Renowned for her evocative and thought-provoking works, ORLAN is a French performance artist who uses bio-hacking and technology to re-frame our perceptions of the body. In this pivotal new work developed in collaboration with Science Gallery Dublin, ORLAN will join us virtually from Paris in a brand new performance through a connection between the artist and the artist’s replica: ORLANOÏDE, who will perform live from the stage in the Paccar Theatre at Science Gallery at Trinity College Dublin. Over the course of two years, researchers from the ADAPT Centre at Trinity College have hacked and dissected the ORLANOÏDE equipping it with new and innovative skills that will enable it to communicate directly with ORLAN and to mimic her presence and bodily movements.
ORLAN: ORLAN is a renowned French performance artist who works in the media of sculpture, photography and film, and is best known for her work with plastic surgery in the early to mid-1990s. Her performance work often uses scientific and medical techniques like surgery and biogenetics. ORLAN’s artwork Harlequin’s Coat (2007) was a result of her collaboration with the SymbioticA laboratory in Australia. ORLANOÏDE is an AI robot that continues to explore themes of science, medicine and biogenetics to look at ways of examining how to reinvent bodies and selves, with a full replica humanoid of ORLAN. The ORLANOÏDE physically mimics ORLAN and questions Artificial Intelligence and new technologies that seek to rebuild and reconstruct the human body. Dimitar Shterionov is an Assistant Professor in Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence at Tilburg University, and a former researcher from the ADAPT Centre at Trinity College Dublin. Dimitar led the development of the machine-translation process involved in the ORLANOÏDE robot during its time at Science Gallery Dublin.
