Heather Barnett is an artist, researcher and educator working with natural phenomena, complex systems and biological design, often in collaboration with scientists, artists, participants and organisms. Using diverse media including printmaking, photography, animation, video, installation and participatory experimentation, and working with living materials and imaging technologies, her work explores how we observe, manipulate and understand the world around us. Recent work centres around nonhuman intelligence, collective behaviour and knowledge systems, including The Physarum Experiments, an ongoing ‘collaboration’ with an intelligent slime mould; Animal Collectives collaborative research with SHOAL Group at Swansea University; and a series of publicly sited collective interdisciplinary bio/social experiments, including Crowd Control and Nodes and Networks.
She is Pathway Leader on the MA Art and Science at Central Saint Martins (University of the Arts London), a Higher Education Academy National Teaching Fellow, regularly consults on interdisciplinary art and science curriculum, and chairs London LASER, a regular talks series exploring art and science.
Heather will participate the Open Set 2018 Fluid Rhythms summer school as an expert and lead the workshop City As Superorganism on 19 and 20th of August. Furthermore, she will participate the Open Set 2018-2019 seminar Rhythm Analysis in Context, and lead the 2nd session of the seminars Scales of Rhythm: From Bacteria to Crowd.