1st International Summit of the Planetary Collegium

Disturbing, fascinating, poetical, provocative, the works and researches of the Planetary Collegium’s members reveal and explore the fundamental questions that are opened by the technological explosion on the topics of consciousness, life, humanity, knowledge, being-in-the-world, borders between natural and artificial, access to information. 65 researchers from 15 countries will share during 4 days the result of their research-creation works with their guests, their colleagues from Quebec, and with the general public.

The first International Planetary Collegium Summit will be held in Montreal from April 19 to 22, 2007, on the premises of University of Quebec in Montreal’s Coeur des Sciences.

The Planetary Collegium is an international community of researchers, thinkers and artists dedicated since 1994 to research/creation. It also offers a unique Ph.D. research program through its network of nodes in Europe, South America and Asia.

Although its members meet regularly in various places around the world, the Montreal Summit will be the first large scale meeting of its young history. It will offer the Montreal based artist/creators and the Montreal media arts community the opportunity to get in touch with projects, methods, tools and research projects that are amongst the more advanced in the field.

The Summit will welcome numerous high reputation international artists, thinkers and researchers, such as Roy Ascott, founder of the Planetary Collegium, astrophysicist Roger Malina, culture theoretician Derrick de Kerckhove, biochimist James Gimzewski, media artist and theoretician Bill Seaman, philosopher Pierre Lévy, transhumanist Natasha Vita-More, sound artist Andrea Polli, as well as two researchers from the CIAM-Hexagram community, Barbara Layne and Nicolas Reeves.

Entitled Reviewing the Future: Vision, Innovation, Emergence, the Summit will allow 65 presenters from fifteen countries to share the results of their latest works and researches with their guests, and with the Quebec media arts and technologies community. The Summit will be an opportunity to get together for members of the different nodes of the Collegium (Plymouth, Beijing, Milan and Zurich, which will soon be joined by Seoul and Sao Paulo), along with several members pursuing their research on an individual basis as part of this international network. Many of these are amongst the best known artist/researchers of their fields.

Through mostly transdisciplinary research, calling upon artists, scientists, engineers, philosophers, educators and communications specialists, the Collegium is contributing to the production of new knowledge in the field of media arts and to the transfer of this knowledge to other fields. Computer science, communications, research on consciousness, biotechnologies, cognitive sciences, hypermedia, variable environments, robotics are but a few of the disciplines whose development feeds and informs the Collegium research in all artistic disciplines : performance, dance, architecture, new narrative forms, music, installations, design, performing arts, film and video…

Although the Summit is first and foremost and occasion to come in contact with singular artistic approaches, which cannot be classified into traditional fields and are at the cutting edge of contemporary practice, several presentations will discuss the theoretical, cultural, social, educational, museological and environmental stakes of these practices.

The Summit is open to everyone interested. For information about the Collegium and registration to the Summit, please go to: http://summit.planetary-collegium.net.

For more information about the Summit, please go to Hexagram’s site at www.hexagram.org, or to the CIAM’ site at www.ciam-arts.org.