africa.

Lennart Löfdahl

Lennart Löfdahl is Professor in Fluid Dynamics at Chalmers University of Technology, and has during the last fifteen years devoted most of his research to the field of Road Vehicle Aerodynamics and Thermal Management. Main theme of the works is on the reduction of fuel consumption and emissions for a sustainable society, and in the research works advanced experimental technology as well as CFD methods for flow field optimizations are key issues.

Lars Schmidt

Lars Schmidt might be described as a sort of modern day drop out. He is a nature lover. Some say he is a poet. He grew up in a small village, spending most of his time outside. Since then he has been wearing many hats. He has worked as ice-cream vendor, truck driver, actor for film and television, barman, kitchenhelp, acting coach, theater director, tango teacher, gardener and landscaper, filmmaker, model, shepherds help, musician and singer, meditation instructor, doorman or photographer... International conferences with academics and politicians, club or contemporary art scenes, life on organic farms, collaborations with movie stars, or times at the military are parts of his pathway.

In short: He has made the round enough to experience the absurdity of modern civilized life and at some point he had to leave (which in itself surely isn't less absurd.)

Magda Mayas

Magda Mayas, born 1979, is a pianist living in Berlin. Over the past 20 years she developed a vocabulary utilizing both the inside as well as the exterior parts of the piano, using amplification, preparations and objects that become extensions of the instrument itself. Mayas explores textural, linear sound collage, and has developed a set of techniques that draw on the history of prepared and inside piano vocabulary, but are highly individualized and expand the language for internal piano music making. Alongside the piano, Mayas performs on a Clavinet/Pianet, an electric piano from the 60s with strings and metal chimes, where she engages with noise and more visceral sound material, equally extending the instrumental sound palette using extended techniques and devices.
www.magdamayas.com

Malgorzata Zboinska

Malgorzata Zboinska, PhD, is an architect, designer and researcher. She is interested in the artistic consequences of involving computer-driven technologies in the processes of creation. She investigates these issues in an exploratory and design experiment-based manner. She employs digital techniques such as free-form modeling, animation, computational, parametric and generative techniques, rapid and interactive prototyping, and digital fabrication, and works with a wide range of design representations: animations, digital artifacts, physical models, interactive prototypes, full-size architectural pavilions and artistic installations. Her most recent artistic research project, The Architectural Convertibles, explores the notion of Thick Interactive Architectural Flesh, taking a closer look at the processes of Flesh creation, embodiment, spatial embedding and domestication with the aid of the digital media.

Maria Mebius Schröder

Maria Mebius Schröder is an internationally certified teacher in yoga and meditation. Brännö Kundaliniyoga was established in 2013 and gives courses and retreats all year. Maria is also a professional dancer/improvisor and has through her career practiced different traditions within yoga. Based on her deep knowledge on the human body and the potential to unlock energy through movement, she give an extra dimension to the practice of yoga. Maria is also an internationally certified coach, working with the development of creativity and leadership.

Marina Cyrino

Marina Cyrino (Brazil) explores the flute playing through a diversity of mistures with text, images, light, movement, theatrical elements, objects. Between interpretation, composition and improvisation, has as a main interest exploring and transforming the flute playing through a multimodal approach. Studied classical music in Brazil and Sweden (B.Mus, M.Mus). Currently a doctoral student in Musical Performance and Interpretation at the Academy of Music and Drama, University of Gothenburg. Also holds a bachelor in Psychology (UFMG, Brazil).

Martin Nilsson Jacobi

Martin Nilsson Jacobi is professor in Complex systems. He has a background in physics but has spent is research career working on questions in biology, chemistry and physics, typically focusing on questions related to self-organisation, evolution and hierarchical organisation in dynamical systems. A passionate interest for how complexity emerges and is controlled in natural systems has always been a driving force in his research.

Mikael Kågebäck

Mikael Kågebäck is a part of the machine learning group at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering Chalmers. He received his MSc in Engineering Physics and Licentiate of Technology from Chalmers University and is currently pursuing a PhD in Computer Science with a special interest in Deep Learning and Artificial Intelligence.

Nathan Clydesdale

Nathan Clydesdale is a designer, researcher and educator. Originally from Scotland, he first studied Product Design at Glasgow School of Art, before pursuing his master’s degree in Child Culture Design at Högskolan för Design och Konsthantverk, Gothenburg. Nathan’s professional practice encompasses the conception of creative workshop models, and the design of furniture and props to function within participatory exhibitions. Within these contexts, he creates objects to mediate choreographed social scenarios, or tools to facilitate individual and collective creative expression. Nathan currently maintains an independent design practice between Sweden and the UK.

Palle Dahlstedt

Palle Dahlstedt is a composer, improviser and researcher from Sweden, working in the borderland of advanced technology and art. He grew up in Stockholm, studied instrumental and electronic composition at the music academies of Malmö and Gothenburg, and did a PhD on evolutionary algorithms for contemporary composers at Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg. His music, ranging from chamber music and orchestral works to interactive computer installations, has been performed on six continents, and awarded several international prizes (e.g., Gaudeamus Prize 2001). As an improviser, he performs on piano and/or custom electronics, and has toured and performed all over the world with, e.g., AMM, Gino Robair, Stephen Nachmanovitch, and his own duo pantoMorf. He has also composed music for over 35 dance and theatre productions for, e.g., EnsembleTeatern, Göteborgs Stadsteater, Malmö Dramatiska Teater, E=mc2/Gun Lund och Ami Skånberg Dahlstedt. In his artistic research, funded by the Swedish Research Council, he develops new technologies and interaction models for electronic improvisation and composition, and studies computer models of artistic creativity. Dahlstedt is currently Obel Professor in Art & Technology at Aalborg University, and Associate Professor/Docent in Computer-Aided Creativity at University of Gothenburg & Chalmers University of Technology, and lecturer in electronic music composition at the Academy of Music and Drama, Gothenburg.

Pamela Lindgren

Pamela Lindgren is engaged in research and design as well as art. She has a Master of Fine Arts Degree from HDK and is a PhD candidate at the division of Design & Human Factors, Department of Industrial and Materials Science at Chalmers. Pamela´s research aims to increase knowledge of user experience, user acceptance and adoption of products based on aesthetic and emotional values. Pamela seeks to create an interplay between technology, construction and the human body. She is driven by passion and curiosity, in her free time she is involved in sustainability projects.

Patrick Couch

Patrick Couch works as a business developer at IBM focusing on Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Technologies and IBM Watson. Patrick wrote his master thesis on human/machine boundary blurring and pursued a PhD until he went on a sabbatical in the late 90s which landed him in the hey day of the internet start-up scene in Stockholm when the economy was new and .com was booming. He's been with IBM since 2010 and is still on his sabbatical...
IBM Blog: https://www.ibm.com/blogs/think/se-sv/author/patrickcouch/
LinkedIn: se.linkedin.com/in/couchpatrick/
Twitter: @couch_patrick

Per Anders Nilsson

Per Anders Nilsson, born 1954 plays live electronics and lives in the Gothenburg area. Professor in Music and Media at Academy of Music and Drama at University of Gothenburg. Improvising musician and composer. Studied saxophone and electroacoustic music from 1981-87 at the University of Gothenburg. In 2011 Nilsson defended his doctoral thesis A Field of Possibilities, which is about designing and improvising with digital music instruments. Nilsson and Palle Dahlstedt are currently running the research project “Systemic Improvisation” supported by the Swedish Research Council. In the 70s and 80s he managed his own bands as well performed occasionally with artists such as Willem Breuker, Antony Braxton, and Karin Krog . In 2009 Nilsson toured Sweden with the legendary saxophone player Evan Parker. In 2014 duo pantoMorf with Palle Dahlstedt toured with British group AMM in Sweden.

Rachel Barron

Initially trained as a painter, Rachel Barron now composes her artworks in relation to the spaces within which they are situated. Her installations are inherently intertwined with their context - framed by and fused with the surrounding architecture - interacting with patterns and structures including skylights, floor tiles and air vents to create subtle interventions that heighten our perception of the environment. By encouraging us to reinterpret our surroundings, she expands our sense of space, colour and light, inviting us to reimagine the hidden potentials within architectural and urban spaces. Originally from Glasgow, Rachel graduated with an MFA Fine Art, Valand Academy (2014).

Sara Rousta

In 2010, at the age of twelve, Sara Rousta was introduced to the Urban Dance culture in which she has competed and performed with several street-styles during the years. This was an experience which brought about her first on-stage performance, Challenge, that premiered in The Göteborg Opera 2013, where she worked with the choreographers Guido markowitz and Daniela Rodrigues Romero. Since 2016 she has been working as a dancer in Emelie Enlund projects, the We Love Holocene-series which had their first premier in the spring of 2017 in Dansens Hus.

SPINN

Danskompaniet Spinn is an international dance company with dancers with and without disabilities. We are passionate about dance and about challenging stereotypes about what dance is and can be. It’s about different bodies and new ways of creating and presenting dance. In our world, everybody is welcome. It’s not about the number of pirouettes you can do, but what you express with the pirouette you do. Spinn was founded 2010 by Artistic Director Veera Suvalo Grimberg and is based in Gothenburg. We work with Swedish and international choreographers and composers, create bigger and smaller productions and give workshops and lectures.

Tangótica

With their different backgrounds in classical music and jazz, the musicians of Tangótica opens up a bleneded style, still keeping the initial tango feeling. Tangótica blends dramatic tangos, fast-paced milongas and elegant waltzes from the classic Argentinian tango repertoire with composers like Osvaldo Pugliese, Carlos Gardel and Astor Piazzolla, but also their own material, which can be heard on their first album. The record was nominated for the 2013 Manifesto Prize.
Sexteto Tangótica consists of five musicians, all established names in Sweden.

Zsófia Boros

Zsófia Boros’ guitar playing is subtle and restrained, accompanied by a melancholy grace. As the subtleness of her playing unfolds, the attentive listener perceives its quiet virtuosity. Her restraint arises quite naturally from the knowledge of her own ability to become one with her instrument and, thus, never to let virtuosity dominate the music. Zsófia Boros’ melancholy is sweet, bitter-sweet; her performance sharpens our concentration and awareness and its vibrations create a tender feeling of happiness. By ECM New Series Zsófia Boros has found a new home.

Wanselius & Wikkelsö

Peter Wanselius is an actor and director who has worked as an organizational consultant, coach and educator since 15 years. His primary focus is to coach leaders and management teams in order to help them connect strategy with structure, leadership and corporate culture so that they may successfully reach their goals. Peter´s way of working is characterized by commitment, humour and support. He mixes theory with concrete tools, role-playing and interactive exercises. The workshops of Peter tend to touch and open up for vital issues as well as entertain and remain as an positive and joyful experience.

Louise Wanselius is a Swedish singer-songwriter, musician and music pedagogue. With voice, guitar and violin she performs with her music and lyrics which receives great appreciation at festivals, concerts, performances and work-shops in Sweden and around the world. In 2018 she will release her next solo album. Louise's music and lyrics are humble questions on the essence of life. The songs open up for reflection around our hope, doubt, dreams and true presence in the meeting with ourselves and our surroundings.

Hans Wikkelsö is a songwriter and filmmaker who combines moving pictures with self-written music, aimed to touch different senses and focusing on specific topics. In recent years, he has delivered productions to customers and organizations such as Göteborgsvarvet, SKL, Team Rynkeby, Solheim Cup, Jontefonden among others. He has also written popular music to artists around the world who topped the lists in several European countries, for example Germany, Switzerland and Austria.

* Please click on the name for more info

ABOUT THE AHA! FESTIVAL

The AHA! festival explores encounters between art and science during a two-day event at the Chalmers University of Technology, supported by the Departments of Architecture and Civil Engineering, Physics, Microtechnology and Nanoscience, Industrial and Materials Science and Communication and Learning in Science, and Health Engineering Area of Advance. It is an international festival intended to provide a stage for enlightening and surprising experiences, staging surprises, new thoughts and displaced perspectives that lead to alternative modes of thinking about exploring the world through art and science. We invite scientists (physicists, historians, astronomers, engineers), artists (dancers, musicians, painters, poets, acrobats) who reside in these borderlands and wish to share their vision and work.

HISTORY

The relation between science and art has become more complex, but is just as important to attend to. Their meeting is still that of theory and practice, but also something more: a meeting of causal connections and meaningful coherences, of given conditions and unsuspected possibilities, of the order of things and our own place within it.

Today, ”science” no longer refers to systematic knowledge, but rather to a highly professionalised, specialised and often technically advanced activity intended for the production of empirically secure facts. Similarly, ”art” is no longer a methodical ability, but rather a complex and autonomous activity comparable to science: the creation of images, sounds, and other forms of sensuous experience with a most immediate effect. Forms that grab hold, shake up, leave us at a loss. Experiences that make us question ourselves and the world around us.

By bringing together science and art, architecture has provided an ideal playing field for such a confrontation for the first two festival in 2014 and 2015. In 2014, October 21–23, the first festival investigated the theme ‘embodiment.’ In 2015, November 2-4 the festival explored numbers, an underlying element in our lives. In year 2016 the festival was a joint voyage between the Departments of Architecture and Department of Physics to explore the theme ‘uni-verse,’ the fabric of life. All festivals offer three days of seminars, workshops, conversations, exhibitions, concerts, performances, and mingles, through thought-provoking experiences, hands-on surprises, itinerant perspectives, and savoury ideas. The festival welcomes students and researchers from all universities, and the general public, to turn the searchlight onto the relation between two different– but equally important – human activities; ’Science and art.’