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The Prix Ars Electronica Archive is a collection enabling search and viewing of all the submissions since 1987. The award-winning projects are documented with catalogue texts and audio-visual media. All other submissions can be searched by title/artist and displayed with year, category in list form. Please cite the credits (artwork name, artist and photographer) and only use the materials if your article is related to Ars Electronica.
HuMCC - Human Molecular Colonization Capacity
Maja Smrekar
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Food prices are going to rise in the future due to lack of production capacity, which decreases inversely with the global population growth. The food industry is exploring new possibilities and alternative capacities for future food production within the fields of synthetic biology and biotechnology. The *HuMCC—Human Molecular Colonization Capacity* project focuses on the food industry’s biotechnology production, and in its final form is represented as a highly designed yoghurt package, containing the product of an artist’s enzyme, which is offered for public consumption while at the same time the package is represented as a hybrid-art readymade object exhibited in a gallery. The project stands as a social darwinism experience paraphrased within the realm of the industrial food-chain process.
The _HuMCC_ project paraphrases a concept for the waste of productive forces explored by Marx, who established a connection between rising levels of accumulation of capital and the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, related to the exploitation of labor time—by new waves of technological innovation. This is shown by the genetically transformed microorganism producing lactic acid (as one of the most-used additives in the contemporary food industry) after being synthetically designed by the code of the artist’s gene composed with the code of a yeast gene and transformed back into the same microorganism.
The project is therefore located in the _Soylent Green_ paradigm where the fear of ecological cataclysm turns into a subtle critique of corporate cannibalism: not only are corporations actually using people to continue to maintain themselves in their own lives but these same people are simultaneously yearning for those products! "Maya Yoghurt" is an overidentification tactical media product as means of producing pressure on the population—this infinite desire of capital to continue developing regardless of whether that would include even (sublime) levels of cannibalism.
Links: http://www.majasmrekar.org/ http://www.mayayoghurt.net/
The _HuMCC_ project paraphrases a concept for the waste of productive forces explored by Marx, who established a connection between rising levels of accumulation of capital and the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, related to the exploitation of labor time—by new waves of technological innovation. This is shown by the genetically transformed microorganism producing lactic acid (as one of the most-used additives in the contemporary food industry) after being synthetically designed by the code of the artist’s gene composed with the code of a yeast gene and transformed back into the same microorganism.
The project is therefore located in the _Soylent Green_ paradigm where the fear of ecological cataclysm turns into a subtle critique of corporate cannibalism: not only are corporations actually using people to continue to maintain themselves in their own lives but these same people are simultaneously yearning for those products! "Maya Yoghurt" is an overidentification tactical media product as means of producing pressure on the population—this infinite desire of capital to continue developing regardless of whether that would include even (sublime) levels of cannibalism.
Links: http://www.majasmrekar.org/ http://www.mayayoghurt.net/
Brand identity and web design: Atelje Balant
The project has been executed in cooperation with Institute of Biochemistry, Medical Faculty, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
Co-worker at the filed of molecular biology: dr. Metka Lenassi, Co-worker at the field of molecular gastronomy: Dr. Tilen Konte, Co-worker at the field of biotechnology: Dr. Špela Petrič
Co worker at the field of biochemistry and laboratory biomedicine: Marko Žavbi, lab. biomed. engineer, Construction plan and map design: Andrej Strehovec, Web site coding: Oliver Marčetič, Luka Marčetič
Special thanks: Dr. Ana Plemenitaš, Dr. Andrej Petrič, Dr. Zlata Luthar, Savica Soldat, Biotechnology Department / Ministry of Agriculture and the Environment / Republic of Slovenia - Dr. Martin Batič, Dr. Ruth Rupreht and Shu Lea Cheang, Janez Bratovž, Polonca Krajnc, Mojca Žavbi
Supported by Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sport / Republic of Slovenia and Municipality of Ljubljana / Slovenia
Production: Kapelica Gallery - Zavod K6/4 / Ljubljana / Slovenia (2012)
The project has been executed in cooperation with Institute of Biochemistry, Medical Faculty, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
Co-worker at the filed of molecular biology: dr. Metka Lenassi, Co-worker at the field of molecular gastronomy: Dr. Tilen Konte, Co-worker at the field of biotechnology: Dr. Špela Petrič
Co worker at the field of biochemistry and laboratory biomedicine: Marko Žavbi, lab. biomed. engineer, Construction plan and map design: Andrej Strehovec, Web site coding: Oliver Marčetič, Luka Marčetič
Special thanks: Dr. Ana Plemenitaš, Dr. Andrej Petrič, Dr. Zlata Luthar, Savica Soldat, Biotechnology Department / Ministry of Agriculture and the Environment / Republic of Slovenia - Dr. Martin Batič, Dr. Ruth Rupreht and Shu Lea Cheang, Janez Bratovž, Polonca Krajnc, Mojca Žavbi
Supported by Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sport / Republic of Slovenia and Municipality of Ljubljana / Slovenia
Production: Kapelica Gallery - Zavod K6/4 / Ljubljana / Slovenia (2012)
Maja Smrekar (SI), born 1978, 2005 graduated at the Sculpture Department of Fine Art Academy in Ljubljana and is currently finishing an MA at the New Media Department. Her main interest is in the phenomenology of perception, which she first started researching through space phenomena by composing live video with other artists in various collaborations in interactive sound/visual projects. Her projects have researched frequency phenomena through biofeedback and telematic presence in relation to the body, privacy and the (inter-)subjective perception of space. In the last two years she has been developing projects within the field of bioart with the focus on living organisms.