PRIX PIC PRINT VIDEOS

ARS ELECTRONICA ARCHIVE - ART & SCIENCE

The basis of the „European Digital Art and Science Network“ is a big manifold network consisting of scientific mentoring institutions (ESA, CERN, ESO and Fraunhofer MEVIS), the Ars Electronica Futurelab and seven European cultural partners (Center for the promotion of science, RS – DIG Gallery, SK – Zaragoza City of Knowledge Foundation, ES – Kapelica Gallery / Kersnikova, SI – GV Art, UK – Laboral, ES – Science Gallery, IE. The EU funded project lasted from 2014 to 2017.
The Online Archive of Ars Electronica provides an overview of the individual activities of the network and also delivers information about the network itself, the residency artists and the involved project partners and the jury.

MATERIA PRIMA exhibition at LABoral 2015

MATERIA PRIMA exhibition at LABoral

MATERIA PRIMA
Exhibition
Gijón
14.11.2015 – 08.05.2016
• Info: An exhibition in the context of the European Digital Art & Science Network.
Year of creation
2015

Urls
https://export.aec.at/materiaprima/

Start:
Nov 14, 2015
End:
May 08, 2016

LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial
AGRIEBORGZ by Nick Ervinck (BE)
Materia Prima Exhbition
14.11.2015 - 08.05.2016

............ Another artwork on display is by Belgian artist Nick Ervinck. For AGRIEBORZ he used images of human organs that he found in medical manuals as construction material for creating organic forms, and then realized them in 3D. With his work he is questioning, on the one hand, the impact of rapid prototyping and 3D printing for medical research and, on the other hand, the influence of bioprinting technology in generating organs. Ervinck, who is working parallel to science, is developing new realities for different audiences in art, science, and beyond.
Biopresence (2003) by Shiho Fukuhara (JP) and Georg Tremmel (AT)
Materia Prima Exhbition
14.11.2015 - 08.05.2016

........ Biopresence by Shiho Fukuhara (JP) and Georg Tremmel (AT) creates “Human DNA Trees” by transcoding the essence of a human being within the DNA of a tree in order to create “Living Memorials” or “Transgenic Tombstones.” Biopresence is collaborating with scientist and artist Joe Davis on his DNA Manifold algorithm, which allows for the transcoding and entwinement of human and tree DNAs.
Drosophila Titanus by Andy Gracie (UK/ES)
Materia Prima Exhbition
14.11.2015 - 08.05.2016

........ Drosophila titanus by Andy Gracie (UK/ES) is an ongoing and long-term project which through a process of experimentation and artificial selection aims to breed a species of the fruit fly, Drosophila, that would theoretically be capable of living on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. The project needs to adhere to a rigorous scientific methodology and framework in which the artist can act and at the same time artistically investigate concepts related to the topics of species, biological perfection, perception, and future life.
Environment Dress by María Castellanos and Alberto Valverde (ES)
Asturian artist María Castellanos and Madrid native Alberto Valverde were two of the artists working in the FabLab during the exhibition. They explore certain man-machine relationships and intersections. Their work Environment Dress focuses on garments as a kind of sensory device for investigating variations in noise, temperature, atmospheric pressure, ultraviolet radiation, or the amount of carbon monoxide we are exposed to in our daily life. The person wearing this smart dress will receive direct feedback about his or her exposure through changes in the dress’s lighting.
Fifty Sisters by Jon McCormack (AU)
Jon McCormack’s Fifty Sisters are the counterparts of Cornelia Hesse-Honegger’s handmade drawings. Since the late 1980s McCormack has worked with computer code as a medium for creative expression. Inspired by the complexity and wonder of a diminishing natural world, his work is concerned with electronic “post-natures”—alternate forms of artificial life that may one day replace the biological nature lost through human progress and development. Fictional visualization is also practiced by the artist Nick Ervinck, who was presented earlier within the context of the FabLab. At first sight his 3D printed objects look as if they have been made for medical research, however, as soon as you understand that his work is not about existing bodies, you start imagining the creatures behind the objects on display.
Gene Gun Hack by Rüdiger Trojok (DE)
Gene Gun Hack by Rüdiger Trojok (DE) is a scientific instrument. The biologist Rüdiger Trojok succeeded in building one of his own and in slashing its cost to a mere 50 euros. Normally the gene gun is one of the most important tools used in modern biology. Many of today’s genetically modified plants have been produced with this technology, which is a kind of a bio-ballistics device used to shoot a particle of gold coated with DNA into a cell. Trojok has not only provided a DIY version of a gene gun, he has at the same time critically questioned developments in genetic engineering.
Impressions from MATERIA PRIMA exhibition at LABoral
Materia Prima
Exhibition
14.11.2015 – 08.05.2016

The exhibition focuses on new alliances between art and science, and the materia prima that their protagonists work with: computer code.

The core of the exhibition consists of a set of interactive visitor labs. Education and communication are not a side program but the central component in this exploration of art and science. The labs are surrounded by exploratory displays featuring outstanding artistic works as well as R&D prototypes—atelier and laboratory meld together here. Between these areas, we find references to the rich history of the liaison of art and science. To quote Merriam-Webster dictionary, a laboratory is “a place providing opportunity for experimentation, observation, or practice in a field of study.” Although in our common understanding of laboratories, we tend to see them as places where highly secret experiments are conducted and high-cost equipment is used. Places where access is only granted to those who have a good relationship to the people working there or a mandate to enter them. They are where processes take place that have a direct impact on knowledge.

Curated by Gerfried Stocker, Ars Electronica Center Linz
Impressions from MATERIA PRIMA exhibition at LABoral
Materia Prima
Exhibition
14.11.2015 – 08.05.2016

The exhibition focuses on new alliances between art and science, and the materia prima that their protagonists work with: computer code.

The core of the exhibition consists of a set of interactive visitor labs. Education and communication are not a side program but the central component in this exploration of art and science. The labs are surrounded by exploratory displays featuring outstanding artistic works as well as R&D prototypes—atelier and laboratory meld together here. Between these areas, we find references to the rich history of the liaison of art and science. To quote Merriam-Webster dictionary, a laboratory is “a place providing opportunity for experimentation, observation, or practice in a field of study.” Although in our common understanding of laboratories, we tend to see them as places where highly secret experiments are conducted and high-cost equipment is used. Places where access is only granted to those who have a good relationship to the people working there or a mandate to enter them. They are where processes take place that have a direct impact on knowledge.

Curated by Gerfried Stocker, Ars Electronica Center Linz
Impressions from MATERIA PRIMA exhibition at LABoral
Materia Prima
Exhibition
14.11.2015 – 08.05.2016

The exhibition focuses on new alliances between art and science, and the materia prima that their protagonists work with: computer code.

The core of the exhibition consists of a set of interactive visitor labs. Education and communication are not a side program but the central component in this exploration of art and science. The labs are surrounded by exploratory displays featuring outstanding artistic works as well as R&D prototypes—atelier and laboratory meld together here. Between these areas, we find references to the rich history of the liaison of art and science. To quote Merriam-Webster dictionary, a laboratory is “a place providing opportunity for experimentation, observation, or practice in a field of study.” Although in our common understanding of laboratories, we tend to see them as places where highly secret experiments are conducted and high-cost equipment is used. Places where access is only granted to those who have a good relationship to the people working there or a mandate to enter them. They are where processes take place that have a direct impact on knowledge.

Curated by Gerfried Stocker, Ars Electronica Center Linz
Impressions from MATERIA PRIMA exhibition at LABoral
Materia Prima
Exhibition
14.11.2015 – 08.05.2016

The exhibition focuses on new alliances between art and science, and the materia prima that their protagonists work with: computer code.

The core of the exhibition consists of a set of interactive visitor labs. Education and communication are not a side program but the central component in this exploration of art and science. The labs are surrounded by exploratory displays featuring outstanding artistic works as well as R&D prototypes—atelier and laboratory meld together here. Between these areas, we find references to the rich history of the liaison of art and science. To quote Merriam-Webster dictionary, a laboratory is “a place providing opportunity for experimentation, observation, or practice in a field of study.” Although in our common understanding of laboratories, we tend to see them as places where highly secret experiments are conducted and high-cost equipment is used. Places where access is only granted to those who have a good relationship to the people working there or a mandate to enter them. They are where processes take place that have a direct impact on knowledge.

Curated by Gerfried Stocker, Ars Electronica Center Linz
Impressions from MATERIA PRIMA exhibition at LABoral
Materia Prima
Exhibition
14.11.2015 – 08.05.2016

The exhibition focuses on new alliances between art and science, and the materia prima that their protagonists work with: computer code.

The core of the exhibition consists of a set of interactive visitor labs. Education and communication are not a side program but the central component in this exploration of art and science. The labs are surrounded by exploratory displays featuring outstanding artistic works as well as R&D prototypes—atelier and laboratory meld together here. Between these areas, we find references to the rich history of the liaison of art and science. To quote Merriam-Webster dictionary, a laboratory is “a place providing opportunity for experimentation, observation, or practice in a field of study.” Although in our common understanding of laboratories, we tend to see them as places where highly secret experiments are conducted and high-cost equipment is used. Places where access is only granted to those who have a good relationship to the people working there or a mandate to enter them. They are where processes take place that have a direct impact on knowledge.

Curated by Gerfried Stocker, Ars Electronica Center Linz
Mobile Instrument by María Ignacia Edwards (CL)
María Ignacia Edwards’s (CL) Mobile Instrument, for example, works with equilibrium, lightness, and the weightlessness of objects, which she brings into balance by deploying their own weight or counterweights. Though, at first glance, her works are perceived as purely aesthetic, artistic objects, it soon dawns on those who behold them that these constructions are the result of elaborate mathematical and physical calculations, mechanisms, solutions, and interventions. María Ignacia Edwards calls these pieces self-sustainable because they require no more than their own weight to exist, and the objects tend to rotate constantly around their own axis.
Synthetic Memetic by Matthew Gardiner (AU)
The artist Matthew Gardiner (AU) was inspired by the idea of using a gene gun in a similar way as the British police are said to use them: DNA sequences containing particular codes are deployed to mark suspicious persons with a shot from a special pistol. In his work Synthetic Memetic, Matthew Gardiner composed a DNA sequence in such a way that the series of nucleotide bases in it correspond to the letters of the song title “Never Gonna Give You Up” by Rick Astley, and then integrated them symbolically into a pistol. It is a reference to the viral systematics of this song that—having first topped charts worldwide in the 1980s—is still causing a commotion online: users who click on some seemingly innocuous headline, image, or video are unexpectedly redirected to Rick Astley’s catchy tune.
Teacup Tools by Agnes Meyer-Brandis (DE)
Agnes Mayer Brandis’s Teacup Tools are part of a “Global Teacup Network” and draw attention to climate-related sciences. Her work consists of a table and machinery for raising two or more teacups individually. Various measuring instruments are built in and onto the teacups, measuring the environment of the cup. The energy produced by these instruments heats the inside of the cups and brews tea from rainwater and the residues that have fallen into it. This tea produces a little cloud that contains the essence of the local air. The cloud again feeds back into the system and becomes the subject of investigation for the tools connected to the cup. The teacups move up and down individually, according to certain aspects related to the collected data and environmental processes, dancing an endless choreography determined by raindrops and clouds, particles, measurements, and tea drinking.
The Listener by Patricia Piccinini (AU)
In addition to Lozano’s excursive project, Patricia Piccinini presented The Listener. This humanoid figure that her crew painstakingly put together out of silicon, fiberglass, and human hair doesn’t seem the least bit threatening. Actually, its vulnerability is what leaves the strongest impression. With a friendly look on its face, it seems to be seeking acceptance and hoping that we are not put off by its strangeness. In a world in which human beings can use new technologies to modify and reform the creatures of nature, in which the diversity of life has reached a new stage, and in which new possibilities of synthetic biology bring forth more questions than answers, we mustn’t lose our capacity for empathy. And so the question arises: Can a code for empathy be written for a machine and, if so, what challenges will we have to face in the future?
Drosophila Titanus by Andy Gracie (UK/ES)
Drosophila titanus by Andy Gracie (UK/ES) is an ongoing and long-term project which through a process of experimentation and artificial selection aims to breed a species of the fruit fly, Drosophila, that would theoretically be capable of living on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. The project needs to adhere to a rigorous scientific methodology and framework in which the artist can act and at the same time artistically investigate concepts related to the topics of species, biological perfection, perception, and future life.
Opimilk (2013-2014) by Teresa Dillon, Naomi Griffin-Murtagh, Claire Dempsey and Aisting Mc Crudden (IE)
Teresa Dillon (IE), Naomi Griffin-Murtagh (IE), Claire Dempsey (IE), and Aisling McCrudden (IE) are artists who once came together for a course on synthetic biology and posed the following question: Can animals be transformed into medical devices? Opimilk, as this Dublin-based team calls their idea, involves transforming the bovine organism into a living bioreactor, and so producing complete and effective medications that can be milked right from the cow’s udder.
ARS DNA Workshop
Based on DNA systematics, a group of Ars Electronica Futurelab researchers asked during an ARS DNA workshop, how digital data might be stored to memory for 10, 100, or even 1,000 years without having to transfer it periodically to new data storage media? Now this question is not new, and so numerous labs are already working on it. But then the importance of this idea was transferred to a workshop with citizens in Linz and then to one in Gijon, where audiences were invited to understand the latest research on DNA as a medium for memory, as well as to convert their name or some other series of characters into a DNA sequence. Simultaneously they were asked to investigate how much they would have to pay today to have this done in a lab.
Biopresence (2003) by Shiho Fukuhara (JP) and Georg Tremmel (AT)
Biopresence by Shiho Fukuhara (JP) and Georg Tremmel (AT) creates “Human DNA Trees” by transcoding the essence of a human being within the DNA of a tree in order to create “Living Memorials” or “Transgenic Tombstones.” Biopresence is collaborating with scientist and artist Joe Davis on his DNA Manifold algorithm, which allows for the transcoding and entwinement of human and tree DNAs.
Biopresence (2003) by Shiho Fukuhara (JP) and Georg Tremmel (AT)
Biopresence by Shiho Fukuhara (JP) and Georg Tremmel (AT) creates “Human DNA Trees” by transcoding the essence of a human being within the DNA of a tree in order to create “Living Memorials” or “Transgenic Tombstones.” Biopresence is collaborating with scientist and artist Joe Davis on his DNA Manifold algorithm, which allows for the transcoding and entwinement of human and tree DNAs.
AGRIEBORGZ by Nick Ervinck (BE)
Another artwork on display is by Belgian artist Nick Ervinck. For AGRIEBORZ he used images of human organs that he found in medical manuals as construction material for creating organic forms, and then realized them in 3D. With his work he is questioning, on the one hand, the impact of rapid prototyping and 3D printing for medical research and, on the other hand, the influence of bioprinting technology in generating organs. Ervinck, who is working parallel to science, is developing new realities for different audiences in art, science, and beyond.
Environment Dress by María Castellanos and Alberto Valverde (ES)
Asturian artist María Castellanos and Madrid native Alberto Valverde were two of the artists working in the FabLab during the exhibition. They explore certain man-machine relationships and intersections. Their work Environment Dress focuses on garments as a kind of sensory device for investigating variations in noise, temperature, atmospheric pressure, ultraviolet radiation, or the amount of carbon monoxide we are exposed to in our daily life. The person wearing this smart dress will receive direct feedback about his or her exposure through changes in the dress’s lighting.
Environment Dress by María Castellanos and Alberto Valverde (ES)
Asturian artist María Castellanos and Madrid native Alberto Valverde were two of the artists working in the FabLab during the exhibition. They explore certain man-machine relationships and intersections. Their work Environment Dress focuses on garments as a kind of sensory device for investigating variations in noise, temperature, atmospheric pressure, ultraviolet radiation, or the amount of carbon monoxide we are exposed to in our daily life. The person wearing this smart dress will receive direct feedback about his or her exposure through changes in the dress’s lighting.
Teacup Tools by Agnes Meyer-Brandis (DE)
Agnes Mayer Brandis’s Teacup Tools are part of a “Global Teacup Network” and draw attention to climate-related sciences. Her work consists of a table and machinery for raising two or more teacups individually. Various measuring instruments are built in and onto the teacups, measuring the environment of the cup. The energy produced by these instruments heats the inside of the cups and brews tea from rainwater and the residues that have fallen into it. This tea produces a little cloud that contains the essence of the local air. The cloud again feeds back into the system and becomes the subject of investigation for the tools connected to the cup. The teacups move up and down individually, according to certain aspects related to the collected data and environmental processes, dancing an endless choreography determined by raindrops and clouds, particles, measurements, and tea drinking.
ARTSAT1: Invader
Another data collecting project is ARTSAT1: Invader, which was launched on 28.02.2014 (JST). It was the world’s first art satellite sent into orbit as a piggyback payload onboard the H-IIA F23 launch vehicle, and inserted into a non-sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 378 km and inclination of 65 degrees. Invader, a 10-cm 1U-CubeSat with a mass of 1.85 kg, continued its steady operation in orbit. It also successfully performed an array of artistic missions based on commands from the main ground station at Tama Art University and under the guidance of the ARTSAT: Art and Satellite Project team. The mission included algorithmic generation and transmission of synthesized voices, music, and poems, as well as capturing and transmitting image data and communicating with the ground through a chatbot program.
Mobile Instrument by María Ignacia Edwards (CL)
María Ignacia Edwards’s (CL) Mobile Instrument, for example, works with equilibrium, lightness, and the weightlessness of objects, which she brings into balance by deploying their own weight or counterweights. Though, at first glance, her works are perceived as purely aesthetic, artistic objects, it soon dawns on those who behold them that these constructions are the result of elaborate mathematical and physical calculations, mechanisms, solutions, and interventions. María Ignacia Edwards calls these pieces self-sustainable because they require no more than their own weight to exist, and the objects tend to rotate constantly around their own axis.
Lapillus Bug by Yasuaki Kakehi, Takayuki Hoshi and Kono Michinari (JP)
Acoustic levitation is the secret behind Lapillus Bug by the three Japanese artists Yasuaki Kakehi, Takayuki Hoshi, and Kono Michinari. Similar to a fruit fly, Lapillus Bug flits about over the table, interacts with people, and reacts to light and motion. But here’s the interesting part—it’s just a Styrofoam particle kept aloft by sonic waves out of the range of human hearing. Ultra-low frequencies produce standing waves that let the little bug hover—thanks to a phenomenon called acoustic levitation. The point of this work is to breathe life into an inanimate object by means of external forces.
Chijikinkutsu by Nelo Akamatsu (JP)
Chijikinkutsu by Nelo Akamatsu (JP) is a coinage, combining two Japanese words: “Chijiki” means geomagnetism. It is about terrestrial magnetic properties that have always existed and affect everything on earth, even though they cannot be perceived by the human senses. A “suikinkutsu” is a sound installation for Japanese traditional gardens, invented in the Edo period. The sounds of drops of water falling through an inverted earthenware pot buried under a stone washbasin resonate through hollow bamboo tubes. Chijikinkutsu is made using water, sewing needles, glass tumblers, and coils of copper wire. The needles floating on the water in the tumblers are magnetized in advance, so they are affected by geomagnetism and turn themselves in a north-south direction. When electricity is supplied to the coils attached to the outside of the tumblers it creates a temporary magnetic field that draws the needles to the coils. And the faint sound of the needles hitting the glass resonates in the space all around.
Fifty Sisters by Jon McCormack (AU)
Jon McCormack’s Fifty Sisters are the counterparts of Cornelia Hesse-Honegger’s handmade drawings. Since the late 1980s McCormack has worked with computer code as a medium for creative expression. Inspired by the complexity and wonder of a diminishing natural world, his work is concerned with electronic “post-natures”—alternate forms of artificial life that may one day replace the biological nature lost through human progress and development. Fictional visualization is also practiced by the artist Nick Ervinck, who was presented earlier within the context of the FabLab. At first sight his 3D printed objects look as if they have been made for medical research, however, as soon as you understand that his work is not about existing bodies, you start imagining the creatures behind the objects on display.
Seh-Forschung by Cornelia Hesse-Honegger (CH)
Since 1968, scientist-artist Cornelia Hesse- Honegger (CH) has been painting pictures of flies and other bugs that have mutated as a result of environmental contamination and atomic radiation. Since the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986, she has collected more than 16,000 insects in the fallout zones of Chernobyl and nuclear facilities in Asia, Europe, and the US under the title of Seh-Forschung (Vision Research). She calls her approach “knowledge-art” and is still continuing her work on it. In October 2015, she received the Nuclear Free Future Award in the category education.
Fifty Sisters by Jon McCormack (AU)
Jon McCormack’s Fifty Sisters are the counterparts of Cornelia Hesse-Honegger’s handmade drawings. Since the late 1980s McCormack has worked with computer code as a medium for creative expression. Inspired by the complexity and wonder of a diminishing natural world, his work is concerned with electronic “post-natures”—alternate forms of artificial life that may one day replace the biological nature lost through human progress and development. Fictional visualization is also practiced by the artist Nick Ervinck, who was presented earlier within the context of the FabLab. At first sight his 3D printed objects look as if they have been made for medical research, however, as soon as you understand that his work is not about existing bodies, you start imagining the creatures behind the objects on display.
Seh-Forschung by Cornelia Hesse-Honegger (CH)
Since 1968, scientist-artist Cornelia Hesse- Honegger (CH) has been painting pictures of flies and other bugs that have mutated as a result of environmental contamination and atomic radiation. Since the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986, she has collected more than 16,000 insects in the fallout zones of Chernobyl and nuclear facilities in Asia, Europe, and the US under the title of Seh-Forschung (Vision Research). She calls her approach “knowledge-art” and is still continuing her work on it. In October 2015, she received the Nuclear Free Future Award in the category education.
Econodos. Transferencias, Las artes, las ciencias y las nuevas formas de lo local, 2015. lmagen del King’s American Dispensatory, 1898
The excursive project Transferences – Arts, Sciences and New Forms of the Local by Lorena Lozano (ES) puts forward the idea of the plurality of the arts and sciences, and the need to generate collaborative processes of knowledge transference to strengthen common knowledge. This laboratory is an open office, a participatory and propositional place for active listening and rethinking the role of artists and researchers. The activities in this lab develop in six open encounters that include presentations, interviews, and debates.
The Listener by Patricia Piccinini (AU)
In addition to Lozano’s excursive project, Patricia Piccinini presented The Listener. This humanoid figure that her crew painstakingly put together out of silicon, fiberglass, and human hair doesn’t seem the least bit threatening. Actually, its vulnerability is what leaves the strongest impression. With a friendly look on its face, it seems to be seeking acceptance and hoping that we are not put off by its strangeness. In a world in which human beings can use new technologies to modify and reform the creatures of nature, in which the diversity of life has reached a new stage, and in which new possibilities of synthetic biology bring forth more questions than answers, we mustn’t lose our capacity for empathy. And so the question arises: Can a code for empathy be written for a machine and, if so, what challenges will we have to face in the future?
Teacup Tools / AgnesMeyer-Brandis (DE)
The cybernetic “Teacup Tools” created by Berlin artist Agnes Meyer-Brandis focus attention on climate change and the scientific analysis of it. In a natural setting such as a forest or meadow, the artist sets up all sorts of mobile measuring instruments including tea cups each equipped with a miniature weather station.
Artist Biographies - MATERIA PRIMA / Laboral