Art & Science Journal

The countdown begins - there are just over 24 hours left to get your hands on the first do-it-yourself bioengineering kit! The Amino, which originally began as a school project by Julie Legault out of the MIT Media Lab, is a kit made to encourage people to experiment with synthetic biology. So much of our life is created through bioengineering, and the Amino lets everyone from artists to hackers experience the fun of the lab at home. Better yet, it lets you do so without the expensive equipment.  

When you first think of bioengineering something Frankenstein might come to mind, but there won’t be any dangerous monsters growing in this package. The Amino uses friendly strains of bacteria that are safe for home use. In total, the Amino lets you grow living cells while also getting data on what is going on, and is sophisticated enough for professional labs too! The kit comes with DNA programs (“Apps”), and in the first order you can choose from making a glow in the dark living light or experimenting with several DNA programs. 

The kit looks like loads of fun and I’m excited to see where this goes!

1. Read up on the backstory of the project on the MIT blog. 

2. Check out the Amino Indiegogo campaign

What is it like to live on Mars time? For her work, How the Stars Stand, artist Sara Morawetz worked with Dr. Michael Allison of the NASA Goddard Institute of Space Studies to abandon Earth time and start living on the rhythms of Mars. As the artist explains:

“A Martian day is 24h 39m 35.24s, approximately 2.7% longer than a standard day on Earth. I will live according to Mars time for a full (although approximated) cycle – that would see my ‘day’ gradually separate from Earth bound standards, invert, and then slowly return to synchronicity, an action that should take approximately 37 days to complete.”

The 37 days ends August 22nd with a reception at Open Source Gallery in Brooklyn. Stream it live here. 

Julie Sperling has been working on a series of artworks called Fiddling While Rome Burns about the effects of climate change. In this specific work, Drinking from the firehose, Sperling focuses on the changes to precipitation trends as a result of global warming, such as the increases in extreme drought and floods. As the artist and environmentalist explains:

“A warmer atmosphere increases evaporation and is able to hold more water. So as warmer temperatures suck the moisture up into the atmosphere, which holds onto larger quantities of it for longer stretches of time, the land dries out more quickly, thereby increasing the risk and potential severity of drought. When the precipitation does eventually fall, it is with less frequency but higher intensity, resulting in, you guessed it, increased risk of flooding. In addition, warmer temperatures also mean that more precipitation falls as rain instead of snow. Less snow means a smaller snowpack, which reduces our summer water resources—normally the snow melts gradually and recharges water sources for important things like, say, agriculture. Well, not so much in the future. So, a warmer world is both wetter and drier, more drought stricken and more flood prone.”

Sperling’s mosaic representations are fitting. Like the mosaic-building process, global warming is a slow change that doesn’t appear until you look at the bigger picture. 

In Susan Roston’s ceramic work she takes the hard shell of the material and creates the illusion of flowing and organic sea life. Rather than creating a literal translation of underwater worlds and their inhabitants, this self-taught artist focuses on the movement of life through water. Her creations tremble as though caught in a current and reach for invisible food coming their way. 

Jordan Clayton’s most recent body of work focuses on the microbiology available from the artist’s own body. As Clayton describes his artistic process for this series: “I explore microscope imagery of single-celled organisms, bacterium, viruses, and fungus, which are then conceptualized into abstractions that nuance representation.” The artist uses what he describes as visual quantification - painting or drawing used as a way to record raw data from observation. 

As for the inspiration, Clayton gathers his bacteria colonies from his own body. The harmless samples aim to create a more personal connection between the artist and his work, and contrast with his previous explorations into decay and pandemics. His use of abstraction with these subjects explores the possibility of infinite growth. As he states: “My bacterial colonies could, in theory be in any state of growth or size but are infinitely indeterminate until observed on a microscopic scale.” By observing and recording these processes, Clayton makes them real.

A Tardigrade, also known as a water bear, is a resilient creature. They can survive in some of the most extreme environments (think boiling water and almost absolute zero) and are known for their strange gait, which look like a bear’s walk. Inspired after watching a feature on these little monsters in Neil Degrasse Tyson's Cosmos, designers Eric Ho and Kostika Spaho got to work and created a 3D sculpture of the Tardigrade now available on Shapeways. These eight-legged creatures can even be printed in stainless steel, brass, silver, and 14k gold! Get a little trophy celebrating one of nature’s most gritty inhabitants.

In Vitro by Aljaž Celarc is a work that explores the cyclical nature of our water resources. Celarc, a recent Masters of Photography graduate from Rotterdam, the Netherlands, created a continuous system where ice melted to water, and then that water was filtered to a freezer where it was reformed within a 3D printed mold. 

Each cycle takes about 40-60 hours to complete and then the work continues again. Though In Vitro seems to focus on everlasting rebirth, the artist notes that each time the work goes through the cycle a bit of the material escapes through repetitive exposure. Eventually, the work will just disappear. 

Fashion 2050: Biolace

Carole Collet is a professor in Design for Sustainable Futures and Director of Design & Living Systems Lab, focusing her research on biodesign, biofacturing, high-tech sustainability. Collet is also a pioneer of the Textile Futures discipline at Central Saint Martins.

What is unique about Collet’s work is that most of her projects are fictional, in the sense that they represent possible products or situations in the year 2050 and beyond.

One such fictional project, is “Biolace” (2010-2012), a series of four plants, Strawberry Noir, Basil n 5, Tomato Factor 60, and GoldNano Spinach, which are presented in a hyper-engineered state. The works are provocative, in the sense that they bring up discussions of the pros and cons of living technologies and genetic engineering. How far is ‘too far’ when it comes to controlling living organisms to our benefit? What happens when these plants become a reality? The main goal is to eliminate chemical-based textile manufacturing while also harvesting food to eat. 

But would you, as the artist states, “eat a vitamin-rich black strawberry from a plant that has also produced your little black dress?”

In the future, plants may become multi-purpose factories, producing both food and fabric. Instead of polluting the air with gas or the water with runoff like in a traditional factory, water and sunlight are the only fuels these ‘factories’ would need. Sustainability has never looked (and tasted!) so good.

A&SJ Founder and Editor is giving a talk in Ottawa this Friday!

Playing With Our Food

Edible arrangements and fancy chefs turn food into art, but what about food packaging?

Designers are combining culinary arts with food packaging, creating vessels that are safe for the environment and even edible! No need for fancy garnishes, the packaging itself is a work of art. 

Combining biological engineering and design creates new ways of not only using food, but talking about food consumption.

Swedish design studio Tomorrow Machine has many creative packaging solutions, but one of the most exciting designs comes from the series “This Too Shall Pass”. The series includes packaging for oil-based products, smoothies and short lifespan liquids, and dry foods, such as rice. The oil package is “made of caramelized sugar, coated with wax”, and to open it you crack it like an egg. The package melts in water after use. The smoothie package is made of “gel of the agar-agar seaweed and water”. As the contents become closer to expiration, the package begins to wither. The rice package uses biodegradable beeswax and to access its contents you peel the package like a fruit!

Another innovative food packaging design is called “Edible Growth”, an ongoing project created by food designer Chloé Rutzerveld. The project combines 3D printing with food management and presentation, as everything, even the dirt, is edible.

These designers are part of a new wave of waste management design, where not only are we thinking about how to cut down waste, but how to make waste management LOOK good. It’s not only an innovation in design, but in biological engineering and sustainability too.

Playing with Perspective

Like the fantastical drawings of early physicists, artist John Chervinsky composes photographs which seem to defy explanation, but also inspire curiosity. The artists' series, An Experiment in Perspective (2003-2010) re-imagines the space of the still life as one where optics "challenge sensory perception", similar to the works of graphic artist M.C. Escher. 

The artists' background in engineering and applied physics brings another dimension to the series. Our perception of mathematics and the laws of physics become distorted, some elements seeming to float in space. One may begin to wonder if some of the found objects within the photographs have any relation to each other, or is this another layer of perspective play?

Another observable layer is the perspective of medium; are these photographs of still life, or photographs of sculptures, which are themselves works of art. There are more questions than answers in Chervinsky's work, but that is what seems to be the point. If no one ever asked questions on how things work, we'd have no experiments, scientists, engineers, even artists.

Rock 'n' Roll Nature

There’s a cool record out on the market by Swedish group Shout Out Louds. Why is it so cool? It’s made of ice.

Bad puns aside, the band’s record, “Blue Ice” (2012) defies expectations of audio playing, creating a record that you have to maintain over time, either keeping it in the freezer after one play, or making yourself a whole new one again. When you purchase the record, it comes with a silicon mold and a bottle of distilled water, which apparently is better than regular water as it minimizes the “formation of air bubbles in the ice that made the needle jump”.

If records melting over time aren't your thing, perhaps a laser-cut wooden record is? Artist Amanda Ghassaei, who previously used a 3-D printer to make her own record, has moved on to laser cutting slices of wood. For “Laser Cut Record” (2013) Ghassaei created a program that is “modified for any song, material, cutting machine, record size, and turntable speed”. The artist even provides instructions on how to make your own laser-cut wooden record.

Artist Bartholomäus Traubeck managed a similar feat, except instead of embedding music onto wood or ice, he uses the already present markings on his material to create music. In “Years” (2011) the artist takes a slice of a tree and through a specially designed machine is able to ‘play’ the tree rings that have naturally formed over time (you can literally say that these records took decades to produce). Instead of using a conventional needle, sensors are used to “gather information about the wood’s color and texture and use an algorithm that translates variations into piano notes”, creating a hauntingly beautiful symphony.

iMac Divas

The idea of artists exploring new mediums such as web-based art or incorporating robotics and computers into their practice, for most, seems like a relatively new and innovative idea coming to light only in the past decade or so. However, certain pioneering artists such as G. H. Hovagimyan and Peter Sinclair have been working with computers and robotics as mediums since the mid 1990s, not long after the dawn of the Internet. Their SoaPOPeras from 1997-2005 are a series of projects that transforms early iMacs into soap opera  personalities with the use of specialized software, detailed programming, robotics and remote controls. These projects change the function of a computer from a tool for human communication into simulated human entities, characters in a drama. The machines are turned into surrogates of soap opera divas posed and primed for gossip. The conversations require a human prompt because the iMacs have had software installed that is programmed to respond to keywords that trigger vocal responses from the computers. The title of the piece Soap Opera FOR laptops highlights the notion of the computer as an entity, as a quasi-person. The artists exaggerate the personification of the computers by accessorizing each iMac with unique hairstyles and programming them with different voice software. In their respective outfits the machines play out dramas with each other and the viewer through conversations.

The idea of the disconnect created by using the computer as a tool for social communication is another idea addressed in the soaPOPeras. When we write emails or use instant messengers we are not speaking to each other but rather using the computer as a tool to translate the actions of our fingers on the keyboard into the words the other receives. Therefore it is essentially the computer who responds to the email or the message and not our friends and colleagues.

The communication problems one encounters are also present in these installations. While the computers try to sustain a conversation there are major breakdowns in mutual comprehension. It is difficult to express certain tones such as sarcasm via computers and such flaws quickly surface in the performances of the machines. They have a hard time understanding one another because they don’t have the kind of contextualization that a face-to-face human interaction contains and the conversations take off on unexpected tangents.

Although these pieces are almost 20 years old they are still poignant indicators of certain questions that have arisen from the use of virtual communication. The artists bring to life the machines that we so often speak of as though they are our best friend or conniving nemesis and simultaneously bring to light the social ramifications and questions that they import.

Tradition and Tech

Contemporary art and technology are filled with new ideas, innovations. Many artists prefer to focus on new medias or changing aesthetics, but it is possible to create work that is both new and traditional. Artists such as Ngatai Taepa and Sonny Assu use aesthetic elements from their Indigenous cultures, Māori and Kwakwa̱ka̱'wakw respectively, to create a dialogue between tradition and modern.

Using traditional elements such as the kōwhaiwhai pattern, Taepa’s works merge forms inspired by nature, and recreates them in his own way, exploring “positive and negative space, line work, the pītau [plant shoot] and the kape [eyebrow] patterns, and the way they were originally laid down.” The artist preserves the knowledge of these patterns and traditions, but now for new audiences and interpretations. The work “Tane Pupuke” (2014) for example, is visually reminiscent of a circuit board, but still maintains the distinct kōwhaiwhai pattern.

Where Taepa’s natural forms take on the look of technological elements, artist Sonny Assu takes tech objects, such as iPods, and bends the devices and earphones to become fluid shapes, interacting with traditional shapes found in Northwest Coast art. In his series “iDrum”, Assu combines the tradition of image (for example, ovoids) and object (the drum) with representations of the ‘new’ image and object; today, the iPod has replaced the drum as music creator, but the iPod does not hold the same spiritual and cultural value as the drum. Through these works, Assu creates “dialogue towards the use of consumerism, branding and technology as totemic representation”, often with a hint of humour.

We the Cell(s)

Joseph Farbrook's Cell in the New Body, 2006, is a virtual visual poem that uses a combination of rapid flash animation and text to evoke meaning. This work cannot be fully explained without actually experiencing it, so I would urge the reader to visit it on the artist's site: http://www.farbrook.net/website/cell.html. The image and text compete with for attention because both are changing so rapidly and are equally intriguing. Farbrook addresses this dilemma by having the work on an infinite loop so that it can be seamlessly viewed as many times as needed to fully understand the meaning of the piece.  The images are composed of many small elements that squiggle and shift, as though they were cells, working together to create the image. This work explores individual identity within a larger body, such as a network. We are all part of several networks, we are parts of a greater whole: a student in a school, an employee of a company, a member of an association etc. As users we are also all elements of the World Wide Web. The Internet is a network and relies on collaboration.

We work together to create the world of the Internet by uploading data. I believe the "new body" that Farbrook refers to in his poem could certainly be read as the vast network of the Internet. We may or may not necessarily be aware of what our actions on the Internet are building towards, but every keystroke we submit is inevitably adding to the network of information. While use of the Internet has become almost completely integrated with most aspects of daily life, there are some who still feel overwhelmed or daunted by the Internet. Both those who now little and those who know all too well of the vastness of the Wide Web can find it an imitating space. Cell in the New Body addresses the virtual world, which is a world with an enormous population that is rapidly increasing and that we have more and more access to. We can feel very small and insignificant in this world now more than ever because we are made aware of the seemingly unlimited achievements and outputs of our peers. It can thus be a challenge to identify ourselves in this increasingly virtual world. We can consider ourselves lost in an infinite space or found within a whole.