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Watch the video above for a flavour of the Treats on Elasticity event, including interviews with speakers and footage from the event itself.

A lively evening on elasticity in form, theory and practice. 'Treats on Elasticity' was a treatment of elasticity in an unexpected and exploratory way, stimulating intellectual thought. The evening was also a real treat.

Why elasticity? We are surrounded by elasticity - be it in the shape of our skin, the price elasticity on the stock exchange that plays havoc with our spending power, or a piano string that stays in tune for as long as its tension remains constant. People tend to be amazingly resilient in the face of adversity: somehow we manage to pick ourselves up by the hem of our lives and bounce back. Or take something as ostensibly simple as the elastic band: it makes a perfect sling and keeps post packages together.

The event featured talks and performances by:

• Yoko Seyama and Lyndsey Housden, artists: A State of Flux
• Nick White, condom expert: A Material of Choice
• Mayke Nas, composer/performer: Anyone Can Do It
• Didier Fiuza-Faustino, architect: (G)host in the (S)hell
• Fiona Sampson: reading from her latest collection, 'Rough Music' (Carcanet, 2010)
• Daniel Glaser, neuroscientist: fMRI.
• Jolyon Brewis, architect and Managing Partner: Grimshaw-Architects: In Elastic City

 

Treats on Elasticity was moderated and produced by Hester Aardse and Astrid van Baalen from the PARS Foundation, Amsterdam; and made possible thanks to the support of SNS REAAL fonds, Van Bijleveltstichting, STROOM, Fonds Podiumkunsten, De Nederlandsche Bank and The Dutch Embassy in London.

Biographies

PARS was founded by Astrid van Baalen and Hester Aardse and is an experimental and independent initiative that views the arts and sciences as essentially creative processes borne out of sheer curiosity. PARS collects the thought notations of those artists and scientists who shape the way we perceive the world today. The aim is to create an atlas of creative thinking at the beginning of the 21st century. PARS does this through the publication series 'Findings on... ' and the events 'Treats on...'

Astrid van Baalen lives and works in Amsterdam and London as an editor and writer, and is a poet whose work is published internationally. Hester Aardse works for National Heritage in Amsterdam as an art historian and journalist specialised in industrial structures and urban development since the 1850s. She also works as a consultant in graphic design. Together they are the co-founders of the PARS Foundation.

Lyndsey Housden creates installations that hold the potential to transform and develop through social interaction and movement. She is interested in the impact of architecture on the human body. Her work questions the physical and psychological effects of space and architecture through collaborations with dancers and visual artists. Yoko Seyama is a scenographer and media artist. Trained as both an architect and a ballet dancer, she now specialises in creating installations for the performance context, concentrating on scenography and time-based art. They have collaborated to create Sentient Architecture.

Nick White works as Technical Risk Director at SSL International, a focused consumer brand company and owner of Durex. Since 1996 he has been a participant in UK, European and International standardisation efforts for condoms. He published his research paper, 'Contraception', on the mechanism of breakage of male condoms, based upon his work at SSL, showing that nearly all condom breakages are due to a 'blunt puncture' mechanism.

Mayke Nas enjoys creating music for musicians breathing simultaneously, for moving chairs and wired blackboards. She considers herself lucky to work with Nieuw Ensemble, Asko|Schönberg, Slagwerk Den Haag, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Bl!ndman, the Neue Vocalsolisten, Eighth Blackbird and other musical wizards.

Didier Fiuza Faustino is an architect and co-founder of the Bureau des Mésarchitectures label in Paris. His work reciprocally summons up art from architecture and architecture from art. The central dimension of his line of thinking is the body - not the body as a reference machine, but the body as a spatial component. He conceives architecture as a "tool for exacerbating our senses and sharpening our awareness of reality".

Dr Daniel Glaser is Head of Special Projects in public engagement at the Wellcome Trust. He comes from a neuroscience background, was the first 'Scientist in Residence' at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, has presented a television series for the BBC and co-chairs Café Scientifique at the Photographers' Gallery.

Fiona Sampson is an award-winning poet and poetry reviewer. She has written 17 books and is published in more than 30 languages. Her most recent poetry collection is entitled 'Rough Music' (Carcanet, 2010).

Jolyon Brewis is an architect and Managing Partner of Grimshaw in London. His experience covers a range of building sectors, including the design and delivery of significant cultural, transport and industrial buildings. He has been involved in all phases of the Eden Project in Cornwall. He has also played a key role in the development of a number of research projects that focus on utility issues including energy generation, the conservation of resources and the re-use of waste.