About the Organizers:

Beatriz da Costa (Arts, Engineering, Public BioArt)

Beatriz da Costa is an Interdisciplinary Artist and Researcher. She has developed a body of work, which simultaneously uses, examines and comments upon emergent technologies. Her recent creative research addresses the politics of biotechnology and the social implications of surveillance technologies. She has taken part in three "biotech initiatives" which contextualized a) the environmental impacts of transgenic organisms, b) the power relationship between biotech companies and individual farmers using traditional or organic breeding techniques, and c) the politics of GMO food labeling in Europe. In collaboration with the Arts and Technology Group "Preemptive Media" she developed a series of projects outlining the uses and misuses of data collection techniques, related policies and legal matters. Rather than placing research solely within the popular but often overly simplistic privacy debate, she examined data gathering and redistribution phenomena as a social transformation tool. Ms da Costa places an emphasis on active involvement of visitors and non-expert participants in all of her projects. As a new media arts researcher she attempts to bridge scientific and technological developments, applications and the science & technology debates with non-expert audiences and peer cultural producers. She recently joined the faculty of UC Irvine as an Assistant Professor in the graduate program in Arts, Computation and Engineering.

Kavita Philip (Science Studies, Women's Studies, Critical Theory-Technoscience)

Kavita Philip, a researcher in the cultural studies of science and technology, is Associate Professor at UC Irvine's Program in Women's Studies.

Her research interests are in transnational studies of science and technology; feminist technocultures; gender, race, globalization and postcolonialism; environmental history; and new media theory. Her book Civilizing Natures (Rutgers University Press, 2004; Orient Longman 2003) explored the colonial politics of science, technology, and the environment in South Asia. She has also published in critical studies of information technology, and has advised graduate students in information design and technology. Her essays have appeared in the journals Cultural Studies, Postmodern Culture, NMediaC, Radical History Review, and Environment and History. She is co-editor, Constructing Human Rights in the Age of Globalization (M.E. Sharpe, 2003), with Neil Englehart, Mahmood Monshipouri & Andrew Nathan; co-editor of Multiple Contentions (Radical History Review 2003) with Andor Skotnes; editor of Homeland Securities (Radical History Review special issue, forthcoming Fall 2005); and is co-authoring, with Terry Harpold, a forthcoming book entitled Going Native: Cyberculture and Postcolonialism. Philip's next solo book project will address global property regimes as applied to different aspects of science and technology.

A Project, Research and Conference Initiative between the ParasiteLab at UCI and xDesign at UCSD. Contact: info@parasitelab.net

SPONSORS (in alphabetical order):
California Institute for Telecommunications & Information Technology | UCI Arts Computation Engineering Graduate Program
UCI Claire Trevor School of the Arts | UCI International Center for Writing and Translation | University of California Humanities Research Institute
UCI Research & Graduate Studies | UCI School of Biological Sciences