La Poussière de soleils (Dust of Suns)
In the semicircular conservatory is a tall standing sculpture. It’s called La Poussière de Soleils, the Dust of Suns. On its back are tubes full of murky amber fluid; sunlight that has yet to be illuminated, still yet to set fire. Its façade comprises three hexagonal panels filled with a magical alchemical solution of la poussière de soleils, of the artist’s own invention. Each appears filled with thick golden sunshine. The bubbles blown through them leave trails of light even brighter and more golden; like trails of light torn through the heavens, like pools of shooting stars.

Morphogerador
Die Wissenschaft sucht ständig näher oder weiter, um zu helfen, die Phänomene der Natur zu enträtseln. Mit sich ständig weiterentwickelnden Technologien blicken Wissenschaftler in die tiefsten Bereiche des Weltraums oder bis ins Unendliche, die Wissenschaft lernt ständig neue Dinge über unsere Welt und ihre Funktionsweise. Morphogerador nutzt ein Reaktions-Diffusions-System und reflektiert biologische Prozesse, die strukturelle Farbe erzeugen, wie wir sie unter anderem bei Insekten wie dem Morpho-Schmetterling und vielen Käferarten sehen. Diese Reaktions-Diffusions-Systeme wurden erstmals von Alan Turning in seinem wegweisenden Artikel “The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis” angewendet, um biomorphologische Systeme zu beschreiben. Morphogerador verwendet ähnliche Algorithmen, um ein sich ständig weiterentwickelndes, aber stabiles System zu schaffen, das die Perspektive kontinuierlich näher und weiter bringt, ohne jemals die kleinste oder breiteste Ansicht zu erreichen, die immer auf neue Erkenntnisse am Rande unserer Sicht hinweist.

prima materia

Prima materia, as the first element, the ubiquitous starting material required for the alchemical processes, reveal transformation of our times.The matter of all forms create various transmutations, attached to laboratory processes, form and color changes in 3D, used as a model for the individuation process, and as a device in art and technology.That pure matter, existing in nature, is converted to other imperfect bodies that it interacts with, and this way is rediscovered and brought to the front by art and technology.

As above
As Above is a short film exploring the tight link between the microscopic world and immensity of the universe. Illustrating our universe’s never ending dance of destruction and creation, in which life can emerge. As Above was made of one single shot filmed on the 8mm2 (0.3 square inch) surface of a chemical reaction. The environment in which we live, is at the constant mercy of the ever changing flow of planets, stars and galaxies… As well as the composition of the microscopic world. “As Above” is an invitation to contemplate the beauty of this perpetual movement of which we are part of… And perhaps invite the viewer to reflect on his position in the universe and the preciosity of life.

Untitled: (A Search for Ghosts in the Meat Machine)
What does it mean to be human? At first glance a simple question, the idea of being human is an unstable construct, continuously recrafted. Recent technological innovations allow us to redesign ourselves profoundly— from networked prosthetics and artificial intelligence, to the genetic code of life itself. Can our behaviors be reduced to algorithms? Can our bodies be upgraded with nonorganic integrations? Can sentience itself by manufactured in a lab? This set of nine sculptures examines personhood from anatomical, psychological, genetic, biochemical, behavioral, algorithmic, personal narrative and memory. In many ways, this installation is an emotional confrontation with being quantifiable.

Until I die
This installation operates on unique batteries that generate electricity using my blood. The electric current produced by the batteries powers a small electronic algorithmic synth module. This module creates generative sound composition that plays via a small speaker. The blood used in the installation was stored up gradually over 18 months. The conservation included a number of manipulations to preserve the blood’s chemical composition, color, homogeneity and sterility to avoid bacterial contamination. The total amount of blood conserved was around 4.5 liters; it was then diluted to yield 7 liters, the amount required for the installation. The blood was diluted with distilled water and preservatives such as sodium citrate, antibiotics, antifungal agents, glucose, glycerol etc. The last portion of blood (200ml) was drawn from my arm during the performance presentation, shortly before the launch of the installation.

THE LONG NOW
A soap bubble usually remains stable for only a few moments – it is a perfectly formed sphere with an iridescent surface that reflects its surroundings. As one of the classical vanitas symbols the soap bubble traditionally stands for the transience of the moment and the fragility of life. THE LONG NOW approaches the soap bubble from a contemporary perspective – with reference to its chemical and physical properties as well as recent scientific and technological developments. THE LONG NOW is aimed at extending the lifespan of a soap bubble, or even to preserve it forever. Using an improved formula, a machine generates a bubble, sends it to a chamber with a controlled atmosphere and keeps it there in suspension for as long as possible. The project is presented in the form of an experimental set-up in which the newly created soap bubble oscillates permanently between fragility and stability.

Aquaphoneia
Aquaphoneia is an alchemical installation centred around the poiesis of time and transmutation of voice into matter. A large horn floating mid space echoes the ghosts of Edison, Bell, and Berliner’s machines. But unlike early recording, herding sound energy to etch pressure patterns in solid matter, this odd assemblage transmutes voice into water and water into air. Disembodied voices abandon their sources to cross the event horizon of the horn. Estranged, the schizo-phone falls into the narrow depths of the bell, squeezed into spatiotemporal infinity, calcinated, liquified and released: The aqueous voice then flows into three alchemical chambers where inner time is surrendered to the tempi of matter: unbound, yet lucid and sound.

Project Florence
Plants synthesize a very large amount of information via electrical and chemical signals and deliberately make changes to themselves, their neighbors and the land nearby for their benefit. This signals caused by cell depolarization through ions fluxes such as K + , Ca2 + , H + , Na + , and Cl alert the whole plant for localized stimuli, such as biotic and abiotic stress and are one of the most universal properties of living organisms. In project Florence we take advantage of the sensibility of plants to different light frequencies and use it to trigger a plant response through manipulation and compare the similarities between plants and natural language processes.

Return to Sender
Disarm music box
For the work group Disarm, he was able to use 6,700 weapons confiscated in the Mexican drug war and transform these into musical instruments[…] They play well-known, classical music pieces from the respective manufacturer’s country of origin. A musical box made with Glock pistol parts plays Mozart, Beretta barrels Vivaldi, while Reyes’s weapon of choice for Swiss songwriter Mani Matter is the Carabine. Reyes is concerned with «upcycling» – transforming an instrument of death into a musical instrument that stands for dialog and exchange. He undertakes this transformation process with the conviction that the physical act is always accompanied by an idealistic one and appeals to the spiritual dimension of this quasi-alchemical operation towards the good.

Psychoprosa

The exhibition PSYCHOPROSA focuses on mucus as a biochemical substance and sculptural material. The production of mucus takes place as a real process within the exhibition spaces, transforming the Frankfurter Kunstverein into an interconnecting ensemble of greenhouse, laboratory, walk-in refrigerator, cinema, and factory. Through tubes connected to one another, equipment and objects produce and transform their interior substances, refrigerators open and close automatically and transparent threads of mucus drip from expansive glass sculptures.

In close collaboration with biochemists, Thomas Feuerstein has developed the synthetic molecule Psilamin, derived from algae and fungi. In its production, large quantities of viscous biofilm are generated. If one were to take Psilamin, one would begin to feel psychotropic effects. Perception would liquefy, and objects in the room would appear soft and shapeless. Simultaneously, the flowing nature of the sculptural matter, which escapes solid form, externalizes an inner psychic process. At the end of the biochemical production process, which visitors can track in the different exhibition spaces, there is the expan-sive sculpture Accademia dei Secreti over whose glass containers vast amounts of mucus pour.

Astronomical Bodies

Astronomical Bodies is based on the research of Dr. Terence Kee of the University of Leeds. He proposes that that a reactive form of phosphorus arrived on the early Earth via meteorite impacts. His research found that phosphorus from space was more suitable for the chemical reactions to develop complex life. Astronomical Bodies reverses this process and tries to transform phosphorus harvested from the body — in the form of kidney stones and urine — into manmade meteorites. Rather than the traditional idea of transpermia addressed in a host of science fiction writings and films, Astronomical Bodies proposes that the galactic transferal of life-promoting chemicals is a natural process that we can facilitate.

The Admiral’s Garden
Christine Ödlund’s work explores the borders of our knowledge of the world around us, connecting such themes as the chemical communication of plants, synaesthesia and theosophy. She works in a variety of media, including drawing, sculpture, video, watercolour and sound works.
Stress Call of the Stinging Nettle: When a plant reacts to a butterfly larvae feeding on its leaves, it releases chemical substances, or compounds. The characteristics of these compounds have been analyzed in collaboration with the Ecological Chemistry Research Group at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, and then transposed into amplitude and intensity of sinus tones, recorded at EMS (Electroacoustic Music in Sweden), Stockholm. Thus these beautiful graphic score and soundtrack by Swedish artist Christine Ödlund are direct transpositions of “the plant’s life, struggle and death”.

TETRAGRAMMATON
A dialogue between these two artists on themes of myth, ritual and meaning, as much about their exhaustion and propensity to bewilderment as any potential they may inhere, for recuperation for and by language, culture and society. Joey’s work, ‘Religiously observant’, is inspired by alchemical and occult ideas, the world of spirits and hallucinations. The wall print features a gold CGI blazon of the Tetragrammaton It references the Sumerian mythology of the Annunaki a race of ancient chthonic fertility Gods, subsequently inscribed in a series of publications by Zecharia Sitchin (a kind of elder statesman of conspiracy theorists worldwide) as descendants of aliens, who enslaved the human race to extract gold from the earth. John’s work similarly ranges over territories of opposition: between ancient and contemporary; mythic and kitsch; between the viscid and primordial. It takes as its subject the vector of congealment, in the Marxist sense of the way labour power is congealed in commodities and so forth, extending this metaphor into an aesthetics of myth and ritual, emptied out, flattened, compacted like a sedimentary layer of anthropocene garbage, for the post-historical epoch.The sound component provides an aural complement to this structure of refuse, exhaustion and abjection. Mixing pre- or post-linguistic utterances, grunts, groans, screaming: a kind of secular glossolalia chaotically interwoven with whalesong, deep techno and political oratory.

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.

ジェシカ·イートン
杰西卡·伊顿
polytopes
Jessica Eaton’s photographs dissect chemical and optical phenomena, the materiality of film, and the language of light itself. Eaton came to international acclaim through her Cubes for Albers and LeWitt (commonly referred to by the acronym cfaal)—a series of vibrant photographs that deconstruct her studio practice. Like the majority of Eaton’s works, these optically charged images are made by taking multiple in-camera exposures of common studio supplies. Through her abundant use of traditional analog photography practices—such as colour-separation filtering and in-camera masking—Eaton imbues her large-format images with an aesthetic more reminiscent of the paintings and drawings of hard-edge geometric abstraction than the photographs of traditional studio work.

Wearable Sculpture
He designs with meticulous attention to detail and longing for newness. Leather and wool are still his favourite materials. To get the effect of surprise he juxtaposes these two traditional materials with others, perhaps not typically associated with the textile industry. An important part of his design process is treating natural and synthetic fabrics with various methods, using heat, chemicals or other techniques, thus combining innovation and tradition.

Jacobson’s Fabulous Olfactometer
Created by Susanna Hertrich, Jacobson’s Fabulous Olfactometer (JFO) is a sensorial prosthesis that mimics mammalian ‘flehmen’ when air pollution levels are high. The prosthetic is designed around a new human sense modeled after a mammalian sense organ called the vomeronasal or “Jacobson’s” organ. This olfactory sense organ enables certain animals to sense odourless chemicals. When a mammal senses chemicals, it lifts its upper lip to expose this organ. This behaviour is called ‘flehmen’ (wikipedia).Two air chemical sensors located at the top part of the prosthetic register small particles (smoke) and CO2 levels. This data is fed into an Arduino board. When air pollution levels are registered as ‘high’, two stepper motors on either side of the head set exaggerated bone gears in motion and the wearer’s lip is slowly pulled upwards. Thus, JFO enables its wearer to ‘sense’ airborne chemicals and modifies his/her face similar to mammalian flehmen.Sensing and data processing is achieved using an Arduino with a Smoke detector (fine particles) & a Co2 sensor. The device also includes Adafruit stepper motor shield, two stepper motors and a custom designed gears carved from camel bone.

Transient Materialization
Created by Shih-Yuan Wang, Yu-Ting Sheng, Dr. Alex Barchiesi and Vyacheslav Kryvosheya with guidance from Prof. Jeffrey Huang at the Media and Design Laboratory LDM, EPFL / SINLAB, Transient Materialization explores the relationship between digital and material-based digital fabrication through n-hedron structure composed mainly of soap foam that is blown, through a mixture of air and helium, into a foam structure.The project questions structure’s materiality and examines its physical performance and ephemeral characteristics. In the first phase of the project the team achieved a programmable foam structure and presented various configurations of dynamic and transformable foam structures. The fabrication interacts with the algorithm, which involves a mixture of air and helium (controlled by pneumatic valves) and additive chemical substances and thickening agents.The aim of the project is to take architecture beyond the creation of static forms and into the design of dynamic, transformable and ephemeral material experimental processes.

Венсаном Калебо
Mangrove Towers

as the name indicates, the design of ‘mangrove towers’ references the shape and form of the distinctive tree. to be built at paris’ busy gare du nord railway station, the structures will accommodate a mixed program of offices, hotels and housing dedicated to international and traveling customers. the station’s platforms will be full of piezoelectrical captors polarizing under the action of the mechanical constraints generated by its inhabitants. the tubular façades will be composed of grätzel cells forming a photo-electrochemical skin.

The Chemical Brothers
Left Right

Калеб Чарланд
(deep space chemically alters)

„Das Schönste, was wir erleben können, ist das Geheimnisvolle. Es ist die Quelle aller wahren Kunst und aller Wissenschaft. Er, dem diese Emotion ein Fremder ist, der nicht länger innehalten kann, um sich zu wundern und in Ehrfurcht zu versinken, ist so gut wie tot: Seine Augen sind geschlossen. “ -Albert Einstein

Die Art und Weise, wie wir die Welt verstehen, hängt so sehr von unserer Fähigkeit ab, sie zu messen. Angesichts der Tatsache, dass viele Messungen auf den Proportionen des menschlichen Körpers basieren, ist es klar, dass wir Dinge messen, um unseren Platz unter all dem zu finden und uns auf irgendeine Weise damit zu verbinden. Durch die Erkundung der Welt vom Keller bis zum Hinterhof habe ich eine Resonanz in den Dingen gefunden. In diesem Raum schwingt eine Energie zwischen unseren Wahrnehmungen der Welt und dem Potenzial, das der Geist für unsere Eingriffe in die Welt wahrnimmt. Diese Energie ist die Quelle aller wahren Kunst und Wissenschaft, sie züchtet die geliebten „Ah Ha!“ Momente und es ermöglicht uns, das Außergewöhnliche im Gemeinsamen zu spüren.

Camera Lucida: Sonochemical Observatory
Camera Lucida (chamber of light or lucidity) directly transforms sound waves into light emissions by means of a phenomenon known as sonoluminescence. After adapting to the darkness surrounding the installation, one gradually perceives the detailed configurations of glowing sound fields.