Dr. Laura Beloff
Dr. Laura Beloff
Laura Beloff (Ph.D.) is an internationally acclaimed artist and a researcher in the cross section of art, technology and science. Additionally, to research articles and book-chapters, the outcome of the research is in a form of experimental art projects, that deal with the merger of the technological and biological matter at large. The research engages with the areas such as art & science, human enhancement, wearable artistic interventions, biosemiotics, biological matter, artificial life, artificial intelligence, robotics, and information technology in connection to art, humans, environment and society. She has Doctor of Philosophy degree from Plymouth University. Previously she has been a Full Professor at the Art Academy in Oslo 2002-06, a visiting Professor at The University of Applied Arts in Vienna 2009, 2011. 2012-2019 she was Associate Professor, Head of Section 2012-2016 and Head of PhD School 2017-2019 at IT-University in Copenhagen. In late 2019 Beloff accepted a position in Aalto University. She has been the Head of ViCCA-program (Visual Cultures, Curating and Contemporary Art) in 2020-2022, 2022-2024 Head of Doctoral Education in the Department of Art & Media (DAM). Currently she is Associate Professor and Vice Dean for Artistic and Creative practices in the School of Art, Design and Architecture, Aalto University.
talk :Artistic Research in Hybrid Ecologies
The talk examines so-called art&science practices as sites of alternative knowledge production: modes of research and knowing that operate alongside, and sometimes in tension with, scientific paradigms. It focuses on artistic practices affiliated with science and technology, rather than vice versa.
The talk argues for a shift from detached, universalizing knowledge toward situated, relational, and material forms of artistic research. In a world shaped by biotechnological innovation, environmental crisis, and computational systems, knowledge production is inseparable from questions of responsibility, material agency, and planetary belonging, including the arts.
To frame this condition, the talk introduces the concept of hybrid ecology: environments in which engineered and biologically evolved systems converge. These include gene-edited organisms, laboratory life forms, AI-generated entities, and ecologies emerging between natural, technical, and cultural domains. Hybrid ecologies destabilize distinctions between nature and culture, organism and artifact, origin and copy.
Within this context, art and artistic research are positioned as modes of inquiry and world-building. Artists navigate hybrid ecologies as practitioners of terrestrial accountability, responding to worlds shaped by entangled agencies rather than separable domains.
The talk is exemplified by art works from the speaker and other artists and researchers.
Additional support by:
Critical Media Practices
Stadium 255 (Gate 7)
2085 Colorado Avenue
University of Colorado Boulder, UCB 477
Boulder, CO 80309-315
303-735-6382
Stadium 255 (Gate 7)
2085 Colorado Avenue
University of Colorado Boulder, UCB 477
Boulder, CO 80309-315
303-735-6382
