organism: making art with living systems

VIDA 10.0 is a annual competition for artists working in the field of artificial live to gain recognition and support for their latest projects (they need to be created not before than Stember 2005) as well as financial support for the production of projects with no realization for those artists from Spain, Portugal and Latinoamerica.

Many of the arts projects that explore issues on life and living systems could be suitable for this competition, so I encourage everyone working in this area to submit their projects. The artistic projects that address the interaction between “synthetic” and “organic” life”. In previous years prizes have been awarded to artistic projects using autonomous robots, avatars, recursive chaotic algorithms, knowbots, cellular automata, computer viruses, virtual ecologies that evolve with user participation, and works that highlight the social side of Artificial Life.

The call for projects is opened since the 17th of Setember until the 22nd of October.

http://www.telefonica.es/vida/ 

Ebon Fisher says:

If you get a chance, you might want to reference our Organism of 1993 in which the first web jam was put into practice. 120 Williamsburg artists wove webs of video, sculpture, radio, performance, and living things for 9 straight hours. 2,000 people attended.

The interdisciplinary event, cultivated for months, was called Organism and was conceived as a living cultural system. It was putting into practice a radical form of interspecies democracy (including the machinic phylum). There’s documentation of it on Artnetweb which has been up and running for over a decade. It’s also on my website.

http://artnetweb.com/organism/
http://www.nervepool.net/ritindex.html (scroll down to “Web Jam”)

Yesterday was the presentation of the prize Winners in the brand new “Hybrid Art” category of Ars Electronica.

A superbly deadpan Wim Delvoye presented Cloaca (the name comes from the Latin word for sewer), a body of works that duplicate human digestion. The machine is fed and after a long process –involving wires, tubes but also acids, bacteria and enzyme liquids– produces feces. Since he started working on the project in 2000, Delvoye developed several models of Cloaca machines. The one on show is a domestic one, a Cloaca you could have at home.

via: Regine@ WMMNA

From Make Blog:

There seems to be bio theme emerging lately (pictured here “Personal Cloaca” by Wim Delvoye).

link

Here we go! The NEW new organism blog is ready for action, with your hosts, Douglas, Regine, Andy, Monica, and Garnet (see “who’s who” on the left). Please send comments/suggestions/post ideas to: organism at music columbia edu.

A Newcastle artist has gone into partnership with her pet gerbil on her latest artwork. Sally Madge’s gerbil eating its way through a 1933 edition of the New Illustrated Universal Reference Book. The gerbil, which has no name, is just doing what comes naturally, building its nest, at Sally’s home. But it is the unwitting star of an exhibition called The Gerbil’s Guide to the Galaxy at Newcastle’s Waygood Gallery. On display are remnants of the 72-year old book, an empty cage containing a nest of book fragments and a video webcast of the gerbil in action. Sally says she’s fascinated in the gerbil’s “personal translation” of the book by choosing particular words and phrases. When the book is completely transformed, the shredded paper will be turned into a new piece of artwork.

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_1462528.html?menu=

Tiffany Holmes has made several pieces, including
Fishbowl and Follow the Mouse that use the movements of small animals as control signals.

Eduardo Kac has made several "transgenic artworks," including GFP Bunny, a genetically engineered fluorescent rabbit.

Laura Cinti’s The Cactus Project claims to be a transgenic artwork involving the fusion of human genetic material into the cactus genome resulting in the cactus expressing human hair.

Douglas Repetto plays with anthropmorphism and the movement of plants in Fly Away (Not Going Very Far) and How to Annoy a Plant.