Lighten Up! symposium: Encounters between Art and Chronobiology

Prof. Christian Cajochen is heading the Centre for Chronobiology at the University of Basel. He received his PhD in natural sciences from the ETH in Zürich, Switzerland, followed by a 3-y postdoctoral stay at the Harvard Medical School in Boston, USA. His major research interests include investigative work on the influence of light on human cognition, circadian rhythms and sleep, circadian related disturbances in psychiatric disorders, and age-related changes in the circadian regulation of sleep and neurobehavioral performance. He has held a number of honours and has authored more than 200 original papers and reviews in his career.

Anna Ridler (b. 1985) is an artist and researcher who lives and works in London. She is interested in systems of knowledge and how technologies are created in order to better understand the world. She is particularly interested in ideas around measurement and quantification and how this relates to the natural world. Her process often involves working with collections of information or data, particularly self-generated data sets, to create new and unusual narratives in a variety of media. She seeks to use new technologies, such as machine learning, to translate these to an audience.
Her work has been exhibited at cultural institutions worldwide including the V & A, the Barbican Centre, Centre Pompidou, HeK Basel, The Photographers’ Gallery, the ZKM Karlsruhe, and Ars Electronica.

Anne Noble is one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most widely respected contemporary photographers who has been at the forefront of photographic practice in New Zealand since the early 1980s. Creating bodies of work that mark sustained engagement with particular places, sites, histories, issues and more recently species, her images are known for their beauty, complexity and conceptual rigour and for their persistent inquiry into the ways we perceive and come to understand the natural world.
Her long engagement with the honeybee has centred on their physiology and their contemporary predicament in the light of escalating environmental stresses and resulted in several projects in which Noble has collaborated with researchers and scientists to develop images that articulate the delicate majesty of these beings. A book, Conversātiō: In the Company of Bees, (MUP) documents the trajectory of Noble’s bee projects.
Noble is the recipient of numerous awards including the 31st Higashikawa Overseas Photographer Award (2015), a Fulbright Fellowship at Columbia College, Chicago (2014), an Arts Foundation Laureate Award (2009) and US National Science Foundation Artists and Writers Award (2008). She has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally and her work is held in collections throughout the world.

James Carpenter has worked at the intersection of fine art, architecture and engineering for nearly 50 years, advancing a distinctive vision conceptually founded on the optical and material properties of materials and light as they reveal the presence of nature. Originally studying architecture before concentrating on the fine arts, Carpenter exhibited in the United States and Europe through the 1970s, creating immersive film installations. He established James Carpenter Design Associates in 1979 which has applied these aesthetic principles to transforming the public realm through public art and design projects. The broad range of this work can be seen on his studio’s website.
Carpenter has been recognized with numerous national and international awards, including a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, the Velux Daylight Award, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award and the Smithsonian National Environment Design Award. He holds a degree from the Rhode Island School of Design and was a Loeb Fellow of Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.

Siegrun Appelt has been working in the fields of media, object, photographic and light art for over three decades. A recurring theme in her work is space. In her new project, the artist approaches Le Corbusier’s Notre-Dame-du-Haut chapel in Ronchamp. Her pictorial compositions thematise the spatial structure, lighting, surfaces and transitions with extraordinary precision and detail, and yet they are also only excerpts. They can be read as clues that both stand on their own and allow a conclusion to be drawn from the detail back to the whole.
Siegrun Appelt’s installation at the Vienna Biennale for Change 2021 has been recreated for this exhibition. It is based on the question whether a balance can be found between the preservation of nature as the basis of life, and its use by man as the object of his will to create. Here science and art are strongly interwoven. An essential component is eight whispered children’s voice recordings, each dealing with central questions of climate care and daylight and outlining possible solutions. The texts are based on interviews with experts from the fields of ecology, environmental sciences, chronobiology, architecture and urban planning.

Alan Bogana (b.1979) is a Swiss visual artist based in Geneva. Over the years, he has developed a multiform art practice involving installations, sculptures, time-based media, virtual realities and holograms. Bogana’s research focuses on the real and speculative behaviour of light as well as on the emergence of organic shapes and patterns by means of technological processes. His works delve into the mediating roles that technoscience cultures play in our perceptions, in our understanding of reality, and in the construction of our notions about nature.
He completed a Fine Arts Diploma with honors at the Geneva University of Art and Design in 2009, a specialisation in computer graphics in 2010, and one in artistic research methodologies at the Zurich University of the Arts in 2013. Bogana has exhibited his works in Switzerland and abroad. He was the recipient of the the Bally Artist Award in 2018 and the Pax Art Award in 2019, and has been awarded multiple grants and artist-in-residence programmes.

Ted Hunt (b. Wales 1976) is an independent critical designer living and working in London. His practice explores the intersections between our ancient behaviourally-driven selves and our modern technologically-mediated selves. Graduating from the Royal College of Art in 2016, he is an alumni resident of Somerset House Studios, a fellow of the School of Critical Design, and an advisor to the Billion Seconds Institute.

An engineer by training, Bharath Ananthasubramaniam, fell in love with rhythms designing wireless devices. His subsequent transition to studying biological clocks in humans was a natural but serendipitous one. He is interested not only in understanding how these biological clocks tick, but also how we can use them to improve medicine and our health. He is always hungry for new datasets especially if they include measurements at different times of day and enjoys teaching people how to analyze them. His interests go beyond just 24h rhythms and he is particularly proud of his study of synchronized annual reproduction of corals in the south Pacific. More recently, he has become interested in science communication (of clocks) and just completed his 2-year term as the Public Outreach Fellow for the Society of Research on Biological Rhythms. He currently is a research group leader at Humboldt-Universität in Berlin and has lived & worked in 3 continents. In his spare time, he enjoys learning to learn languages and reading history.

Artist and composer, Robin Meier Wiratunga tries to understand the emergence of thoughts and ideas, be it for people, animals, flocks, algorithms, rivers... With a bag of tricks from sound, science and sorcery he composes thinking tools he never quite manages to master.
Referred to as “Artist of the future” (le Monde), “Maestro of the swarm” (Nature) or simply “pathetic” (Vimeo) his investigations have been conducted internationally, with partners including Palais de Tokyo, Centre Pompidou, Shanghai Biennale and Colomboscope Sri Lanka amongst others. Meier Wiratunga is a collaborator at the Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music (IRCAM) in Paris. He teaches Sound Arts at the HKB Academy of the Arts in Bern and is a fellow of the Istituto Svizzero di Roma.

Dr. Elizabeth Klerman is a Professor of Neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston MA, USA, a physician at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, visiting Scientist at the Picower Institute at MIT, and Senior Consultant at the Institute and Polyclinic for Occupational-, Social- and Environmental Medicine at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany. Her areas of research are (i) the application of circadian and sleep research principles to normal and pathophysiologic states and (ii) mathematical analysis and modeling of human circadian rhythms and sleep. She was Team Lead for the National Space Biomedical Research Institute (affiliated with NASA) Human Factors and Performance Team. She is a member of the International Academy of Astronautics, and was a member of the International Space Station Flexible Lighting Team that won a NASA JSC Director’s Innovation Award. She also is active in teaching and mentoring in patient-oriented research for medical school students, fellows, and junior faculty.

Rafael Gil Cordeiro is a multidisciplinary designer working in performance, installation, objects and education. New design strategies, performances, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary discourses are at the centre of his practice. Rafael’s approach to artistic and design processes is influenced by his background in theatre, for which he still works.
Born in Lucerne, Switzerland, Gil Cordeiro graduated with a BA in Trends & Identity at the Zurich University of the Arts. He has worked as a tutor, artist and designer in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Spain, Greece, Italy, and Germany, both independently and collaboratively.

Susan Morris is an artist who also writes. Her work engages with periodicity and the involuntary mark, either through a form of diaristic writing, or by diagrammatic works generated from data recorded by devices worn on the body and, more recently, from ambient light and sound recordings.
Morris has won several grants and awards including, in 2010, a Wellcome Trust Grant to produce a series of Jacquard tapestries from data recording her sleep/wake patterns. In 2020 she won a competition to make six large Jacquard tapestries for the library at St John’s College, University of Oxford, woven directly from sound recordings made in the garden outside the library. She is currently exhibiting two large Motion Capture Drawings in ‘Expect the Unexpected’ at the Kunstmuseum in Bonn.
In 2016 she had her first museum show, Self Moderation, at the Centre d’art Pasquart, in Biel, Switzerland. Her most recent solo exhibition Susan Morris: Ongoing Work, was at Bartha Contemporary, London, 2021. She has curated A Day’s Work, a group exhibition at SKK Soest, Germany in 2019, and The Gorgeous Nothings at Bartha Contemporary in 2022. She is the co-editor, with Rye Dag Holmboe, of On Boredom: Essays in Art and Writing (UCL Press 2021).

Kirell Benzi’s work revolves around the creation, using state-of-the-art technology, of aesthetic experiences that inspire, educate and empower large audiences. Through a hypnotic visual semantic, he tries to demonstrate that algorithms have a soul; and that we can create positive emotions from complexity using methods that come straight from scientific research.
Benzi holds a Ph.D. in Data Science from Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and teaches Data Visualisation / Data Art at various universities.

Francesca Siclari is a tenured group leader at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience in Amsterdam and invited Professor at the University of Lausanne. With her research, she aims to understand how the brain creates dreams and other forms of mental activity during sleep, which she investigates using neurophysiological techniques.
After obtaining her medical degree from the University of Geneva and completing her clinical specialization in neurology and sleep medicine at the University Hospitals in Lausanne (CHUV) and Zürich (USZ), she completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the center for sleep and consciousness of the University of Wisconsin, US. In 2014, she returned to the University Hospital in Lausanne, where she co-directed the Center for Investigation and Research on Sleep between 2018 and 2022. She won competitive career grants including the Ambizione and Eccellenza Professorial fellowship of the Swiss National Science Foundation, as well as an ERC-Starting grant

Liliane Lijn was born in New York, moved to Paris in 1958 where she studied archaeology and art history, and began to experiment with collage and ink drawings. In her first exhibition at La Librairie Anglaise in 1963, she showed kinetic artworks called Poem Machines, where cylinders with printed words spin at high speed until they blur and vibrate. She is now recognised as one of the pioneer kinetic artists of the sixties. In Paris at that epoch women were not considered professional artists and were rarely visible. In reaction to this, Lijn began to explore ways of representing the feminine in art. Additionally, an important influence in Lijn’s work is her passion for science and technology. She works across media - drawing, sculpture, film, text and performance - to explore language, mythology and the relationship between light and matter.
Her works are in collections including the Tate, British Museum, V&A and FNAC in Paris. Recent exhibitions: The Milk of Dreams, 59th International Art Exhibition, Biennale di Venezia, 2022; Light: Works from Tate’s Collection, ACMI, Melbourne, 2022; Siren, (some poetics), Amant Foundation, New York, 2023. Liliane Lijn is represented by Rodeo, London / Piraeus.

Colin Fournier was educated at the Architectural Association in London. He is Emeritus Professor of Architecture and Urbanism at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London and is currently teaching in Paris at the Confluence Institute for innovative and creative strategies in architecture. He is a founding member of the Daylight Academy (DLA) in Zürich, Switzerland. He was an associate of Archigram Architects in London and planning director of the Ralph M. Parsons Company in Pasadena, California, USA. He was Bernard Tschumi’s partner on the Parc de la Villette project in Paris and co-designer, with Peter Cook, of the Kunsthaus Graz (2003), a museum of modern art in Austria. He is now based in Paris as “Studio Colin Fournier”.
The Circadian House pushes the concept of the Kunsthaus Graz “nozzles” much further, by giving each a different orientation, size and geometry, resulting in a much higher level of inner illumination as variations in light conditions and colour temperature. Spectators can navigate freely within the digital simulation of a building, change their perspective, and observe the patterns of daylight from dawn to dusk.

Till Roenneberg started to work on biological rhythms with Jürgen Aschoff at the age of 17. After studying Biology in Munich (LMU) and London (University College), he worked at Harvard. He investigates the human clock and sleep in the real world (the Human Sleep Project). He is professor emeritus at the Medical School of the LMU Munich and founder and CSO of the company Chronsulting. He is currently President of the World Federation of Societies for Chronobiology (WFSC), and former President of the European Society for Rhythms Research (EBRS). He has initiated and directed several large national and international research networks (including EUCLOCK), received several international research prizes and has been named “Ambassador of Sleep” by the German Sleep Foundation. He has published more than 220 papers that have been cited >26,000 times (Impact Factor: >1,000; H-Index: 75) and has written two books, “Internal Time”, Harvard University Press (2012) and “The Right to Sleep” (German Version “Das Recht auf Schlaf”, DTV, 2019).

Dr Helga Schmid is an artist/designer, researcher and lecturer. She has worked at MOMA in New York, the V&A, the Royal Academy of Arts and the British Museum. Her work has been exhibited in the Whitechapel Gallery London, Dia Art Foundation in New York, Istanbul Design Biennial and DMY Berlin. In 2018 she was a Designer in Residence at the Design Museum in London. She has received a number of international awards including the Type Directors Award, Art Directors Award, Best German Books Award as well as a Fulbright scholarship and two DAAD scholarships. Helga has a background as a communication designer, holding a postgraduate degree from the University of Applied Sciences in Augsburg, and a Master’s degree from the School of Visual Arts in New York.
Schmid is the founder of the Uchronia platform. This opens up a new world of temporality (lived time) situated at the intersection of design, sociology and chronobiology. She advises, promotes and lectures on technological acceleration processes, the politics of time, alternative temporal systems, and deep time.

Marilyne Andersen is Full Professor at EPFL and Head of the LIPID laboratory. Her research focuses on the psycho-physiological effects of daylight on building occupants around questions of comfort, perception and health, thereby reaching out to other fields of science, from chronobiology and neuroscience to psychophysics and computer graphics.
With a background in physics, she completed her PhD at EPFL in 2004, was a Professor at MIT from 2004 to 2010, Dean of the School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering at EPFL from 2013 to 2018, and is Academic Director of the Smart Living Lab and of the SKIL at EPFL, as well as co-founder of the consulting startup OCULIGHT dynamics.
Author of over 200 refereed scientific papers with several distinctions, she was the inaugural laureate of the Daylight Research Award in 2016 and led the winning team for the US Solar Decathlon 2017 competition. She serves on the Boards of the ArtTech Foundation and of the EPFL+ECAL Lab.