Transnet: Transdisciplinary Performance Investigations and Collaborations - where contemporary art meets contemporary science to redefine notions of performance, and where disciplinary perspectives on the body are challenged. TransNet is an international network of artists, scholars, performers, educators, scientists, engineers, and community activists formed to explore notions of performance, especially in the arts and sciences. The network uses a transdisciplinary approach to analyse the intersection of diverse disciplines and knowledges and to examine how new research directions emerge from this confluence. TransNet
suggests that performance, of people and of systems, is the primary activity in an exchange across societies and cultures, with new technologies and the human body as common denominators for these exchanges.
Transnet is a SSHRC funded Research Development Initiative (RDI).

Performing Art Performing Science Conference: Transdisciplinary Approaches to Performance
Hosted by the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada
June 16 - 18, 2005

In the arts, performance has traditionally implied a staged activity using a form like dance, music, and theatre. In the sciences, it has been the efficient operation of mechanical and/or technological systems and prototypes in specific goal-oriented tasks. This conference seeks to reexamine these seemingly disparate disciplinary perspectives as technology increasingly dictates their modes of presentation. Conference topics include: new media and performance; new visualization technologies; emergence and artificial life science; performance of self-organizing systems; genetic engineering; embodied
knowledge; computing machines and the evolution of culture; the survival of performance disciplines in contemporary hypermedia and mass media contexts.
Dates: June 16-17, 2005 - TransNet conference, IRMACS Centre, SFU Burnaby.
June 18, 2005 - Open Roundtable Discussion. The Wosk Centre for Dialogue, SFU Harbour Centre, Vancouver.
For Further Information and Conference Registration:
Christine Stoddard - Research Assistant, TransNet
School for the Contemporary Arts, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6 Canada
Tel: 604.291.3896 / Fax: 604.291.5907
cpstodda@sfu.ca http://www.sfu.ca/transnet