Living Data

Conversations & Collaborations

The experiential process of observation and reflection is key to art and science
and is an essential component in understanding interdependence
of all species and ecosystems, terrestrial and aquatic.
Paul Fletcher Animator

Science Art & Talks
Living Data Program for the 2013 Ultimo Science Festival, Sydney, September 12-21.

Hybrida Objects (installation) by Antonia Poseda
Human impacts on the planet generate hybridity in living forms.
Art is made with naturalised plants to appeal to our own experience of adaptating to a new place.

Hybrida. Antonia Poseda

Antonia Poseda photographing diatoms

If collections open the possibility to find patterns, to build connections, to discover or invent narratives, I argue that they also play a role in the fixation of memories, and can enhance people's emotional bond with the places they inhabit.

For many years I have worked both as an artist and as a biologist, and so my everyday has oscillated between the art studio and the laboratory. Lately, the disciplines of specimen collection and their arrangement in some sort of creative taxonomy have become a means to bring science and art together. Moreover, they are allowing me to reflect on my own processes of adaptation to a new country, and the development of a sense of place. After moving from Colombia to Australia in 2007, I started gathering objects (mostly plants and other natural materials) as a means to familiarise myself with my new territory. My collection started to evidence the hybridity of the urban landscape and, as such, aided my process of building a sense of place. I argue that the hybridity generated by globalisation can allow for the emergence of unique ecological and cultural interactions and allow displaced people to build a new sense of home. Thus, if collections open the possibility to find patterns, to build connections, to discover or invent narratives, I argue that they also play a role in the fixation of memories, and can enhance people's emotional bond with the places they inhabit.

Antonia Poseda

From an early age I decided that I wanted to be both an artist and a scientist. I could not see myself dedicated to one and not to the other, and ever since, it has been my personal and professional endeavour to develop strategies through which I can see them interact. With that aim in mind, I studied Biology and Fine Arts at the undergraduate level in Medellín, Colombia, followed by a Master in Evolutionary Genetics. In 2007 I moved to Australia with my husband and in 2008 started a PhD in Fine Arts at the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University. Since moving to Australia, I have had three solo exhibitions and participated in numerous group shows, including two with the Environmental Art Collective, five with the Griffith University Printmakers Club and other shows with the postgraduate community from the Queensland College of Art.

Antonia Posada 2013