Last week I was in Hannover for a STARTS Talk and exhibition of STARTS Prize Winners and Residencies at CEBIT, Hannover. CEBIT is digital tech candy heaven where I moderated a STARTS Talk with Giulia Tomasello, winner of this years artistic exploration STARTS Prize, Pierre-Xavier Puissant of EPFL, Grenoble and mentor of several STARTS Residencies and Ana Solange Leal of Innova+ and coordinator of the STARTS Residencies-programma Vertigo.
Though we had to compete with enormous large stages left, right, in front of and behind us we were able to gather a crowd that showed serious interest in the science, technology and arts collaborations that we were showcasing and that are – yet – uncommon to all other things at CEBIT: helicopters, pantser tanks and cyberfighters of the German army, block chain solutions for the adult industry, ocean drones of Fraunhofer and AI for everything.
The comparatively modest but well-tuned stand of the STARTS Initiative of the European Commission gained much attention, with about every passer by looking curiously at the Environment Dress 2.0 of Maria Castellanos and Alberto Valverde and at the underwear and wetware of Giulia Tomasello’s Future Flora.
Finally we were visited by the EU Commissioner Mariya Gabriel of the Digital Economy and Society. Aside from appreciating the projects shown and the collaborations between the arts and technologies she was also interested to see quite a number of works were made by women.
Next STARTS Talk feauring Guilia Tomasello’s work and that of the Making Sense project is during WeMakeThe.City in Amsterdam 22nd of June 2018.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 732019.
