Bi0film.net
Independent and distributed communication networks are at the core of self-organized communities. Based on the idea of biological peer-to-peer networks, which explore how microorganisms like bacteria communicate and collectively act, we have built a human biofilm-like connectivity enhancer.20

MAN-NAHĀTA
Computational growth across material and urban scales offers a framework for design through self-organization, enabling the generation of vast, diverse forms exhibiting characteristics like those that emerge through the biological growth processes found in Nature. In this project, we construct an oriented volume spanned by surface normals of the shape at every point. The value of the oriented volume drives the iterative deformation of the shape. Depending on the parameterization of this process, we can obtain distinctly different growing forms. Importantly, the emergence of these forms is driven only by the time evolution of a geometric operator acting on the shapes iteratively, thereby connecting geometry and growth through an algorithm. To form the Man-Nahata landscape, the buildings of the urban landscape are transformed through repeated morphological closing operations, where the field of influence follows a gradient from the center to the outskirts of a circular region.

Biomimicry
For the ‘Biomimicry’ film, Iris van Herpen and Dutch National Ballet explore the symbiotic relationship between the metamorphic force in which fashion and dance interlace. The film, directed by Ryan McDaniels, sees the mesmeric dancer JingJing Mao undulating into liquescent shapes and transcending into graceful figures that reflect her myriad of movements. The concept of the creation stems from the notion of biomimicry — the design and production of materials and systems that are modelled on biological processes. In line with Iris van Herpen’s continuous pursuit to materialise the invisible forces that structure the world, the film focusses on the bond between humanity and nature.

Delusional Crime and Punishment

Who created life? I think this is the question everyone has been asking themselves since childhood? At least I have many doubts, the subjective feeling of the existence of consciousness allows us to face the world from that source. Why do humans eat like this for energy? Why not get energy in other ways? Why do you need energy to exercise? Why is this so joyful and so painful? What is the need for pain, pleasure, fear, excitement, etc.?Upon careful analysis, it appears that the source of many desires comes from the design of our physical structure. If God designed human beings, why was he designed that way and why was he designed as a biological mechanism for sin and hell? Why do human beings have desires because of such a physical structure and even they don’t understand self-control, they have sins, and they have to go to another hell of punishment system to atone for their sins? Who created this series of systems?

Breathing
File Festival
Breathing is a work of art based on a hybrid creature made of a living organism and an artificial system. The creature responds to its environment through movement, light and the noise of its mechanical parts. Breathing is the best way to interact with the creature.
This work is the result of an investigation of plants as sensitive agents for the creation of art. The intention was to explore new forms of artistic experience through the dialogue of natural and artificial processes. Breathing is a pre-requisite for life, and is the path that links the observer to the creature.Breathing is a small step towards new art forms in which subtle processes of organic and non-organic life may reveal invisible patterns that interconnect us.Breathing is a work of art driven by biological impulse. Its beauty is neither found isolated on the plant nor in the robotic system itself. It emerges at the very moment in which the observer approaches the creature and their energies are exchanged through the whole system. It is in that moment of joy and fascination, in which we find ourselves in a very strange dialogue, that a life metaphor is created.Breathing is the celebration of that moment.

The Heart Chamber Orchestra
File Festival – Hipersonica 

In the TERMINALBEACH Heart Chamber Orchestra (made up of artists Erich Berger and Peter Vatava), twelve musicians played pieces from the heartbeat, recorded by an electrocardiogram from data sent by sensors placed on their bodies. As the live score created in real time from the physical and emotional states of the musicians, their beats further influenced the resulting musical composition. In this way, the biological feedback loop becomes a self-generating, organic and evolving system, which creates a musical score and a show that adopts the form of open or network art, in which chance and interdependence, thus how emotional changes and computational reasoning create a biological and psychological dynamic at the same time.

Disrupted Domains
Disrupted Domains features new animations created with molecular visualization software and SARS-CoV-2 structures displayed in Quorum at the Science Center. The animations were developed in remote collaboration with uCity Square biotech company Integral Molecular for Splan’s Science Center Bioart Residency while “sheltering in place” for COVID-19. The work in the exhibition is part of Precarious Structures, Splan’s project that explores the interconnectedness of cultural and biological systems during the coronavirus pandemic. Accompanying soundscape by Frank Masciocchi recorded in collaboration with Splan over Zoom.
VIDEO

Radiant Lines

“People are naturally drawn to light, It’s intuitive. What I want people to feel is a sense of familiarity even though they haven’t seen it before. There’s a sense that it’s pseudo-natural, which I think is why people are drawn to it. It uses crazy technology – there’s a lot of stuff happening – but it doesn’t show it and the result is more humanistic and almost biological.” asif khan

Morphogenetic Creations
Created by a mathematician, digital artist and Emmy award winning supervisor of computer generated effects – Andy Lomas, Morphogenetic Creations is a collection of works that explore the nature of complex forms that can be produced by digital simulation of growth systems. These pieces start with a simple initial form which is incrementally developed over time by adding iterative layers of complexity to the structure.The aim is to create structures emergently: exploring generic similarities between many different forms in nature rather than recreating any particular organism. In the process he is exploring universal archetypal forms that can come from growth processes rather than top-down externally engineered design.Programmed using C++ with CUDA, the series use a system of growth by deposition: small particles of matter are repeatedly deposited onto a growing structure to build incrementally over time. Rules are used to determine how new particles are created, and how they move before being deposited. Small changes to these rules can have dramatic effects on the final structure, in effect changing the environment in which the form is grown. To create these works, Andy uses the GPU as a compute device rather than as a display device. All the data is held in memory on the GPU and various kernel functions are called to do things like apply forces to the cells, make cells split, and to render the cells using ray-tracing. The simulations and rendering for each of the different animated structures within this piece take about 12 hours to run, Andy explains. By the end of the simulations there are over 50,000,000 cells in each structure.The Cellular Forms use a more biological model, representing a simplified system of cellular growth. Structures are created out of interconnected cells, with rules for the forces between cells, as well as rules for how cells accumulate internal nutrients. When the nutrient level in a cell exceeds a given threshold the cell splits into two, with both the parent and daughter cells reconnecting to their immediate neighbours. Many different complex organic structures are seen to arise from subtle variations on these rules, creating forms with strong reminiscences of plants, corals, internal organs and micro-organisms.

Synthetic Seduction

Foreigner

Stine Deja and Marie Munk

The title of the exhibition was inspired by Sherry Turkle’s theory of how technology seduces us, making emotions “easy” by offering human relationships without the complexity of being together ‘face to face’. But if machines can become attentive and emotional, what is left to distinguish us as human beings? We are facing a paradigm shift in how we understand ourselves physiologically, as data and algorithms, and are being forced to question the role of our biological body. As the relationship between artificial and human intelligence becomes increasingly intermingled in our everyday lives, Synthetic Seduction provides immersive and timely insight into the limits of human empathy and intimacy. We are glad at SixtyEight Art Institute to host such a space for thought. We hope it will start conversations and maybe even encourage some intimacy among our visiting audiences in the coming weeks.

Morphogenesis
Morphogenesis (from the Greek morphê ‘’shape” and genesis “creation”; literally, “beginning of the shape”) is the biological process that causes an organism to develop its shape. As a fulldome and virtual reality piece inspired by the phenomenon of emergence in self-organized systems, Morphogenesis consists of continuous transformation of fundamental geometrical patterns and uses them as the building blocks of immersive spaces.

Realistic and Interactive Robot Gaze
System for lifelike gaze in human-robot interactions using a humanoid Audio-Animatronics® bust. Previous work examining mutual gaze between robots and humans has focused on technical implementation. We present a general architecture that seeks not only to create gaze interactions from a technological standpoint, but also through the lens of character animation where the fidelity and believability of motion is paramount; that is, we seek to create an interaction which demonstrates the illusion of life. A complete system is described that perceives persons in the environment, identifies persons-of-interest based on salient actions, selects an appropriate gaze behavior, and executes high, fidelity motions to respond to the stimuli. We use mechanisms that mimic motor and attention behaviors analogous to those observed in biological systems including attention habituation, saccades, and differences in motion bandwidth for actuators.

The Story of the Earth

The Story of the Earth concerns the development of planet Earth from its formation to the present day. Nearly all branches of natural science have contributed to understanding of the main events of Earth’s past, characterized by constant geological change and biological evolution.

The Immortal
A number of life-support machines are connected to each other, circulating liquids and air in attempt to mimic a biological structure.
The Immortal investigates human dependence on electronics, the desire to make machines replicate organisms and our perception of anatomy as reflected by biomedical engineering.
A web of tubes and electric cords are interwoven in closed circuits through a Heart-Lung Machine, Dialysis Machine, an Infant Incubator, a Mechanical Ventilator and an Intraoperative Cell Salvage Machine. The organ replacement machines operate in orchestrated loops, keeping each other alive through circulation of electrical impulses, oxygen and artificial blood.
Salted water acts as blood replacement: throughout the artificial circulatory system minerals are added and filtered out again, the blood gets oxygenated via contact with the oxygen cycle, and an ECG device monitors the system’s heartbeat. As the fluid pumps around the room in a meditative pulse, the sound of mechanical breath and slow humming of motors resonates in the body through a comforting yet disquieting soundscape.Life support machines are extraordinary devices; computers designed to activate our bodies when anatomy fails, hidden away in hospital wards. Although they are designed as the ultimate utilitarian appliances, they are extremely meaningful and carry a complex social, cultural and ethical subtext. While life prolonging technologies are invented as emergency measures to combat or delay death, my interest lies in considering these devices as a human enhancement strategy.This work is a continuation of my investigation of the patient as a cyborg, questioning the relationship between medicine and techno- fantasies about mechanical bodies, hyper abilities and posthumanism.

Eunoia II
It is an interactive performance and installation that attempts to display invisible human emotion and physiological changes into auditory representations. The work uses a commercial brainwave sensor to visualize and musicalize biological signals as art. The real-time detected brain data was used as a means to self-monitor and to control. The installation is comprised of 48 speakers and aluminum dishes, each containing a pool of water. The layout of “Eunoia (Vr.2)” was inspired by an Asian Buddhist symbol meaning ‘balance.’ The motif of number 48 comes from Spinoza’s ‘Ethics’ (Chapter III), classifying 48 human emotions into three categories – desire, pleasure, and pain. In this performance, water becomes a mirror of the artist’s internal state. It aims to physically manifest the artist’s current states as ripples in pools of water.

Remnants

Remnants is an installation, comprised of two individual sculptures, Anatomy and Lacuna, which explores this evolving symbiosis between the mechanical and the biological become. Anatomy and Lacuna are constructed of aluminium, both containing areas of uncertain space. Anatomy contains a plane of black viscous matter and Lacuna, a black void, creating a tension between the two sculptures. The work draws on diagrammatic anatomical and architectural models, distorting scale and hijacking visual languages, creating an undetermined terrain where the purpose of our made objects is undefined.

Vanitas Machine

The installation VANITAS MACHINE addresses the desire for eternal life and the potential of life-prolonging measures. Based on a candle which – by means of technical intervention – burns down very slowly, vanitas machine creates a contemporary analogy to the endeavour of prolonging the human lifespan with the help of science and technology.Being one of the classical vanitas symbols, a burning candle recalls the futility of the moment, the transience of human life and the certainty of the end of all existence. But is this end really still inevitable?In the course of the last two centuries, average human life expectancy has increased significantly in the industrialised countries. Moreover, in the context of scientific research the biological causes of ageing are being explored. Numerous theories of aging have already been developed pointing both towards physiological as well as environmental factors.One of the first theories of ageing was the so-called »metabolism theory«, which claims that the lifespan of organisms is reciprocally related to energy turnover and therefore connected to calorie intake, oxygen consumption and heart rate: The higher the metabolic rate, the shorter the lifespan of the organism.

CellF
“CellF is the world’s first neural synthesiser. Its “brain” is made of biological neural networks that grow in a Petri dish and controls in real time it’s “body” that is made of an array of analogue modular synthesizers that work in synergy with it and play with human musicians. It is a completely autonomous instrument that consists of a neural network that is bio-engineered from my own cells that control a custom-built synthesizer. There is no programming or computers involved, only biological matter and analogue circuits; a ‘wet-analogue’ instrument.”Guy Ben-Ary

Марин Савва
مارين سوا

Algaerium
Algaerium is an in-vitro aesthetic photosynthesis system of microalgae for spatial installation of algal biotechnology in the urban environment. As a collective family, each member of Algaerium represents an urban bio-repository, floating biota, in which to preserve the microorganisms for their future biotechnological use such as bio-energy. Through displacement into the urban environment, Algaerium re-contextualises the sterile environment of the algae culture laboratory. I have incorporated and manipulated the endogenous yet ‘re-programmable’ biological processes of photosynthesis and bioluminescence.

Neri Oxman: Material Ecology

Vespers

“Vespers is a collection of 15 3-D-printed masks that explore the idea of designing with live biological materials. The collection consists of three distinct series, each reinterpreting the concept of the death mask—traditionally a wax or plaster impression of a corpse’s face. Taken as a whole, the three series form a narrative arc from death to rebirth. In the first series, Oxman and The Mediated Matter Group looked at the death mask as a cultural artifact. Fabricated using an algorithm that deconstructed polyhedral meshes into subdivided surfaces, the masks were 3-D printed with photopolymers, as well as with bismuth, silver, and gold, and rendered in color combinations that recur in religious practices around the world.” Rachel Morón

Self Luminous 2 – Unbalance
Self-luminous 2 is an experimental handmade instrument shown as performance. It is a series-project which I have been working on since 2013 and finally developed into shape in 2014. I am looking for intimate and personal instrument that reflects on the relation of digital sound and light message. In computer language, light on is 1 and light off is 0. If more than 2 lamps, it could be code or readable possibility by the meanings. When I press the button or turn the knob, the message will be sent to Pure Data, and the sound will be triggered in live by Pure Data.
The Data of sound such as frequency and volume, are analysed and sent out to the second Arduino to control the light. The light, in thus case, is an intuitive element for human beings. From this point, it is really close to sound which disturbs our biological body directly. The lights are visualised and they can be transferred the into messages. The message might be readable by coincidence with the link to the code. The light is bright enough to let audience to have persistence of vision in mind. During the performance, the sound will be reproduced by code and part of it is impromptu.
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Silent Barrage

Silent Barrage has a “biological brain” that telematically connects with its “body” in a way that is familiar to humans: the brain processes sense data that it receives, and then brain and body formulate expressions through movement and mark making. But this familiarity is hidden within a sophisticated conceptual and scientific framework that is gradually decoded by the viewer. The brain consists of a neural network of embryonic rat neurons, growing in a Petri dish in a lab in Atlanta, Georgia, which exhibits the uncontrolled activity of nerve tissue that is typical of cultured nerve cells. This neural network is connected to neural interfacing electrodes that write to and read from the neurons. The thirty-six robotic pole-shaped objects of the body, meanwhile, live in whatever exhibition space is their temporary home. They have sensors that detect the presence of viewers who come in. It is from this environment that data is transmitted over the Internet, to be read by the electrodes and thus to stimulate, train or calm parts of the brain, depending on which area of the neuronal net has been addressed.

スプツニ子！
カラスボット☆ジェニー
Menstruation Machine

So what does Menstruation mean, biologically, culturally and historically, to humans? Who might choose to have it, and how might they have it? The Menstruation Machine — fitted with a blood dispensing mechanism and electrodes simulating the lower abdomen — simulates the pain and bleeding of a 5 day menstruation process. The machine was developed with research support from Professor Jan Brosens at the Department of Medicine, Imperial College London.

Digital Substance

The parametric technology allows to generate a self-organizing system, that is, to open the essence of the universe as an infinite variety of possible self-organizing systems. The world is in constant process of self-development, but it is not chaos and not a set of known forms (cube, sphere, cylinder, from which you can build everything as Cezanne believed). Everything in the world (in the physical, biological and other reality) is in fluid, flexible, flowing, accelerating and decelerating movements that create tension, tears, force fields. And they are amazingly beautiful (attractors and fractals are their individual symptoms) and they exist before form and after form. It is not a solid, or lines in a space, but something that stands before and after the space.

Xenobots – the First “Living Robots”
Researchers used the Deep Green supercomputer cluster and an evolutionary algorithm to design new life-forms that could achieve an assigned task. Then they built them by combining together different biological tissues from Xenopus laevis embryos, hence the name Xenobots.
Credit:A scalable pipeline for designing reconfigurable organisms
Sam Kriegman, Douglas Blackiston, Michael Levin, and Josh Bongard
PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1910837117

Afasia
File Festival – Hypersonica
Afasia is a surreal robotic performance that evolves Greek myths, and brings up the tragedy onto-machinal. Marcel.lí Antúnez Roca (Moià, 1959) is well-known in the international art scene for his mechatronic performances and robotic installations. In the 90′s his vanguardist mechatronic performances combined elements such as Bodybots (body-controlled robots), Systematurgy (interactive narration with computers) and Dresskeleton (the exoskeleton body interface). The themes explored in his work include: the use of biological materials in robotics, telematic control, the expansion of body movements with dresskeletons and microbiological transformations.

Nature Abstraction

Nature Abstraction is an immersive sensory experience that explores the arcane forms of fractals, mathematical visual representation of natural and biological forms.
The project gives an insight of their aspects through virtual reality, where they appear as three planets: Birth, Communion and Aether; Each accompained with scores designed to facilitate meditative state and relaxation;The audience is guided to explore these planets and dive into their vast complexities as well as observing the contrast between the entirely digital created world inside the VR against the fully analogue created film projected onto the faces of the cube which have been filmed in real life, recreating using analogue visual effects and various chemical elements.

Rek
With ‘Rek’ (stretch in Dutch) I explore the aesthetic possibilities of the human skin through a mixture of image capturing techniques. By manipulating this curious stretchable material with various low budget materials like nylon fishing rope and cello tape I am able to temporarily shape it into surprising textures and shapes. Highlighting not only it’s flexibility and adaptability but also it’s function as our own biological upholstery that aside from it’s protective capabilities could also serve as a medium for aesthetic expression, possibly in the form of a dress less fashion.

チェ·ウラム
Cakra Lamp
CHOE U-RAM’s work engages a fanciful dialog of aesthetics and machinery and explores themes of biological transformation, flight, and movement. In his recent work, large-scale metal and plastic automata materialize with such a delicacy and weightlessness that it seems to take on the shape and silhouette of an organic life form. Motors, heat and light sensitive materials add to the intricacy of Choe’s kinetic sculptures.

Mal di Testa
His art investigates various natural and emotional phenomena, often using technological and mechanical tools to create his works. Through a thorough study of human cognitive faculties, Piccolo’s art analyses the perceptive aspects of the natural world. His artwork investigates natural, physical, biological, and scientific phenomena which are the basis of living, employing their emotional aspect as a tool. He lives and works in Rome, Italy.

World center
Blending computer-assisted design and experimentation with physics, the collective implements a biological paradigm to develop their morpho-ecological design approach to the architectural project. They are able to do this thanks to the computer-generated design methods they have developed for integrating ecological, topological and structural data.more…

COLLECTIVE JUMPS / COLLECTIVE JUMPS (EXCERPTS)
Projekt von Isabelle Schad und Laurent Goldring
’The group’s body is made out of many. We exercise practices that have the potential to unite instead of individualize. We understand these practices as a relationship to oneself and to one another, as a pathway. These practices are biological ones, cellular ones, energetic ones. We look at freedom in relation to form : to form that is made of and found by an inner process and its rhythms. Rhythm creates the form. Therefore, there is multitude, multiplicity, subjectivity, and variation : variation within repetition. We look at freedom as the essence of happiness. We experience happiness when the flow of movement can be done together and be maintained. We look at freedom that is guaranteed once everyone within a group can find form in a subjective way. Therefore, there is a specific relation to the term equality : Everyone can be equal, once subjectivity in one‘s own respective rhythm is guaranteed within the form.’I.Schad

Self-Replicating Spheres

Self-Replicating Spheres explores the processes of growth, encapsulation and division through macro-scale objects on an oscillating table. This project attempts to demonstrate synthetic cellular division and replication through non-biological physical objects, without the use of robotics. The individual spheres were created with a hollow shell and an arrangement of small metal spheres and magnets. This internal structure provides the force of attraction for growing connections, the flexibility and, ultimately, the capability to divide. By adding more spherical units and supplying energy in the form of the oscillating table, the system will continually grow and divide.

flicker

Flicker is an immersive electronic environment of generative image and sound. A collaborative work with Oliver Bown. Based on biological models of firefly behaviour, Flicker generates an ever shifting rhythmic, meditative environment to the viewer. Flicker uses 4 channels of synchronised high definition video and 8 channels of sound to immerse the viewer in a phenomenologically rich environment of artificial life. The work is a large-scale agent-based simulation, with each agent providing a rhythmic pulse at regular intervals. Agents try to synchronise their pulse with other agents in their immediate neighbourhood. The collective pulsations of groups of local agents are spatially sonified with int exhibition space. Over time, large groups synchronise at different rates, leading to complex visual and aural structures, syncopating and constant shifting in to a long term complexity.

As We May Feel
file festival

“As We May Feel” A parody of the 1945 text “As We May Think”, by Vannevar Bush What enduring benefits did science and technology bring to human beings? First of all, science and technology have extended the humans’ control on their material environment, helping them to perfect their food, their clothes, their dwelling, and gave them more security, allowing to live above the level of mere subsistence. Later on, they have permitted a wider knowledge of the biological processes that occur within our bodies, allowing the control of a more healthy and lasting life, always promising an enhancement of mental health. Finally, they contribute to the effectiveness of our communication. We have therefore a reason to live beyond survival — abundant health and efficient communication. And how do we deal with our existential feelings and conflicts? We don’t have time for our feelings, we can no longer ruminate them. We bury them in secret wishes without bigger consequences. Should we care more for our feelings? Negligence has been our way of cleaning our lives of sentimental values. When we cannot sweep them, we zip them and eventually access them to solve conflicts and/or to organize our thoughts. This project offers the access, through a click, to a central that points to a series of paths toward “As we may feel”. The content of this simulation of a phone center has as its aim to create an encyclopedia of existential feelings and conflicts that represent human life in contemporary society. Welcome to our call center!

Quasi-Objects

ll works are printed using pigment-based inks on Hahnemühle archival paper, variable dimensions, edition of 3+1 ap.
“Quasi-Objects” is an art project consisting of 3d generated videos and prints, a practice of “organic re-design” – started in 2003 and still in progress – that aims to stimulate thought and dialogue on the progressive relativisation of natural forms of life as a result of techno-biological evolution.“Quasi-Objects” regards data actualization, the production of biologically non-functional organisms and ecosystems as transient output of an operative practice: aesthetics of process.
“Life is a real and autonomous process independent from any specific material manifestation.”

Artificial Biological Clock

Revital Cohen’s Artificial Biological Clock (2008) is a clock-like device that responds to online information from a woman’s doctor, therapist and financial advisor. It is designed to remind modern women when they are fertile and emotionally and economically ready to conceive. It is an examination of how contemporary life can disconnect us from our instincts and the natural rhythms of our bodies.

drawing with robot arm
“With gene mapping, gender reassignment, prosthetic limbs and neural implants, what a body is and how a body operates becomes problematic. We generate Fractal Flesh and Phantom Flesh, extended operational systems and virtual task environments. Meat and metal mesh into unexpected and alternate anatomical architectures that perform remotely beyond the boundaries of the skin and beyond the local space it inhabits. The monstrous is no longer the alien other. We inhabit an age of Circulating Flesh. Organs are extracted from one body and inserted into other bodies. Limbs that are amputated from a dead body can be reattached and reanimated on a living body. A face from a donor stitched to the skull of the recipient becomes a Third Face. A skin cell from an impotent male can be recoded into a sperm cell. And more interestingly a skin cell from a female body might be recoded into a sperm cell. Turbine hearts circulate blood without pulsing. In the near future you might rest you head on your loved one’s chest. They are warm to the touch, they are breathing, they are certainly alive. But they will have no heartbeat. A cadaver can be preserved forever through plastination whilst simultaneously a comatose body can be sustained indefinitely on a life-support system. Dead bodies need not decompose, near-dead bodies need not die. Most people will no longer die biological deaths. They will die when their life-support systems are switched off. The dead, the near-dead, the not-yet-born and the partially living exist simultaneously. And cryongenically preserved bodies await reanimation at some imagined future. We live in an age of the Cadaver, the Comatose and the Chimera. Liminal spaces proliferate. Engineering organs, stem-cell growing them or by bio-printing will result in an abundence of organs. An excess of organs. Of organs awaiting bodies. Of Organs Without Bodies.” STELARC