Artist Talk with Pinar Yoldas- 3 October, 2013

Pinar Yoldas is a cross-disciplinary artist and researcher with a background in architecture, interface design, computing and neuroscience. Her work investigates social and cultural systems in regards to biological and ecological systems. She is the 2013/14 resident at the Vilém Flusser Residency Programme for Artistic Research, run by transmediale and the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK).

Pinar has a Master of Fine Arts degree from University of California Los Angeles. Currently she is a PhD candidate in Visual and Media Studies program at Duke University, where she's pursuing a certificate in the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience. She has been awarded fellowships in art and science venues including the MacDowell Colony, UCross Foundation, VCCA and National Evolutionary Synthesis Center.

Her current project An Ecosystem of Excess is an attempt to create a post-human eco-system, a living community of speculative organisms and their environment. The project takes the idea that we are surrounded by "man-made extreme environments" as its starting point. A man-made extreme environment is a site of excess, where leftovers of our capitalistic desires and consumerist actions are accumulated. Hence junkyards, landfills, wastelands are all examples of "man-made extreme environments'. An Ecosystem of Excess starts in the Pacific Trash Vortex. Discovered in 1985 by Captain Roger Marshall, this site is a floating nexus of plastic waste covering roughly 5000 km² area of the Pacific. Pacific Trash Vortex is a monument of plastic waste at a global scale.

http://www.transmediale.de/content/project-description-an-ecosystem-of-excess
http://pinaryoldas.info/speculativeBiologies/
http://www.endangeredspecies.be

in cooperation with transmediale

Speculative Biology Workshop with Pinar Yoldas on 28 September 2013

Photographs from Speculative Biology Workshop: The Design of Biological Systems and Neo-organs with Pinar Yoldas

In her workshop the artist gave a quick overview into general biological systems such as the circulatory system, the respiratory system, the nervous system, the reproductive system etc., and how these systems might evolve under the influence of global environmental transformations.

Somewhere between bio-mimicry and critical design, the workshop will gave particpants the time and assets to discuss and design speculative models for life forms for a post-human era.