Bio Art - Labmade Life Forms in Art

As current technologies are changing our perceptions of the body, bioart, also called "wet" art, "moist" art or "biotech" art, is bridging the gap between science and art. Using biology as their medium, artists clone cells, grow skins, meats and livers. They explore issues ranging from the taxonomical crisis induced by life forms created through biotechnology, cultural cross-breeding and hybridization, the creation of new biological habitats, and the hymen.

For a taste of bioart, check out this BBTV video report on last week's tissue culture workshop hosted by LA's Machine Project. It was led by Oron
Catts and Ionat Zurr of the biotech collective SymbioticA, which "creates new cultural experiments in the field of neurosciences, molecular biology, anatomy physics, anthropology and ethics."



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Molecular Cuisine - Alchemy of the Senses

When Oliver Hess of Silverlake's Materials & Applications described bacon lard ice cream as incredible, I was dubious. Of course, like so many things in life, it's about the context.

Molecular cuisine is the end product of molecular gastronomy. Since the 80s, chefs & scientists have been collaborating to experiment with breaking foods down into their most basic components – molecules – seeking scientific explanations to age-old culinary mysteries -- how do our brains interpret signals from the five senses to tell us the “flavor” of food; why is that some foods combine well, while others don’t -- and applying that knowledge to creating new tastes and textures.

Molecular gastronomy is intricately tied to how the human body interprets sensory input. Try chef and researcher Paul Barham's ice cream experiment: Most of us find that a spoonful of ice cream tastes good. Now, close your eyes eating the same ice cream while stroking a piece of velvet, and you'll find that it tastes much creamier. Repeat the same experiment with sandpaper & the ice cream's texture will be grittier.

A watershed moment for molecular cuisine came in 1999, when Heston Blumenthal, chef at the Fat Duck restaurant at Bray-on-Thames in England, shocked the dining world with his fusion of white chocolate and caviar, a combination whose success was explained by the surprisingly similar chemical compositions of the two foods.

Restaurants in New York, Toronto and Tokyo are popularizing the cuisine. Most famous is Ferran Adrià's El Bulli in Barcelona. In the unlikely event of getting a table, look forward to sampling cocoa butter with crispy ears of rabbit; Kellogg’s paella, which consists of Rice Krispies, shrimp heads and vanilla-flavored mashed potatoes; white garlic and almond sorbet; and tobacco-flavored blackberry crushed ice. And for that added dimension, don't forget your fabric swatches.

Designing Sound Furniture

As more scientific research focuses on the perception of sound, sound as an area of artistic & cultural inquiry is gaining credibility.

The UK’s first exhibition on sound art, Sonic Boom was held in 2000 at London’s Hayward Gallery. Curated by David Toop, it featured 23 sound innovators including delicate sound sculptures by Max Eastley and an electromagnetic noise installation by Disinformation. The intention was to lift sound beyond the club and rave scene into the realm of artistic inquiry.

"Sonic Boom fills the Hayward with a series of sound installations in which the visitor encounters the mechanical and the organic, the electronic and the acoustic, the sculptural and the intangible. The exhibition creates both subtle and intense sensory experiences, offering a soundscape for the imagination."

Seven years later, the 'soundscape for the imagination' is literally translated into the tangible and a new sensory event emerges. Matthew Plummer Fernandez has created the Sound/Chair, in which electronic music exists simultaneously as design in a project that explores the translation of furniture into sound and sound into furniture. The Sound/Chair is an exact replica of a soundwave graph produced by Sean Shreeve. An experiment in mapping soundwaves materially, the piece was launched at the London Design Festival in September.

"When sound is presented in this manner, the beautiful and unexplored aesthetic of sound is discovered; a landscape of spikes and shapes that vary accordingly to the type of sound... The end result is a chair that carries the inherited aesthetic of sound and also a chair that can be heard as a sound."

Current debates on sound as art are expanded upon in Alan Licht's 'Sound Art: Beyond Music, Between Catagories (2007) and Brandon Labelle's 'Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art (2006).