Roberta Buiani works at the crossroad between art, science and technology. Her research is concerned with questioning assumed uses of technologies as cultural artifacts and for scientific purposes. She has written for exhibition catalogues, magazines and academic journals in Canada, Italy and Australia. She is currently a PhD candidate in the Graduate Programme in Communication and Culture at York University. Her dissertation explores the cultural spaces of computer and biological viruses.

Abstract

Viruses: That Intricate Yarn

Virus inc. was one of the projects formulated at “digital poetics and politics” in the Summer 2004 at Queens University. The workshop that led to Virus inc. left the participants with unfinished notes, like pieces of a puzzle that still need to be assembled. In sum, a skein yet to be knitted. Although the project was never brought to a final stage, its potentials were almost infinite. I had wished to provide my own interpretation of the potentials for a long time. I am about to do it with this contribution. It is my personal, subjective and somehow biased report on what happened during the workshop.