ART, SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
BIO-WEAR by Joaquín Fargas
Text: Natalia Matewecki (professor-researcher of Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina)
On June 5th, 2008 was open in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the first centre dedicated to bioart research and production, Laboratorio Argentino de Bioarte (Argentinian Lab of Bioart). It is an initiative of the artist and engineer Joaquín Fargas together with Instiuto Superior de Investigaciones of Universidad Maimonides.
Lab management is carried out by Dra. Alejandra Marinaro (Executive Director), Dr. Alfredo Vitullo (Scientific Director) and Joaquin Fargas (Artistic Director).
“Bio-wear” project comes from “I-wear”, a project about intelligent clothes in which innovative materials, mechanisms and technologies are investigated to make new garments. “I-wear” was shown for first time in Argentina in August 2006, by different models who posed interactive garments made of steel mesh, optical fibre, LEDs and lasers. “Bio-wear” is interested in the production of garments developed by tissue culture techniques where the fabric is replaced by thin layers of skin culture. This project will be launched with the author’s performance who will donate the first epithelial cells to give rise the garment culture.
I-wear project
I-wear Gallery
Video Performance
5TH INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON ENHANCING CHANGE THROUGH SCIENCE CENTRES - Johannesburg, South Africa 25-28 February, 2008
The 5th International Workshop was organized by the Department of Science & Technology, 
Government of South Africa at Johannesburg jointly with the Centre for Science and Technology of the Nom-Aligned and Other Developing Countries (NAM S&T Centre). It was envisaged that this scientific programme will serve as a platform for experts and the governments to share experiences and chart way forward on science centres as the agents of change in the developing world.
Joaquín Fargas was invitated by Mr. Mosibudi Mangena, The Minister of Science & Technology, South Africa as a ´Resource Pernson´
NAM S&T Centre
The Department of Science and Technology-Government of South Africa
International Workshop´s Document
THE BIOSPHERE PROJECT
These spheres, hermetically shut, contain the necessary ingredients, the basic elements for life to happen. Inside, they hold a complex ecosystem, which needs solar energy to subsist and develop.
Biospheres are the representation of live forms in the planet. They reproduce the basic process of life functioning.
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SUNFLOWER, SENTINEL FOR CLIMATE CHANGE
The Sunflower. Sentinel for Climate Change puts forward scientific concepts and theories in a poetic and ludic way, and urges people to understand the properties of nature and the need to care for and preserve them.
The first Sunflower was installed in the city of Ushuaia, province 
of Tierra del Fuego, Argentina (the southernmost city in the world), Fargas’s project has a global nature, not only by providing access to the information collected by the flower anywhere in the world, but also because it contemplates the installation of other flowers in other cities worldwide.
Go to Sunflower Press
Sunflower proposes a kind of communication 
aimed towards a new conception of education that views contemporary art –and the channels through which it circulates– as a space and a time in which to develop constructive criticism about our context.
By Hilary Burke
