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."
New Scientist cites the next demonstration, also performed by UCL's Henrik Ehrsson. Cameras and projections are set up to confuse subjects into experiencing that they are standing somewhere else in the room, reinforcing the idea that peoples' perception of 'self' is tightly bound to how information is processed by the senses.
In these experiments, the sense of touch is synchronized with visual movement. These perceptions are put in conflict with where the synchronization is happening. The brain defaults to vision, which is the most informationally rich sensory modality. As the self is no longer 'within its borders', subjects feel like they're having an out-of-body experience.
Here's a DIY version, brought to you from the guys at Mind Hacks:
"Sit at a table with a friend at your side. Put one hand on your knee, out of sight under the table. Your friend’s job is to tap, touch, and stoke your hidden hand and—with identical movements using her other hand—to tap the top of the table directly above. Do this for a couple of minutes. It helps if you concentrate on the table where your friend is touching, and it's important you don't get hints of how your friend is touching your hidden hand. The more irregular the pattern and the better synchronized the movements on your hand and on the table, the greater the chance this will work for you. About 50% of people begin to feel as if the tapping sensation is arising from the table, where they can see the tapping happening before their very eyes. If you're lucky, the simultaneous touching and visual input have led the table to be incorporated into your body image."
Beyond the practical applications of creating more realistic avatars in virtual reality games, and for doctors' performing remote surgery, these experiments explore the question, 'Why do we feel we own our body?' They indicates that "self" is closely tied to a "within-body" position, which is dependent on information from the senses. Swiss researcher Olaf Blanke concludes, "We look at 'self' with regard to spatial characteristics, and maybe they form the basis upon which self-consciousness has evolved."
Hungry to prepare molecular cuisine, but don't have the specialist knowledge to successfully pair beluga caviar with white chocolate souffle?
For you dabblers in the molecular science of taste, FoodPairings.be has done the chemistry for you. Launched today, visual displays of neuron-inspired food trees instantly reveal that pairing roast beef with grapefruit and licorice is an ideal flavor combination, and banana with mussels - a gastronomical treat.
The chemical engineering team's results are broken down into the categories of chemically resonant food 'pairings' and molecularly 'interchangable' foods.
"A food product has a specific flavour because of a combination of different flavours. Like basil tastes like basil because of the combination of linalool, estragol, …. So if I want to reconstruct the basil flavour without using any basil, you have to search for a combination of other food products where one contains linalool (like coriander), one contains estragol (like tarragon),... So I can reconstruct basil by combining coriander, tarragon, cloves, laurel."
Try out the following online tests & experiments for synesthesia:
David Eagleman's'Synesthesia Battery'is the most comprehensive synesthesia test I've found so far & excellent for synesthetes who want explore a possibly extended range of their gifts, especially as research is showing that 40% of synesthetes have more than one form of synesthesia. The site lists a wide range of possible synesthetic combinations for testing, including musical-instruments>color, sound>smell, Chinese grapheme>color and orgasm>color. Disappointingly, when I checked the box that applied to me, sound>taste, I was immediately directed to a Results page which thanked me for my participation. For me, took about 1 minute to complete.
The BBC's charmingly named Do you see what I see?, from which I appropriated the title of this post, hosts a single test for grapheme-color synesthesia and spatial-sequence (number form) synesthesia. About 10 minutes.
BU's Synesthesia Project has a great test for non-graphemic shapes>color synesthesia. The Project's research on grapheme-color synesthesia found that many synesthetes report having colored basic shapes, including triangles and squares, in addition to their colored letters and/or numbers. Are you one of them? Take the 'Non-Graphemic Shape Battery' here. About 20 minutes.
'Strandbeest', astonishingly beautiful kinetic sculptures which from a distance resemble giant insects or prehistoric skeletons come alive, are the progeny of artist, engineer and sculptor Theo Jansen.
For 16 years Jansen has been designing and refining consecutive generations of Strandbeest ("beach beasts") to survive autonomously in roaming flocks on local Dutch beaches. His creatures 'digest' fuel, walk by flapping their wings in response to the wind, perceive obstacles in their path through simple binary sensors and to protect themselves from harm in oncoming storms, hammer themselves into the sand.
"The beauty in these machines is their mechanical and conceptual simplicity. By copying the evolutionary process, the inventor has managed to create startlingly organic-looking machines, with a depth of creativity and beauty many of today’s electronics lack... He uses genetic algorithms to create artificial life, including a measure of “fitness” for his creations. The creations which are most successful at walking along the beach are bred together and regraded for future designs."
Constructed from the simplest of materials -- plastic tubing, adhesive tape and lemonade bottles -- the animaris' startlingly elegant walking motions evolved from trial and error. The key to their fluid movement lies in the proportions of the tubes - Jansen's 11-number 'holy code' - and on their axis of motion, which replicates the wheel.
"This may be where the future of design ought to be found. By looking more to nature around us, we can evolve creations of much greater complexity and more akin to naturally produced objects. This may be the direction we must head in to create cradle-to-cradlesustainability: rather than the clean-cut, single-function, straightforward inventions of the past, we may need to embrace the complexity inherent in nature."
In the meantime, it's not difficult to imagine these poetic beasts, many larger than elephants, as future artifacts in a post-human world, silent but for gusts of lonely winds on the shore and the hypnotic swarm-of-insects/wind-rustling-branches murmur of Strandbeests' whirring parts.
While I’m not a synesthete myself, 'fusiform gyrus' has got to be one of the yummiest phrases around. It takes the mouth so many places, & sounds like an onomatopoeic compression of Goldfrapp’s Strict Machine.
To neuroscientist Vilayanur Ramachandran, the fusiform gyrus section of the brain may be the key to the ‘linked senses’ phenomenon of synesthesia. The fusiform gyrus is part of the temporal lobe and houses the areas responsible for color and number perception, which happen to be next to one another. Noting the hereditary nature of the condition, Ramachandran posits that in synesthetes there is cross-wiring between these two areas resulting in simultaneous perception of sensory input and very often, enhanced creativity.
Ramachandran is a dynamic and entertaining speaker. In the TED Talk below he expands on this theory. The section on synesthesia starts at 17:53.
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'sEl 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.
Neuromaggio is driven by curiosity & the desire to explore beautiful intersections between art, science, music, sound, culture, technology and design. Areas of interest include - Art, aesthetics and neuroaesthetics. Sound, music, neuromusicology. Synesthesia, creativity, ritual and the unconscious mind. Design & technology. Sensation & perception. Techno fashion & molecular cuisine. Projects & experiments hopefully presented to charm, intrigue, capture and nourish the soul and imagination.
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.
