Here at the British Science Association, we’re so excited to be back in Liverpool for the annual British Science Festival for the first time since 2008 (the same year Liverpool won the European Capital of Culture!).
The weather hasn’t dampened spirits - we’ve had a fantastic first day with drop-in events, installations, talks and much more happening in venues across the city centre.
Geist, an outdoor installation programmed in collaboration with Culture Liverpool is installed in Liverpool One, and will be in place for the duration of the Festival. Geist is interactive; passersby can use their bodies to activate the artwork looking for neutrinos, also known as ghost particles – it’s a one off experience!
Visitors to Liverpool One will also have seen Fungal galaxies: Journey inside plants, a photography exhibition from Diego Dylan Bianchi, a researcher at Trinity College Dublin. By taking photos of fungi within plants that can’t be seen by the naked eye, Diego’s work brings out the ethereal beauty of mould. Along with Geist, this exhibition will be open to the public all week.
Those wandering along St Peter’s Lane would have come across The joy machine, a board where the public could write what brings them joy and chat to the team from mental health charity Open Door.
There was lots going on at The Bluecoat, a contemporary arts centre in the city centre, including Wired differently: Step inside the neurodivergent brain, a buzzing drop-in event co-created by neurodivergent people across Liverpool and the Institute of Population Health (University of Liverpool).
Stalls and games were dotted around the event space allowing attendees to interact, share their thoughts about what neurodiversity means to them for an art piece and experience simulations of a neurodivergent brain. One experiment involved picking out groceries from a box using a list with some words redacted.
Also at The Bluecoat was Deepfakes, identity and bioethics, a fascinating pair of talks from artist Gina Czarnecki and forensic anthropologist at Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) Caroline Wilkinson, followed by a Q&A chaired by artist Anna Dumitriu.
Gina talked through some of her artworks, which sometimes involve using human cells. She has created art with her daughters and shared how she was questioned about the ethics of this, and offered that posting photos of children on social media could be considered much more problematic for their privacy.
Caroline discussed the various ways AI technology and humanity are becoming intertwined, looking particularly at postmortalism – the idea that a digital version of us can exist after our deaths.
Caroline is part of Face Lab, a collaborative unit at LJMU that explores facial identity and representation, which was part of a project to recreate the face and voice of King Richard III after his remains were found in Leicester in 2012. She showed the audience an astonishing clip of King Richard’s likeness speaking words he wrote in his lifetime.
She talked about how chatbots could be trained on the digital estates of recently passed loved ones, allowing people to ‘talk’ to the deceased, and the ethics around that, as well as less morbid uses of this type of technology, such as the holograms at the Abba Voyage show.
Tonight, we’re looking forward to Julia King, Baroness Brown of Cambridge’s Presidential address as incoming president of the British Science Association. Baroness Brown will sharing her experiences of her wide-ranging career in STEM, and exploring the relationship between innovation and policy.
Read blogs covering the other days of the Festival: