SPACE10 Session: Is ‘Better’ Better? with Daisy Ginsberg
We are often advertised the promise of a better future. But what is ‘better’? Whose idea of ‘better’ should be delivered, and who gets to decide? In this Session, artist Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg explores our ideas of what ‘better’ can mean.
This Week
Through artworks, writing, and curatorial projects, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg’s work investigates the human impulse to ‘better’ the world, via subjects as diverse as artificial intelligence, exobiology, synthetic biology, conservation, biodiversity, and evolution.
Ginsberg has noted that we are constantly bombarded with messages promising a better future, from groups such as advertisers, politicians, and even scientists. But ‘better’ is not a universal good or a verified measure; it is imbued with politics and values. And ‘better’ will not be delivered equally, if at all.
We have an opportunity to reimagine a world that is better for more people and more species. In this Session, Ginsberg will lead an open discussion, allowing us to explore what ‘better’ could mean, and how we could make our future better.
About the Guest
Dr Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg is an artist examining our fraught relationships with nature and technology. She has spent over ten years experimentally engaging with the field of synthetic biology, and is lead author of Synthetic Aesthetics: Investigating Synthetic Biology’s Designs on Nature (MIT Press, 2014). Her PhD by practice, Better, at London’s Royal College of Art, interrogated how powerful dreams of ‘better’ futures shape the things that get designed.
How to Attend
This SPACE10 Session is hosted on Zoom. You can sign up by clicking the ‘Attend’ button and submitting your name, email address, and location. From then on, just download Zoom so you’re ready to go — it should all take two minutes in total.
On the day, be ready and logged in by 5 pm so we can welcome all participants at once. But if you’re late, don’t worry — you can sneak in, we won’t tell anyone. When you enter the event, you will be muted to make the sonic experience as smooth as possible for all of us — but we hope you’ll drop an emoji or a greeting in the chat. And you may want to bring some questions for our guests!
*Note: We’re mindful of privacy rights and GDPR guidelines, so we’d like you to know that we intend to capture the event with a screen recording. The recording will likely be used to share our activities with our community — in the form of event images, in articles or public presentations. You will therefore automatically be asked for consent in order to enter the Session. If you in any way feel that we crossed a boundary and wish for your image not to be used, we highly welcome you to contact us — either at the event or through [email protected] Thanks in advance, and we’re looking forward to seeing you.