The idea of making art with living systems is not new; you might even consider a garden or a goldfish pond to be biological art. What is new is the degree of control over biological systems and materials contemporary technology offers us. Topics on the organism weblog include technical, practical, aesthetic, and ethical issues related to making art with living systems. Artists, scientists, engineers, students, and anyone else with an interest in this area are invited to contribute.
Botanicalls: The Plants Have Your Number
Botanicalls opens a new channel of communication between plants and humans, in an effort to promote successful inter-species understanding.Botanicalls allows plants to place phone calls for human help. When a plant on the Botanicalls network needs water, it can call a person and ask for exactly what it needs. When people phone the plants, the plants orient callers to their botanical characteristics.
STUDY FOR LIT FROM WITHIN
new installation
by Ryan Wolfe
(with special thanks to Allison Kudla)The technological and biological merge to create a unique hybrid living system which inverts the fundamental biological relationship between inside and outside…
STUDY FOR LIT FROM WITHIN In a sun-less room, plants thrive using light that emanates from within their own living tissue. Ryan Wolfe’s newest installation redefines how a living form can relate to its environment.
Clusters of Equisetum Hyemale (Common Horsetail) are equipped with the equivalent of internal sunshine. staggered throughout a dark room, each plant contains a number of surgically-embedded LEDs. These LEDs have been selected to enable the plants to photosynthesize in darkness. Sunrise and sunset programmatically occur from within each plant, allowing the viewer to navigate a field of organisms flourishing off their own internal sun cycle.
Wolfe’s installation reminds us how modern advances increasingly reconfigure lives while offering an imaginative glimpse of the future of this intertwining.
At Dam, Stuhltrager Gallery until June 29th, 2008.
One of the central works in the exhibition “Design and the Elastic Mind” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (until 12 May), Victimless Leather, a small jacket made up of embryonic stem cells taken from mice, has died. The artists, Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr, say the work which was fed nutrients by tube, expanded too quickly and clogged its own incubation system just five weeks after the show opened.
Catts and Zurr run a laboratory at the University of Western Australia in Perth; this combines artistic practice with scientific research. The jacket is one of several works created as part of their Tissue Culture & Art Project. Speaking to The Art Newspaper for a televised interview, Paola Antonelli, head of MoMA’s architecture and design department and curator of the show, says she had to make the decision to turn off the life-support system for the work, basically “killing” it.
Ms Antonelli says the jacket “started growing, growing, growing until it became too big. And [the artists] were back in Australia, so I had to make the decision to kill it. And you know what? I felt I could not make that decision. I’ve always been pro-choice and all of a sudden I’m here not sleeping at night about killing a coat…That thing was never alive before it was grown.”
Catts says his intention is “to raise questions about our exploitation of other living beings”.
The interactive installation Sonobotanics is going to be exhibited at okno in Brussels, from may 17, 2008 to may 31, 2008.
Periperceptoida Dendriformis Sensibilis
A sound plant whose precise classifying properties are to be found in the auditory domain. The stalk has a sound which is most similar to a woodwind instrument, whereas its leaves have a soft, rustling kind of sound. Its flowers sound like high pitched glass drops. Furthermore, the plant has a voice with which it reacts on perceived voices from other (e.g. human) beings.
Its physical appearance consists of a transparent ball, with long haulms (which are its sensing organs) in shades of blue and red with yellow ends.
Periperceptoida Dendriformis Imaginaris
A sound plant which is directly related to Periperceptoida Dendriformis Sensibilis. Its acoustic appearance is quite similar to P.D. Sensibilis, except that P.D. Imaginaris does not react to other voices. The outstanding characteristic of Imaginaris is that it is directly connected to one and only one other Sensibilis and that its sound emanations are exactly identical to the sound of this one specimen of Sensibilis. Interestingly, a Sensibilis and its connected Imaginaris cannot live in the same garden; they seem to require some distance between them. The physical appearance of P.D. Imaginaris is quite similar to that of Sensibilis, but with less and more slender haulms.
The Periperceptoidae can be further differentiated by their individual preferences for certain kinds of sounds. When their preferred sounds occur often in their environment, this has a positive influence on their growth and sense of well-being.
Predictive Sonobotanics
Current research in Sonobotanics has shown that it is exceedingly difficult to study the behaviour and characteristics of these plants, as they are extremely sensitive to their environment. This is yet another proof of their intelligence and their emotional nature: they obviously dislike being employed as guinea pigs for human science. Recently, this has led to the birth of a very different approach in Sonobotanics research: the new domain of Predictive Sonobotanics. This scientific discipline attempts to create models of the plants, using all the knowledge gained thus far about them, and implementing in a simulation certain behaviours of interest that the plants are suspected to have. By doing so, the behaviour of the models can be compared to the observed behaviour of the real plants in their natural surroundings, and further understanding of these complex beings can be gained.
The models shown in this exhibition have been created by the Institute for Predictive Sonobotanics (IPSO, which is part of the Foundation for Auralisation and Computation of Transient Objects, also known as FACTO) using modern technology: sensors measure environmental characteristics, such as light, temperature, humidity and sound; these data are used in computational models, implemented in the sonic programming language SuperCollider; the result of these is then auralised via the loudspeakers inside the physical model.
As the domain of Sonobotanics, and even more so Predictive Sonobotanics, is still considered controversial in some academic circles (questioning its validity as a “true” science), the researchers have chosen to use their contacts in the art world to bring the plants into contact with a larger audience, in order to expose their models to realistic environments.
About the researchers of IPSO-FACTO
Alberto de Campo
Born in 1964 in Graz, Austria, young Alberto’s first experiences with sonobotanics was when he went to play alone in the surrounding mountains. There, in places barely visited by other humans, he found plants he could not find back in the encyclopedia at home. He was most entranced by the part melodic, part noiselike, sounds of these colorful plants. Though he never saw significant changes in their visual exterior, he noted during repeated visits that its sounds were always changing, slowly evolving from one visit to the next. Certain biographers of de Campo claim that these experiences led him to become a composer and sound artist. Indeed, he chose to study classical composition, jazz and electronic music, and soon found that many of the melodies in local folk songs were quite similar to the plant sounds he heard as a young boy. However, during most of his life, Alberto was occupied with studying, researching and teaching, in places like CREATE/UC Santa Barbara, the Music Department at Academy for Media and Arts Cologne, the Music University Graz, the Institute for Sonoaviatics (of which he is co-founder and head of its Austrian section), and being involved in art projects together with Andres Bosshard, earweego, Julian Rohrhuber, Bill Fontana, and others.
Only on a recent visit to China - shortly after his guest professorship at the TU Berlin - did he finally find some proof of his notions of sonobotanics. Together with the happy coincidence of getting acquainted with M. Baalman shortly before, this led to the foundation of the Institute for Predictive Sonobotanics.
Currently, de Campo is also engaged in an interdisciplinary research project on data sonification at the Institute for Electronic Music and Acoustics (IEM) in Graz.
Marije Baalman
Born in 1978 in Pingjum, Frisia, the Netherlands, Marije was from a young age interested in (re-)creating realities. In her youth she mostly created these in stories, but as a surprise to some people in her surroundings, when going to university, she chose to study Applied Physics at the University of Technology in Delft. Her study there was accompanied by an engagement in role playing, a form of improvisation theatre. After a one-year course in Sonology at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, Marije moved to Berlin to engage in the creation of sonic realities by the use of Wave Field Synthesis. Currently she is working on a Ph.D. on that topic. Meanwhile, she had started creating models of creatures in computation and sound (e.g. “Scratch” in 2004), and so it was no wonder, that when she met Alberto de Campo during his guest professorship at TU Berlin, and - during some late night discussions in the studio - heard about de Campo’s true motivations to become a composer, his story about the plants - up until then mostly considered children’s fantasy by others - caught Marije’s interest to create a model of these plants. While Alberto was on his Chinese expedition, Marije searched in the more obscure botanic literature for references to these plants and - coincidentally - came across the name of a distant relative of hers, now widely known as Prof. Dr. Hortensia Audactor. Gaining access to (then largely unpublished) scientific descriptions of Periperceptoida Dendriformis and its variants, Marije set out to create models of these intriguing plants. When Alberto returned, they founded the Institute for Predictive Sonobotanics.
Hannes Hoelzl
While he is not directly involved in the work shown here, Hannes Hoelzl has been a seminal figure in the formation of Predictive Sonobotanics.
Born 1974 in Bolzano/Italy, he works in various disciplines orbiting around the central focus of sounds in space: from programming to composition, from installation to improvised performance, from ambient listening to synthesis of unpredictable sound and coding odd behaviour into semi-intelligent sonic entities.
As co-founder of the Institute for Sonoaviatics (led by Swiss sound artist extraordinaire Andres Bosshard), he has been involved in cutting edge sound art/research in a number of disciplines, some of which as innovative as Dracosonics (the study of sounds made by flying objects, often tied to strings). He has been an avid sonobotanist from the start and his experience and intuition has contributed substantially to their development of earlier incarnations of the sonobotanic models.
References:
www.giardinosonoro.it/
Louis Bec & Vilem Flusser : Vampyrotheutis Infernalis
www.sonobotanics.org
The Singing Plant is an installation that lets the audience interact with a natural plant.
When the plant is touched it gives feedback in the forms of sounds and light. The more people touch the it, the more enegetically it responds. The sound gains volume and the light in the room grows from dim to bright.
Peoples reactions become part of the installation. We have seen people pity the plant. We have seen people caress it. And we have seen people dance enthusiastically around it.
The purpose is not to provide answers, but to question established preceptions of the relationship between man, machine and nature.
The exhibition went well in the Botanical Garden about 11.000 people came by and saw our installations.
EOD 02 _ electric organ discharge 02
EOD 02 is an installation by Frederik De Wilde created in collaboration with LAb[au]. EOD 02 is a new-media installation exploring the capacity of special species of living blind fishes to perceive (electrosense) their environment and communicate with each other by emitting electric signals, either in pulses or waves. The installation is based on four aquariums of taintless mirror, each presenting a specific composition of fish producing different electric signals. In each aquarium antennas capture the electric communication between the fishes and render these signals into sound. Under each aquarium a matrix of leds is placed pulsing according to the intensity and rhythm of the emitted signals. In this manner the electrical impulses of the fishes drive sound, light and an entire audiovisual space.
On view from until April 19, 2008 :: Théâtre de l’Agora, Place de l’Agora- BP 46 F-91002 Evry cedex (France).
James Yamada‘ Birth of the Cool installation investigates the contrast between ‘natural’ landscapes and ‘digital’ landscapes typical of post-industrial society. The apparent cold and minimalist sculpture is actually a structure for transforming organic matter – it hosts thousands of worms inside.
These worms digest organic waste from the foundation’s catering facilities and turn it into compost – soil that is rich and fertile – thus creating a self-sustaining ecosystem capable of processing 20kg of organic debris each week. The public cannot detect the presence of the organisms contained within the sculpture as they produce no sound or odor, though the rich compost they generate during the months of the exhibition will gradually be deposited on the floor underneath the sculpture as it falls from a series of holes in the base of the container. Yamada chose the title to evoke what is happening inside the structure – the birth of new earth and new ‘cool’ worms. Above all it is a metaphor for the mechanisms of society and its ongoing, ‘silent’ production of contrastingly useless waste.
For the past ten years, Brandon Ballengée’s work has been the observation of amphibian declines and deformities.
In 2007, The Arts Catalyst in England commissioned the artist to lead a UK study into declining amphibian species, working with the public as well as collaborating scientists.
Cleared and Stained American Bullfrog, collected in Brown County, 1954. Photographed July 17, 2001, from the collection of the Hefner Zoology Museum, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio.
I find his work deeply moving for many reasons. One of them has to do with the way he communicates his work. He produces not only amazingly beautiful images of these deformed amphibians but also takes his discourse out of the white walls of art galleries (where aonly a certain category of people will ever get to see them) by taking people to field trips and let them experience first hand what his happening in their own backyards.
The Arts Catalyst has just released a video that documents the project to date:
You can also see some of Brandon’s work at Exit Art in New York in the E.P.A. (Environmental Performance Actions) exhibition through May 17, 2008.
One of my favourite magazines is aminima. The name of the publication comes from the fact that its editors, the lovely Barcelona-based Andrea Garcia Mendez and Clara Alba, claim that they take a “very minimal” part to its redaction. It’s the artists themselves who write about their work. The selected authors maintain a critical view on the problems of their time. Their work reflects on aesthetic, technological and political questions.
Part of the mag is online and i just spotted this selection of writings by people “making art with living systems.”
In 2001, Zeger Reyers vaccinated some everyday objects - found in the basement of Rotterdam Art Centre Witte de With - with oyster mushroom spores. Shortly afterwards, colorful fungi sprouted from archive boxes, furniture and fire hoses.
via next nature.
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