EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY,GENDER and TECHNOLOGY
9.11.2019, 16h - 18h
LASERZURICH SALON AT WWF Address
:
World Wildlife Fund ZURICH Hohlstrasse 110, Second Floor, 8010 Zürich . Featuring:
Professor Dr Hanna Kokko (Evolutionary Biologist, University of Zurich) and Dr.
Patrícia J Reis (Media Artist) TOGETHER THIS SCIENTIST AND ARTIST PRESENT AND CREATE A VERY LIVELY DISCUSSION ABOUT THE RELATIONAL ASPECTS OF THESE TOPICS
Why did sexual reproduction and different sexes evolve? What diversity of sexual reproduction do we see in nature and how is evolution being affected by the technical world humans have created? How stable are boundaries between the sexes in animals, and why are we any different? Does gender matter?
This special LASER talks features presentations by Professor Dr Hanna Kokko (Evolutionary Biologist, University of Zurich) and Dr. Patricia J Reis (Senior Lecturer Universität für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna, Austria). After the talks there will be an interesting discussion lead by Dr. Jasmin Winkler (Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich) and Prof Dr. Jill Scott ( Professor Emerata Cultural Studies, ZHdK)
Professor Dr Hanna Kokko Most of us have heard one or another version of an argument that deviations from traditional gender roles are ‘unnatural’. Producers of such arguments have probably not spent very much time observing the astonishing diversity of ways that reproduction can be arranged in nature. There are sex changers, hermaphrodites, sperm cells that hijack eggs and kick out all the genetic material from the female (so that the offspring develops as a clone of the father), asexuals, hybrids, sexual cannibalism, offspring killing their mother for food, dwarf males permanently attached to the female… you name it. Sexual relations in nature are not always ‘nice’ – there can be vigorous disagreements of whether a mating should happen or not – but they are always fascinating.
Dr. Patricia J Reis Patrícia J. Reis will be discussing the topic of technology and interactivity as an artistic strategy to create and amplify haptic, sensual and erotic experiences. In that framework she will present her project
Untherneath the skin another skin(2016) , an interactive installation composed by a series of objects represented at a human scale. The objects encloses audio-visual-tactile feedback and are offered to the viewer as an organic genderless body. The artist invites the audience to physical embrace it, at the same time having to perform unusual body positions that might suggest a certain eroticism. The sensuous and erotic connotation is emphasized by the embedded vibration motors, that in turn, confer them an alive dynamic facet. The presentation based on her work will speculate on future machines that might offer an evolutionary replacement for human skin contact and new possibilities for human-object satisfaction.
