Elise Rigot
Elise Rigot is a designer, a phD candidate and a teacher at the University Toulouse - Jean Jaurès. Her thesis in design (LLA-CRÉATIS and LAAS-CNRS) deals with the f(r)ictions between design and nano-bio-technologies, and is directed by Pr. Christophe Vieu and Dr. Anthony Masure. She is the author of a podcast (FR) about design and bio-manufacturing technologies, Bio Is The New Black, in which she invites designers and researchers to explore - by oral & dialogic media - subjects of conversation at the frontier in between biology and design. She is the co-founder of a French association called design↔commun. She works on forms and formats of scientific research. She is creating ways of collaboration between science and design fields by the study of corals by 3D technologies, inside a project called Corail 3D. She is the author of an open-source and open-science web-application project called Codex. By a contributive approach, it permits to explore networks in-between words & technical objects of a specific field of science’s practices such as tissue engineering, bio-printing, etc.
Articles of Elise Rigot
Vampyroteuthis Infernalis, le podcast comme format de recherche-création
For this special issue of Flusser Studies on Vilém Flusser's relations with France, I would like to propose a research-creation format, which is embodied in a podcast that is part of the Bio Is The New Black series. The podcast is a creation based on reading the Vampyroteuthis Infernalis and research conducted at the Vilém Flusser Archive in Berlin under the supervision of Anita Jóri. Bio Is The New Black is a podcast around design, biology and technology that invites artists, designers, philosophers, scientists and engineers to explore the multiple ethical, critical and creative questions that arise with bio-manufacturing technologies.
Vampyroteuthis as a bioluminescent lighthouse to think under the livings. Some mutations: From 1981 to 1991
This contribution is about a translation of the book Vampyroteuthis Infernalis into a dialogic media. In Vampyroteuthis Infernalis, Vilém Flusser describes an abyssal creature, opposite in every point with humans. From 1981 to 1991, the book mutates within the writing process of Flusser engaging with letters, oral dialogues, essays, courses and translations. There is a genealogy of the Vampy and of the Vampyroteuthian model from the French version to the Brazilian one. I will call this model Vampy, a borrowed term from the relationship between Louis Bec and Vilém Flusser (Marburger 2016). The article emphasizes Flusser’s programmatic vision in the Vampyroteuthis. How can the philosophy of Flusser’s programs, embodied in the Vampyroteuthis, serve us as a lighthouse in the “moment of the living” (Worms 2016) that we are going through nowadays? Taking into account the three different versions of the vampy, from the French to the Brazilian one, I propose to contextualize the Vampyroteuthis inputs into the thinking of the livings. In this regard, the French version, which is the first unpublished version, is a typescript given as a gift to his friend, the artist Louis Bec. It deals with an important scientific context. We have to note the existence of the French molecular school of biology with Jacob and Monod, and the presence of thinkers such as Bergson and Canguilhem. In the late 1960s, biology is redefined by DNA discovery and the notion of code: that’s the historical moment of molecular biology. It changed our entire way of seeing living beings. However, it may happen that this moment also lacks the critical point that Flusser made about our programmatic condition of existence.