The PI Symposium is a 3-day event on art and emerging technologies. 

 

The idea is to bring together scientists (from robotics, biomedical ethics, sociology of the media, ethnology), transmedia artists (augmented reality, design, 3D animation) and video game developers (for therapy and entertainment) with personalities from the fields of art, culture, and academic research, to debate the relationship between man and technology in a rapidly developing, culturally digital world.

 

The Symposium is open to the public, students and professionals. It follows on from the biennial “Imaginary Landscapes” competition which was launched by the EPAC (the Academy of Contemporary Arts at Saxon in Switzerland) and the MoCA (Museum of Contemporary Art) at Taipei on Taiwan (ROC), and encouraged from the start by the current Director of the Lieu Unique. The theme of the latest competition was “Immortal quest – new spaces and codes – the post human”.

 

To incubate the convergence of ideas about what is possible and what might actually happen, there will be exhibitions and films, talks and round tables, a game jam, technical presentations, meetings and workshops. The idea is to highlight common interests and skills in order to build the networks that are essential for the arts, culture, science and education to develop in harmony with contemporary issues.

 

PI stands for “Paysages Imaginaires” (“Imaginary Landscapes”) as well as for the symbol pi, the mathematical constant with an infinite number of decimal places. At the interface between art and technology, the PI Symposium will attempt to unveil real and virtual perspectives in order to open our minds to these new spaces and codes, these new imaginary landscapes and territories that the digital age is opening up for us.

Gautier Rebetez