organism: making art with living systems

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

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.

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

Gordon is a very special robot. Controlled by a dish full of rats’ brain cells, he’s helping scientists to understand how our brains work. Antenna explores the science behind Gordon, what he might tell us about the brain, and what his creation could mean for the future of robotics…

Gordon is on display in the Antenna gallery from 16 October 2008 for at least six weeks.

http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/antenna/ratbrains/index.asp

UIC’s Gallery 400 is pleased to present Biological Agents, a group exhibition curated by Christa Donner and Andrew Yang.

The complexities of contemporary life fundamentally challenge the way we understand ourselves as biological entities within larger ecosystems. Biological Agents focuses on the work of Brandon Ballengée, Caitlin Berrigan, and Natalie Jeremijenko: three artists who engage the intimate participation of organisms and the public to investigate what it means to be human, to be animal, and to have personal and social agency. In addition, the show’s Knowledge Virus Research Station offers visitors a diverse collection of small-press zines, view-master reels and web projects disseminating information on biological topics from a variety of creative perspectives.

Featured Artists:

Brandon Ballengée’s MALAMP project explores the mysterious malformations and global decline of amphibians through ecology, aesthetics, and participatory practice.  Collaborating with biologists and local citizens, his photographs and installations create a both a visual and material dialogue on the effects of environmental change on native ecologies.

Caitlin Berrigan uses her Viral Confections and Viral Shelter projects to create intimate, virally-structured space within the gallery where visitors are invited to consume edible chocolates shaped into the molecular structure of the hepatitis C virus.  A carrier of the virus herself, Berrigan will share her handmade chocolates with visitors during the opening reception in exchange for personal dialogue, igniting public discussion and fostering awareness around this prevalent and under-recognized disease.

Natalie Jeremijenko’s site-specific installations and collaborative projects engage the interfaces of animal/human life in urban ecosystems.  Her Environmental Health Clinic proposes animal-collaborative prescriptions that both provoke and provide closer examination of environmental quality in contemporary urban-nature.  For Biological Agents she fosters interaction with tadpoles, migrating coyotes, and local pigeons as a means to assess and intervene in the health of our shared ecologies.

Related Events:

Wednesday, October 22, 6:00pm, Gallery 400 Lecture Room
Screening of Critical Art Ensemble’s Marching Plague and Lynn Hershman Leeson’s Strange Culture, exploring Critical Art Ensemble member Steve Kurtz’s bio-art (and alleged “bioweapons”) case. Accompanied by discussion about the work and the case with CAE collaborator Claire Pentecost, Associate Professor, SAIC.

Panel Discussion, Date and Location TBA
Lori Andrews, Chicago-Kent College of Law, IIT; Hannah Higgins, UIC Associate Professor of Art History; and Andrew Yang, SAIC, exhibition co-curator and biologist. Moderated by Lennard Davis, UIC Project Biocultures and Professor of English, Disability Studies and Medical Education.

Gallery 400 events are FREE.

Biological Agents: Artistic Engagements in our Growing Bio-Culture
October 14 – November 22, 2008
Opening Reception: October 15, 2008, 5-8pm

Gallery 400
University of Illinois at Chicago
Art and Design Hall, First Floor
400 S. Peoria Street (at Van Buren Street)

Phoebe Washburn has a new installation on view at the Zach Feuer Gallery in New York until October 4.

From the Press release:

In Tickle the Shitstem, Washburn has developed a system/environment in which production and waste are equally important.  The Shitstem generates its own products along with the inevitable byproducts or waste, and at times, there is little or no distinction between the two.  The installation simply keeps churning, producing and hemorrhaging cyclically unless it is interrupted by a failure.  Products of Tickle the Shitstem include beverages, pencils, colored urchins and t-shirts.

The Shitstem produces t-shirts, dyed sea urchins, pencils, and drinks, available for purchase.

Previously: Feeding plants with Gatorade.