Artist Patricia Piccinini and synthetic biologist Claudia Vickers discuss novel forms of life and science’s role in shaping conceptions and imaginations of the world.

A discussion on novel forms of life

In this keynote conversation, artist Patricia Piccinini and synthetic biologist Claudia Vickers turn towards the subject of future life forms. Both share their specific perspectives on science’s role in shaping representations of the world as well as science’s capacity in bringing about novel, unexpected, sometimes hopeful, sometimes frightening organisms and ecologies. Through their debate on the agency of science in environmental concerns, Piccinini and Vickers examine how scientific interventions like bioengineering continuously unsettle the boundaries between “the natural” and the “unnatural,” the “human” and the “non-human.”