Link to join on Tuesday 24th May, at 5:30pm BST:

https://zoom.us/j/91015545390

Drawing inspiration from nature, 3D designers and software developers mimic living systems’ patterns, structures, shapes and forms. From modelling the structure of living cells, to whole organisms, morphogenesis and growth patterns, self-replication mechanisms, intelligent networks - all the way to building computational models where organisms interact and entire environments.

Marshmallow Laser Feast will share their experience of building XR experiences, their research process to collect data from a location and build a digital environment from it, understand how other species perceive the world, and create immersive sensorial experiences.

Dr Payam Zahadat will talk about her research on the photomorphogenesis of plants, self-assembly, swarm collective behaviours observed in nature, evolutionary algorithms, and their application in bio-inspired robotics and bio-hybrid systems.

Online - open to all

The event will be held online + supplemented by a live audio installation at Central Saint Martins for students

Ersin Han Ersin is an artist and creative director of London based experiential studio Marshmallow Laser Feast – which creates immersive experiences, expanding perception and exploring our connection with the natural world. Their work has been exhibited around the world with ‘We Live in an Ocean of Air, In The Eyes Of The Animal’ at Saatchi Gallery which was nominated for the Design of the Year by Design Museum Beazley Awards and won the Wired Innovation Award (2016), or ‘TreeHugger, Wawona’ which won the Tribeca Film Festival Storyscapes Award for Innovation in Storytelling and Best VR Film at VR Arles Festival. More recently, they have been collaborating with the Eden Project to design ‘The Invisible Forest’ which informs on carbon cycles and how trees govern the Earth’s climate.

Dr Payam Zahadat is an Assistant Professor at the IT University of Copenhagen, in the Robotics, Evolution and Art Lab. She researches how complex collective systems function and design computational methods for distributed artificial systems (e.g. robotic swarms) by taking inspiration from natural systems. Her research interests include swarm robotics, modular robotics, collective intelligence, self-organizing systems, evolutionary robotics, and bio-inspired computation. She previously worked in the Artificial Life Lab at the University of Graz, and the Modular Robotics Lab at the University of Southern Denmark, where she researched the light-guided morphogenesis of climbing plants for symbiotic robot-plant bio-hybrids. She received her Master and PhD degrees in Artificial Intelligence from Shiraz University, Iran.