[-empyre-] Fwd: Week Four with Laura Cinti, Grégory Lasserre, and Anaïs met den Ancxt

Thu Jun 25 21:19:17 AEST 2015

Hi,

I have been looking forward to this discussion on ‘Plant and New Media’.
Thank you Natasha for the invitation to join in.  I am a research-based
artists working with biology and much of my art practice has involved
working with living plants.

Since plants (for the most part) don’t behave in ways we recognise as
sensorial, I began my PhD research exploring interactive experiences
between plants and humans. This involved looking at scientific
possibilities of having living (non-specialised) plants respond directly
and visibly to touch. At the time there was a fascinating experiment being
conducted at the institute where I was based involving engineered magnetic
nanoparticles used as ‘smart drug delivery systems’ to guide magnetically
tagged stem cells to damaged tissue. These cells were transported inside
living organisms using an external magnet outside the body.  By
assimilating this technique I devised a strategy using these same
nanoparticles as a way of generating interactive motion in living plants (a
video of  Nanomagnetic Plants <https://vimeo.com/38638223> can be seen
here). While developing these plants, the focus of my research shifted as I
became increasingly fascinated by scientific findings revealing plants’
perceptual qualities and the extent these findings conflicted with our
ordinary experiences of plants.  Their sensorial features frequently
appeared invisible without the aid of an interface (i.e. imaging devices,
reporter genes or electrodes).  Thus my PhD research, titled The Sensorial
Invisibility of Plants, An Interdisciplinary Inquiry through Bio Art and
Plant Neurobiology <http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1310152/>, focused on
connecting our ordinary experiences of plants with scientific findings and
accounted for two ways of perceiving plants - one being the ‘scientific
image’ and the other how we normally experience plants (the ‘subjective
image’).

The absence of rapid responsive behaviours in plants have relegated them as
being devoid of sensation -  an understanding that can be traced back to
Aristotelian philosophy (i.e. De Anima/On the Soul). Aristotle argued that
for sensorial qualities to exist in living organisms, motion is required.
Even today, motion is a key attribute for qualifying life with behaviour or
intelligence.  However, the scientific image of plants has shown a very
different scenario demonstrating the extent plants respond to their
environment and the disparities between plants’ internal
information-processing mechanisms in relation to their external
morphological adaptations. For instance, plants perceive and respond to
touch and although such reactions are not directly visible, they are
internalised and result in gradual morphological and growth adaptations. In
another example, touch sensitive genes identified in controlled experiments
show how plant’s physiology changes in response to touch. The existence of
touch-responsive genes and the speed of changes in these expressions shows
the capacity of plants for rapid interaction with touch. In transgenic
plants it has been showed that wind stimulus caused immediate reaction
through luminescence. The speed of the response (light emission due to
calcium elevation) was within milliseconds. Our ordinary experience of
plants complicates this scenario as our perceptions do not correspond with
their scientific depiction. Our ability to see these changes manifest at
the level of the whole plant will take time as the genes will need to
express proteins, cells divide and onwards, slowly adding the layers that
alters growth into our field of perception. My research was focused on the
emerging gap between the scientific image of plants as sensorial, the image
of plants formed by our subjective experience and how we consolidate these
views.

In the scientific image, what is perceived or recognised is dependent on
the interface - such as imaging instruments or biochemical reporters. While
interfaces can be used to generate new features in living organisms, I want
to expand on one of the following questions posed in this forum:

How do technological mediations in new media plant art make perceptible the
otherwise imperceptible (invisible or inaudible) nature of plant life, and
how in the process do these experiments transform our understandings of
plant life and behaviour?

A large part of my research investigated how we tap into processes that
escape us.  I was concerned with how biotechnology has the potential to
visualise invisible processes and the importance for artists working with
biological matter (such as bio artists) to take steps in acquiring such
insights to avoid producing anthropomorphic and iconic constructions and
perhaps invite a deeper appreciation of the living through art.  My
findings indicated that artists whose works attempt to elicit an
understanding of plants using technological interfaces or mediations were
often found to obfuscate our understanding of plants. For example, using
electrodes to extract data from plants opens up questions of authentication
in terms of external interference (i.e. as a result of human movements near
the sensors) or issues of incompatibility of such sensors to extract
electrophysiological signals in plants.  Are these interfaces measurements
originating from human movements? Are the plants subservient to a
conceptual role? If so, does this then reverse plant’s perspective into
that of our own returning us to the anthropomorphic?

With best wishes,

Laura

On 22 June 2015 at 12:37, Patrick Keilty <p.keilty at utoronto.ca> wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> Great discussion heading into our final week of "Plant Art and New
> Media"! Week four brings us three guest discussants, Laura Cinti,
> Grégory Lasserre, and Anaïs met den Ancxt.
>
> Looking forward to continuing the conversation!
>
> Dr Laura Cinti is an research-based artist working with biology,
> co-founder and co-director of C-LAB - a transdisciplinary bio art
> collective and organisation. C-LAB has been invited to range of
> international conferences, exhibitions and continues to contribute in
> publications to broker discussions on the intersections of art and
> science. Laura has been involved in art projects, exhibitions and
> workshops with support from the European Commission, scientific
> institutes, pharmaceutical companies, councils, universities, cultural
> institutes and commercial partners. Laura has a PhD from UCL (Slade
> School of Fine Art in interdisciplinary capacity with UCL Centre of
> Biomedical Imaging), a Masters in Interactive Media: Critical Theory &
> Practice (Distinction) from Goldsmiths College, University of London
> and BA (Hons) Fine Art (First Class) from University of Hertfordshire.
>
> Scenocosme is a collaboration between Gregory Lasserre & Anais met den
> Ancxt. Gregory Lasserre and Anais met den Ancxt are two artists
> working together as a duo under the name Scenocosme. They work and
> live in France. They develop the concept of interactivity in their
> artworks by using multiple kinds of expression. They mix art and
> digital technology in order to find substances of dreams, poetries,
> sensitivities and delicacies. Their works come from possible
> hybridizations between the living world and technology which meeting
> points incite them to invent sensitive and poetic languages. They also
> explore invisible relationships with our environment : they can feel
> energetic variations of living beings. They design interactive
> artworks, and choreographic collective performances, in which
> spectators share extraordinary sensory experiences. Plants of their
> artwork Akousmaflore react to the human touch by different sounds.
> They use also water (Fluides), stones (Kymapetra) and wood (Ecorces;
> Matières sensibles) as elements capable to generate tactile, visual
> and sound sensory interactivity. Their artworks were presented in
> several contemporary art and digital art spaces. Since 2004, they have
> exhibited their interactive installation artworks at ZKM Karlsruhe
> Centre for Art and Media (Germany), at Museum Art Gallery of Nova
> Scotia (Canada), at Contemporary Art Museum Raleigh (USA), at Daejeon
> Museum of Art (Korea), at Bòlit / Centre d’Art Contemporani (Girona)
> and in many international biennals and festivals.
> http://www.scenocosme.com/
>
>
> Patrick Keilty
> Assistant Professor
> Faculty of Information
> Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies
> University of Toronto
> http://www.patrickkeilty.com/
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu

-- 
Dr Laura Cinti
Director of Artistic Engagement
C-LAB
http://c-lab.co.uk
laura at c-lab.co.uk

Twitter @c-labblurb <https://twitter.com/clabblurb> | Facebook
<http://www.facebook.com/pages/C-Lab/243166795704064> | Vimeo
<https://vimeo.com/user1654937>

-- 
Dr Laura Cinti
Director of Artistic Engagement
C-LAB
http://c-lab.co.uk
laura at c-lab.co.uk

Twitter @c-labblurb <https://twitter.com/clabblurb> | Facebook
<http://www.facebook.com/pages/C-Lab/243166795704064> | Vimeo
<https://vimeo.com/user1654937>
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