c-lab is a developing art/science studio lab headed up by two London based artists. The research engages with critical and contemporary amalgamations of bio and electronic art. Our ambition is to produce cultural holes that allow artistic exploration of meaning and idiosyncrasies that focuses on life – organic, artificial and otherness.
c-lab aims to be a body where artworks and ideas of culturally challenging nature can circulate and mature. This is a place where such stories, ideas and documentations can be accessed. To an extent, we are promoters of resistance aimed at challenging structures and ideas in our culture. We do not wish to be advocates of a world that is better to live in, to generate order out chaos or even be a mirror to the world. By hacking the codes of our culture we seek to create substances that circulates between our culture, reality and the other. From a theoretical stand we also open ourselves to texts in a more ephemeral way by using argumentations that allow flow linkages to be created through inventions of new language. Even irrational rhetoric can be a linguistic construction that serves logic and our interest lies in texts that re-codes and breaks formal constructions. As organizations mature they have a tendency of formalizing themselves into semi-academic bodies and our objectives is to resist this by allowing ruptures, disparities, irrationality and inventiveness. Finally, we want to be advocates of intensities and for intensities to be acted out with great expression.
Howard Boland is a practicing artist based in London working with new spaces for life. His research focuses on language and narrative processes within the contemporary intersection of art and science. He is a co-founder and artistic director of c-lab. Taught and worked extensively with award winning interactive productions for clients such as HSBC, Vodafone, Sony, V&A and Microsoft. He has backgrounds in Mathematics, Software Systems for the Arts & Media and Digital Practices. He holds a PhD studentship at the University of Westminster where his research combines synthetic biology and art in an interdisciplinary capacity between The Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media (CREAM) and the School of Life Sciences.
Laura Cinti is a practicing artist working within the intersections of art and biology. Her current research looks at plant and interactivity. She is co-founder of c-lab, an artistic platform that engages in critical and contemporary amalgamations of bio- and electronic art. Currently, she is a PhD candidate at UCL, working in an interdisciplinary capacity between the Centre for Advanced Biomedical Imaging and The Slade School of Fine Art.
Selected Exhibitions
(In)Inhabitable? - Art of Extreme Environments Festival @rt Outsiders 2009, Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris, France
Transient Creatures Microwave International New Media Arts Festival 2008, Hong Kong, China
Unsafe Distance 3rd International Festival for the Arts, Sciences and Technologies, Stone Bell House, Prague, Czech Republic
Bios 4. Arte Biotecnológico Y Ambiental Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Seville, Spain Dias De Bioart Centre d'Art Santa Mònica, Barcelona, Spain
Today In Paradise :: Genetics & Arts Mobileart 05, Göteborg New Media Art Festival - Göteborg, Sweden.
Selected Conferences
Less Remote: The Futures of Space Exploration 2008 International Astronautical Congress (IAC), Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre (SECC), Glasgow, Scotland
Theorie cum Praxi a one day workshop on the materiality of AV theory-practice in Fine Art PhD research, Slade Research Centre, Woburn Square, London, UK
Telling Places: Narratives and Identity in Art & Architecture Slade School of Fine Art and The Bartlett, The Slade Research Centre, Woburn Square Studios, London, UKMutamorphosis: Challenging Arts & Sciences CIANT – International Centre for Art and New Technologies, Prague, Czech Republic
Biorama Digital Research Unit, Huddersfield, UK
An Encounter with Biotechnological and Environmental Art, Centro Andaluz de Arte
Contemporáneo, Seville, Spain
Arts & Genomic Centre Launch Arts and Genomic Centre, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Transgenic Art Forum Edinburgh International Science Festival, Scotland
Göteborg New Media Art Festival Symposium, Röda Sten, Göteborg, Sweden.
Selected Interviews
Růže z Marsu Česká televize, Port, June 2008.
Interview with Laura Cinti & Howard Boland (c-lab) We Make Money Not Art, 12 April 2007
Laura Cinti - The Cactus Project Les Mutants, France.
Art, But not as we know it New Scientist, 28th February 2004, UK, pp. 44.
Selected Books (featuring artworks)
An [Un]Likely Alliance: Thinking Environment[s] with Deleuze/Guattari Bernd Herzogenrath (ed), Cambridge Scholars Publishing, The Edge Effect: Art, Science, and Ecology in a Deleuzian Century, Paul Lewis, pp. 16, 285-288
Ethics on the Visual Arts Gail Levin, Elaine A. King, Allworth Press, pp. 203/4
Next Michael Crichton, Harper Collins Publishers, London, UK, 2006. pp. 165
Det Menneskelige Eksperiment Gert Balling & Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, Museum Tusculanums Forlag, Copenhagen University, 2006. pp. 234, 244.
Art et Biotechnologies, L. Poissant, E. Daubner, Presses de l’Universite du Quebec, 2004, Canada
Verbeelding van Wetenschap: Images of Science Drs. L. Hanssen, Deining Maatschappelijke Communicatie, Netherlands, pp.26.
From Human to Posthuman Brent Waters, Ashgate, Hampshire UK/Burlington, USA, 2006, pp. 48.
The Molecular Gaze, Art in the Genetic Age Suzanne Anker, Dorothy Nelkin, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, New York, 2004, pp. 97.
Selected Peer-Reviewed Publications (by c-lab)
H.Boland & L. Cinti, 'The Martian Rose', Leonardo, Vol. 42, No. 2, April 2009, pp. 178-179.
H.Boland & L. Cinti, 'The Martian Rose', Multi: The RIT Journal of Plurality and Diversity in Design, Spring 2009
H.Boland & L. Cinti, 'The Martian Rose', Mutamorphosis: Challenging Arts and Sciences, Conference Proceedings (ISBN 978-80-254-0691-5).
Selected Reviews and Articles
Met huid en haar Louis van den Hengel, ABG #76, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Universiteit Leiden, Universiteit Utrecht, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, September 2009
¿Pueden Los Gatos Electronicos Sonar con Peces de Colores?, Catano Quinta, La Fresa, September 2007.
A Rose on Mars Is Still a Rose, Wired Science, 24 July 2007
Containing ET Astrobiology Magazine, 28 May 2007
Bio-Art, Mutagènes, 20 April 2007
Eurêka :: L'art transgénique / la science au service de l'art Scientific News Program aired on Vox Channel, Québec, Canada
Die Kac Storie, Insig, Cape Town, South Africa, Janurary 2007. pp. 14-16
Believe It or Not, Fake Biotech Firm Is Key Marketing Ploy for Crichton Novel J. Trachtenberg & B. Steinberg, The Wall Street Journal, 16 November 2006
Nextgencode your Desitny is no longer in question, 2006
Featured Artist, Boog City, Issue 32, New York, USA, May 2006
Kunst Verbeeldt Genomics, Dr.ir. Martijntje Smits, GENOMICS, 2005, Netherlands.
Haarstraubend, FACTS Das Scweizer Nachrichtenmagazin, Sept 2005, Switzerland. pp. 59.
The Artists in the Hazmat Suits? The New York Times, 3 July 2005, USA.
Smile, you’re at the Science Festival, The Scotsman, 18th February 2005, Scotland
Hot from the biology lab comes a cactus with hair, Scotland on Sunday, 27th March 2005, Scotland.
Cactus is real hair raiser at Science Festival, Edinburgh Evening News, 17th February 2005, Scotland.
Bioart – nghe thuat moi hay chung hoang tuong?, Nhan Dan, 8 August 2005, Vietnam.
Crossing the Line between Science and Art?, Today’s Science on File, July 2005, USA.
Konsten skjuter in sig pågenkritik, Dagens Nyheter, 9th April 2005, Sweden.
Vems paradis talar vi om?, Goteborgsposten, 2nd April 2005, Sweden.
Au Poil, Courrier International, 7th April 2005, France.
Grow Your Own Wings, Bizarre, October 2004, UK, pp. 92 – 94.
Wildnis, ETH Life, 22nd September 2004, Switzerland.
Mens of cactus?, Grusonia, August 2004, Belgium.
Pseuds Corner, Private Eye, No. 1102, 19 March – 1 April 2004.
Hot Sites USA Today, 1st March 2004, USA.
Van Oprkip Tot Stralend Konijn, De Volkskrant, 27th March 2003, pp. 2-5, Netherlands.