On Saturday, March 7th from 2-5pm, CRITTER will be presenting Clone-Home, an afternoon open house for multiplying plants. Come with a few cuttings of your favorite plant(s) to share and trade with others. If you’re new to the world of cutting and growing, come ready to start your own little plantlets with a variety of cloning methods that will be demonstrated throughout the afternoon. No experience or green-thumb required.
This free event will feature Denise King from the Exploratorium, Philip Ross and other growers from plant societies and local businesses. Clone-Home will host a wide spectrum of plant cloning, ranging from simple do-it-yourself methods to more complex recipes for making many from one. Denise will be coordinating the construction of a “succulent quilt”, which will be made from donated plants and put on permanent display in the neighborhood. Learn how to start your own succulent quilt! Clone-Hone will be accompanied by the live music from Mary Clare Brztwa, who will be creating specialized flute techniques to clone by.http://www.maryclarebrzytwa.com/
Enjoy some fresh herbal tea, mingle with fellow plant fans, and learn how to make your own home a little bit greener with your new buddies.
http://crittersalon.blogspot.com/2009/03/clone-home.html
Radars & Fences II: Tactical Bioart in the Age of Biotechnology
Event Time
Thursday, March 5, 2009
4:30 PM – 8:30 PM
Location
Information Law Institute
40, Washington Square South
Room VH218
Description
Radars & Fences II features five researchers and artists who have been at the forefront of the battle for the democratization of the life sciences over the last decade: Beatriz da Costa, Natalie Jeremijenko, Richard Pell, Claire Pentecost, and Paul Vanouse will present their own work and discuss with the public models of interdisciplinary engagement at the beginning of the “biological century.”
http://www.nyu.edu/media.culture/events/event.html?e_id=1336
Corpus Extremus (LIFE+)
February 28 – April 18, 2009
Exit Art, New York City
Corpus Extremus (LIFE+), the second exhibition of Exit Art’s Curatorial Incubator Program, will present work by artists who are using bio- and media- technologies to investigate questions of life and death. Representative of a relatively new international trend, these artists are uniting science and art to challenge conventional understanding of both fields.
Prior to the eighteenth century, art and science were not separated as distinct disciplines, and were often joined. Thus a hybrid bio-art discipline is nothing radically new. Yet, the work in Corpus Extremus (LIFE+) represents a revolution in interdisciplinary research and practices and offers a critical evaluation of science and technology through art. This direct involvement of artists in scientific research and lab practices aims to demystify science through a cross-disciplinary approach; to provoke discussion about art and science as creative stimuli to each other; and to pose ethical questions to society.
The artworks in this exhibition deal with the transformation of our notions of life and death due to the implementation of biotechnological advances in everyday life. Recent innovations in science and technology are causing us to confront and challenge our conventional understanding of the body. Trying to reveal “the secret of life,” and to retain health, we are finding new ways to create living transplants and sustain life outside of the body. This possibility gives ground for the design of new organisms – hybrids, cyborgs and extended human bodies – that might be a new stage in an evolution with a questionable future.
http://www.exitart.org/site/pub/exhibition_programs/corpus_extremus/
Other Worlds
With Artist Philip Ross and Dr. Kristina Yu in Person
A Biological Cinema Arts Program
Saturday, February 21, 2009, McBean Theater, 2pm
At Other Worlds, a biological cinema arts and musical event at the Exploratorium, artist Philip Ross and Dr. Kristina Yu present their videos of microorganisms accompanied by a live musical performance. This event takes place on Saturday, February 21 at 2pm in the McBean Theater, and is included in the price of admission to the Exploratorium.
The program includes Leviathans, by artist Philip Ross, which showcases the complex and mesmerizing patterns of the slime mold Physarum polycephalum. Like a harmonically rippling jellyfish, P. polycephalum propels itself along on the oscillating waves of its own body.
Parts, by Dr. Kristina Yu, Director of Living Systems at the Exploratorium, is a video compilation of microorganisms featuring embryonic stem cells and bioengineered C. elegans—glowing round worms—as well other beautifully rendered laboratory samples.
Multimedia artist Keith Evans will create an experimental sonic orchestration for both works as well as for additional projections of other invisibles.
Additional music and projections of microorganisms and other invisibles will be included.
http://press.exploratorium.edu/other-worlds-february-2009
MAKE writes: Mac Cowell recently started the site DIYBio as a resource for biohackers working outside academic and industrial labs.
DIYbio is an organization that aims to help make biology a worthwhile pursuit for citizen scientists, amateur biologists, and DIY biological engineers who value openness and safety. This will require mechanisms for amateurs to increase their knowledge and skills, access to a community of experts, the development of a code of ethics, responsible oversight, and leadership on issues that are unique to doing biology outside of traditional professional settings.
Flies and moths are naturally attracted to light. The Lampshade Robot has holes based on the form of the pitcher plant enabling access for the insects but no escape. Eventually they expire and fall into the microbial fuel cell underneath. This generates the electricity to power a series of LEDs located at the bottom of the shade. These are activated when the house lights are turned off.
More Carnivorous Domestic Robots, by Auger-Loizeau and Alex Zivanovic, this way!
The Carnivorous robots are currently on view at LABoral in Gijon (SP) as part of the exhibition Nowhere/Now/Here.
Medialab-Prado is launching the latest of its increasingly successful interactivos? calls for the presentation of projects.
A maximum of 8 projects will be selected for their production in a workshop that will take place in Madrid on January 28 to February 14, 2009. Happy project leaders will count with the help of instructors, assistants and collaborators. Pending application, Medialab-Prado will provide lodging in a Youth Hostel for participants residing outside of the city. They will also cover travel expenses wholly or in part for one person per selected project.
The theme of this edition of Interactivos? is Garage Science and its keywords include: critical design, bio-art, mechanical devices, impossible machines, Rube Goldberg machines, pataphysic, free hardware, fabbing, recycling, biocomputing, biology, biohacking, biopunk, “license to fail”. Software, hardware, wetware! The selected projects will show innovative ways to make science, technology and art converge.
Now comes the best part: the Critical Art Ensemble will take part to the workshop.
Deadline for entries: December 14.
Joe, Aged Seven (2 minute exposure) / Josh, Aged Six (2 minute exposure)
Simon Park says:
I have collaboration with an artist called Anne Brodie in which we have developed the world’s most unusual photobooth. Using the booth we take portraits of people using only the ephemeral blue-green light produced by bioluminescent bacteria (100s of agar plates and 10 litres of culture). We will be using the photobooth at the “Infective Art” evening at the DANA centre of the Science Museum on 26th November.
Unlike sunlight or artificial light, bacterial bioluminescence is of a pure and refined quality (a single wavelength of ~475 nm), a property that endows it with unique revelatory properties. When a human body is imaged with bacterial light, it does more than illuminate; the light is of a type that penetrates adornments, glamour, and the inconsequential surface features of the face revealing far more about the individual behind it than does the unrefined cocktail of light wavelengths that is sunlight. An example of its properties can be seen in these portraits of my children.
If you’re interested in being represented by a unique form of portraiture then please come along: http://www.danacentre.org.uk/events/2008/11/26/456
ROBERT B. LISEK says:
GESPENST / WIDMO / SPECTRE
self-replication of pathogen
new work by ROBERT B. LISEK of Fundamental Research Lab
at LETO Gallery, Warsaw
opening reception:
Friday, October 17, 2008 7-9 pm
exhibition:
17.10 – 12.11. 2008
GALERIA LETO
ul. Hoza 9c
00-528 Warszawa
022 499 59 16, 0501 696 440
www.leto.pl, galeria@leto.pl
The ‘WIDMO /das GESPENST/ SPECTRE’ project, a result of research by the artist at
the Molecular Biology Laboratory of Wroclaw University, explores the relationship
between bio-molecular technology, code and issues arising from network technologies.
With reference to the emerging practice of ‘biotech-art’, the artist aims to represent the
self-replicating behavior of bacteria in order to draw out its wider bio-political significance
in an imagined scenario of bioterrorism.
For the exhibition, the data from the process of self-replication of DNA is represented in
a visual projection and sound installation. As depicts the process, a singular stream of
light and sound grows into a wall of light and sound. ‘Noise’ and errors of micro-
interferences proliferate. The exhibition also comprises luciferase-mediated
bioluminescent bacteria, fluorescent plants (using GFP), paintings and diagrams,
photographic and video documentation from the artist’s research work.
http://www.letwww.leto.pl
Philip Ross's Leviathans
Phillip Ross says:
Hello,
This coming Saturday at eight I will be screening a video I have made as part of the MACHINE PROJECT FIELD GUIDE TO LACMA, at, of course, LACMA.
A few years back I set out to make a video about the behaviors of certain miniscule organisms, and wanting to shoot it with a microscope as my camera. After traveling many interesting roads I am ready to exhibit the first of these videos: Leviathans. This screening will be accompanied by a live musical performance and narrated reading, featuring the musician and composer David Eggars, and the percussionist Corey Fogel. I am super excited to see this happen.
Leviathans is composed entirely from images of the slime-mold Physarum polycephalum, a very interesting organism for a number of reasons. The slime-mold, though diminutive in size, is able to travel relatively large distances in a short period of time while searching for food. This is due in great part to the way its body pulses and moves, which can be imagined as a harmonically rippling jellyfish like thing, propelling itself along on the oscillating waves of its own body. While kind of skanky looking on a larger scale, the slime-mold’s patterns and movements are mesmerizing and otherworldly when seen up close with good lighting.
Leviathans is narrated by three voices in a conversation amongst alien entities. These aliens reminisce on a range of subjects, including the ecology of living space, the nature of time travel, and the problems with super-intelligent computers.
http://machineproject.com/lacma
