and the flat pack lab idea…

flat pack houses etc

http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2008/08/the-milan-triennale-is-the.php

some interesting art

http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2008/08/the-sometimes-naivety-of-my.php

seams and scars

just found this in reaction to Nurit talking about the china cup story. its a nice story about the cup being put together with gold. so you can see where the history is and have made a hybrid etc etc.

Galloway, Anne. 2007. “Seams and Scars, Or How to Locate Accountability in Collaborative Work,” in Uncommon Ground, Cathy Brickwood, Bronac Ferran, David Garcia and Tim Putnam (eds.), pp. 152-158. Amsterdam: BIS Publishers:

http://www.purselipsquarejaw.org/papers/galloway_uncommonground_preprint.pdf

a discovery at the end of the rainbow…

The Grafting Parlour / summary notes from Finland

The working title for our project is The Grafting Parlour.  Our working process is research-focused.  

The core lies at the common practices between artists and scientists and how they are motivated, what moves them and their activities.  The lifespan of our project is parallel to that of the freshwater pearl mussel:  just as Margaritifera rides in the gills of brown trout and salmon – scientists become hosts for our research.  One of our goals is to develop a symbiotic relationship between certain scientific studies and the project research.  Some of the elements will include video and sound specimens from our experiences of interdisciplinary and interspecies communication.  Basically, we interviewed scientists and trees, armed with 2 HD cameras, 1 underwater camera, 2 handycams, 2 SLR cameras, 3 digital cameras, and a digital Dat recorder. 

The next step is the processing of this material, following parallel and interconnected methods, including our continued collaboration  and work with external science experts. This e-mobile work requires electronic transfers of large data and our shared analysis. Practically, we we would like to find a way to tackle this process so that our research can develop fluidly.

On the Arctic Road…

A Rambling Letter, documenting our science field trip in Finland

Dear Coti and Kelly,

We’re writing you from our road trip, aboard our compact car, and we have had a few adventures which the photos will tell you all about later – we’ll have to sleep some before getting a chance to get these to you.  Each research station was really valuable to visit.  First we went up, and the 4-hour journey took maybe 10 or 11.  We stopped for every reindeer, learned about where Santa really comes from, were attacked by mosquitoes and super happy to have our uniforms.  The terrain was forested – with the same forests that reach the Pacific, as Antti explains, comprising one living entity.  Antti is part of so many streams of research and practical and theoretical science – every aspect of the area was known to him, and he would tell us in narrative form the why of what we were looking at, from the scientific connection between the albino reindeer and evolution to the research practices of our first site scientist, Dr. Panu Oulasvirta (last name meaning “old stream” in old Finnish).  Panu is a marine biologist who is researching the disappearance of the freshwater pearl mussel (Margaritifera Margaritifera).  We interviewed Panu and the national park director, whose conversation about how much “science” can know was a back-and-forth about how the mussel communicates and has or retains knowledge…  After the interview Panu was very enthusiastic about our project and said he is interested in continuing the conversation…

I’m picking up this story again, writing to you from the airport…  On the car ride home we discussed taking on the species (!) Margaritifera margaritifera as the “persona” for our next period of research – instead of another scientist.  Margaritifera margaritifera is precious among scientists, and its rare pearls were sought after and set into rich jewelry and old Russian embroidery.  Some information:  M.M. is one of the oldest species, has a very long lifespan – one of the longest, living up to 250 years, with its age detectable in rings on its shell like the concentric lines of a tree trunk.  The river-dwelling freshwater mussel produces pearls and is endangered in Finland; there are different theories for its disappearance, including the falling numbers of its host fish species – the brown trout and salmon.  The mussel larva is initially carried in the gills of the fish for about one year, and takes upwards of 20 years to pass through adolescence (we relate).  In procreation and development, the mussel must grab an opportunity when it presents itself.  Its reproduction is precarious, the sperm dependent on the right water conditions to travel downstream to the female.  The mussel’s experiential knowledge:  it appears to feel the weight of the water, sense divers, and “know” its environment and other species, including the proximity of potential host fish.  So we will be approaching our work from the perspective of a very old, and ancient mollusk, precious to pearl collectors, naturalists, and biologists – a species struggling to survive in a changing environment.  The freshwater pearl mussel is an indicator species, its disappearance indicative of a broader ecosystem breakdown.

Learning the mussel’s saga was the climax of a mystical day, with rain that turned into fog, rainbows and a quest to track a unicorn.  Indeed, we came across an albino reindeer just after and close to the end of a rainbow.  Suddenly the child advisors’ input given some weeks earlier became a reality (4-yr-old Dr. Joe has suggested we incorporate rainbows).  The day didn’t really end, since after our official interview of the scientists at around midnight, followed by sauna and cooking dinner, we didn’t actually eat until around 2 am, and this after the 11-hr drive, and before the next morning’s research itinerary.  Needless to say, we were late for our morning appointment a couple hours south with Professor Esa Turanen.  Professor Turanen introduced us to an enormous satellite dish, and a tool for measuring the Aurora Borealis…connections to colors, sounds, universe, mythology…  Thank you, Antti, for our science-experiment-roadtrip!

X Orphanites 

Making Temporary Laboratories /eMobiLArt works

Research Trip:  Notes for an Excursion into the North

Our Route to Kemihaara:
http://maps.google.fi/maps?f=d&utm_campaign=fi&utm_source=fi-ha-emea-fi-google-dd&utm_medium=ha&utm_term={Rovaniemi}

Route Kemihaara to Sodankylä:
http://maps.google.fi/mapsf=d&utm_campaign=fi&utm_source=fi-ha-emea-fi-google-dd&utm_medium=ha&utm_term={Rovaniemi}

• find an interesting area on the way to stop- somewhere very isolated and ‘natured,’ devoid of people
• ‘listening to ecology’
• adapting to change; hybrids
• record the large expansive nature environment:  take video/photos of the area
• informal recorded conversation about our curiosity in science and the world: what does it mean for each of us?

Grafting, notes from before the research excursion

Yesterday the group visited the arctic science museum and cultural center, with exhibits on some of the science that we will experience first-hand tomorrow.

Connections between the Arctic and other elements of the project:

• the big and the small – working with microscopic organisms, yet as Antti says, the Arctic forest stretches all the way to the Pacific, and you can think of these forests as one big organism.  In viewing the very green dioramas of the arctic landscape at the museum, we (Lucy and Nurit) talked about the possibility of the “yeast sculptures” creating larger landscapes and dioramas, ala natural history museum displays
• There is a Finish scientist, Minna Mannist, who is working with growth of arctic bacteria, and is part of a Finnish institute that studies forest biology.  She has isolated bacteria from melted snow, containing different colors generated from varying exposures to UV light (potential for bacterial sunscreen!).  She is interested in Natalie Kuldell’s work at MIT and a possible scientific exchange through the fabric of our project
• Potential of borrowing part of the science collection that deals with the endangered freshwater pearl mussel (Margaritifera Margaritifera), specifically a specimen display along with Dr. Branders script about the mussels from 1955, plus correspondence of the Natural History Museum of Fossa of a scientist’s 1950s research and photographs on the mussel.  The mussel uses salmon and trout to travel before it forms a shell and stays in the fish gills for one year (passage!).  The collection of specimen also related so Orphadites’ work, and cataloging biodiversity (collections).
• Biodiversity as a theme arose again in connection with information on endangered Arctic indigenous languages:  Antte, proving an incredible resource of arctic science, the local science institutions and current scientific studies, also has a vat of cultural material – including footage of chanting and storytelling by indigenous in the arctic in their endangered tongue.  Biodiversity, bird speech, and language approach one another:  Nurit or Saiorse earlier made this connection:  as bird species die we lose their songs.  Language loss is inter-species.  Idea to create an interactive display where users connect plant speech with plant species.  What form can the birdsong, potentially translating and communicating with birds, or listening to ecology take?  There was also information about the arctic people’s presence and their migration into the areas 1000s of years ago as they followed the retreating icecaps North (migration).
• Other display ideas that came to mind based on the playful exhibits at the science center; interactive light-up science graphs; display boxes for “collections”
  

An idea for the group:  in the spirit of Jane Wells Loudon, can we each make some predictions about science for the year ____?  These would add an interesting element to the display.

What do you think about taking on the endangered mussel as our next identity, since its name sounds like a person?!   
Margaritifera Margaritifera

All direction/no direction North has come up a few times:
Can we also make an on-line project where we ask people who are traveling to help shift the magnetic pull of North – how do we want Earth to shift?  Could we make all directions North?  How could we relay this?  Does it fit into the “Grafting Parlor?”

Dimitris Charitos in conversation with the group:
D.S.  What is the spine and the intention of the project?
S.H.:  The project is very much the process.  The ongoing laboratory work and experimentation is part of the project outcome.  The emphasis is on the art/science connection, and finding out the scientists’ perspectives on the world.
N.B.S.:  Also a strong connector is translation – it’s more about the connections that we are trying to make between seemingly distant ideas, that appear to be vast and disconnected but that are interconnected, where we become like curators, though curators of experiments.  Ideas for working with sound and connecting the elements
A.T.:  The process is not entirely goal-oriented but is the attempt to adapt to different scientific methods and views and see where it goes.  The process is both playful and place-oriented or site-specific, wehre we are reacting to the scientific environment.
L.H.G.  Another fulcrum for the project is biodiversity, and collection or garden
D.C.  Biodiversity is linked to cultural diversity.
A.T.: biodiversity is a term that came from biologists who view the biological world as a whole, in which all species are linked to one another – to explain the biological world as a whole.
N.B.S.  It’s again about translation – us explaining to ourselves about other things.
D.C.:  This work on a conceptual level relates to the relationship between art and technology as creative theories.  “Collection,” and “translation” are key words, that work in different ways.  The word collection is what we look at and the process.  Conceptually, the group is relating to the ground by where you are located – on-site, relating to the eMobiLArt project.  You are speaking about the perspective of art to the scientific process, how the artist views these experiments as artistic activities.  The artist doesn’t necessarily have the goals that the scientist has, and can view aesthetic value in the process, so that the activity suits the aesthetic aims or other interests.
N.B.S.  This is an extension of the idea of eMobiLArt, as we are collecting and presenting a method for allowing the public to contribute to the collection.
S. H.:  Part of this could be having scientists’ input that is interactive, as a performative element.

Annick Bureaud in conversation with the group:
A.B.  What is the hub of the project?
N.B.S.:  We are realizing more and more what we are interested in: this aspect that scientists are interested in, that we are in the process of collecting.  This interest in collecting site-specific materials and information is a journey, a process that is part of the process.  Some core ideas underly this process, but the links of these aspects are the central.
S.H.:  The process evolves.
A.B.  What is the purpose of collecting these materials?  For stamp collectors, the goal is to present a beautiful and valuable stamp collection.  What is the criteria?  Also, how will you bring this collection to the audience?
S.H.:  I used to be a stamp collector as a kid, and I collected stamps from exotic places where I could only imagine going and exploring.  So, for example, Orphanides collected species when he was traveling and wanted to show the people in Athens other places and give them a sense of the other world from his perspective, and he had a quirkiness because he named the plants after himself.
A.B.:  Do you know why you are collecting what you are collecting?
L.H.G.:  By adapting a scientific methodology and science itself we are infusing the creative concept with the perceived legitimacy of science, giving credence to our playful experimentation.  This is experimentation as opposed to a strict “collection.”
N.B.S.:  The way I see this whole project is creating a tool – could be research, could be experiments – that we can make accessible to people during the exhibition, and adding their inputs into our collection or our own experiments that we are making, and adding them to our environment, and to the traveling exhibition.  These tools include a playful experiment with yeast, so that the organic material has a process, grows into sculptures where growth and decay play a creative part.
L.H.G.  Interaction with and reprocessing of this information is interactive biology.

Ultimately, the group decided A) we need to create visually now with something hands-on and B) we really need input from Kelly and Coti – sound ideas, interactive ideas, what component part excites them and what they think the overarching connective tissue could be!  Can you two fill in the blanks, in spite of jetlag, business, hectic schedules and life – we know you are both in chaotic situations!  We’d love to incorporate your input on Friday at our final report, as they intend us to have an idea of the concrete form of this thing!  We talked about cranks and pulleys and mechanical play initially – any insertions of these, like commas, into this loose garden of experiments, our “boutique of science” as we’ve been calling it, The Grafting Parlor.

UMBRELLA ideas: what is the glue that holds the tentacles together?

What binds the project’s various research components?

• laboratory context: scientific approach and language
• garden or a “grafting parlor”
• narrative storyline
• scientific process that connects components

A possible title for the project is “The Grafting Parlor” 
(art grafted with scientists; research grafting)

Combining…

• garden as a laboratory, as collections, as a “plant zoo”
• laboratory as an open dollhouse where can see various rooms – revealing process
• Botanical details
• If plants are dying they fade – they lose color.  What if the colorization of cells reflects the reverse of this process, so that decay of a plant brings on
• With yeast – growing yeast, we could grow yeast on a specific surface as a sculptural material.  There’s also the possibility of imprinting an image in the cell, visible with an electron microscope
• Idea of a garden environment as a space
• Saoirse reflects on what was supposed to be an idyllic place – a butterfly farm, where the large butterflies were actually really scary…  Could a garden be treacherous, containing the opposite of what you expect.  
• Plant narratives:  a Victorian plant – called Aspidistra – was imported as a symbol of progress; tulips in Holland…; and flowers in Dutch paintings as important signifiers, symbols of wealth, with flowers from different seasons within one painting – so that the artful bouquet is a fantasy; idea of decay and dried flowers; plants in “The Little Prince”
• Slide libraries, specimen slides
• Idea of tracking the passage of a plant – all start with the same seeds and grow in different climates; tracking growth
• What about the physical passage of a plant, grown through community – with one seed starting in one place and has to travel around the globe but restricted by how far it can go with each life, or something like that…
• Idea for each of us to record audio explanations of our ties to and interest in science or gardening or plants
• Grafting parlor: what could happen in the grafting parlor? (boutique research)
• Yeast experimentation

Yeast…forms of presentation, experimentation and interaction:

• “Green” light bulb display – yeast adhering to light bulb form programmed to become florescent when exposed to CO2 – so the yeast sculptures glow when people breathe on the yeast, more people producing more glow; visual idea of hanging lights in the space – the green light bulb could hang next to real lights; conceptually ties into the idea of giving to plants
• Grow-your-own-yeast sculpture station: If we grow something in a gallery space interaction with this could be via Internet:  viewer interaction can stimulate yeast growth.

What does the yeast represent?  We could embed a logo or sign into the cell – so what does it represent?  In once sense, the use of yeast and altering it represents evolution, through asexual reproduction; looking at cells from the atomic point of view and the theme of copy/paste:  yeast cells as digital components.  

How is this interactive?  Remote spectators and visitors to the show become caretakers or gardeners of yeast sculptures.  Have SMS or mobile communication feed the yeast’s genetic imprinting:  can you SMS to yeast?

Talk-to-me plant station; could sit inside a plant chair, tell the plant a secret or story or idea or sentiment – audio sensor could have plant respond somehow; Asian tradition of notes on tree, wishing trees, telling secrets to a tree

What are the “sound” and “machine” components?

Sound – “listening to matter” – listening to ecology – tied into Kelly’s project of listening to plants
- sound gives a context and can blur the line between fact and fiction
- what sounds do plants make?  a plant with a megaphone, stethoscope:  plays with micro/macro  (S.H. has a very large megaphone and an old PA system that would lend itself to a performance)

Potential Performance component – reading off scientific facts, botany…, using the PA; could have panel of expert scientists to answer all of our and viewers’ questions:  idea of scientists on hand with a crank spinning through a ticker tape of our questions

How do we integrate the Arctic Data and Research?
Light is one connection, and the invisible; perspective and perception based on geographic location and experience of “light.”  Idea of the Sun as truth, a constant, yet its variability reveals the multiplicity of truths.  If Sun and North are reference points, and we move the magnetism, then all the truth and references for reality becomes altered…  What if North is no longer North?

Temporary lab in the forest

Antti has footage of the arctic environment, specifically:
Flowers, underwater plants, trees, animals, old cave paintings, Sami people
- has access to Russian footage from 50s and 60s
- on first Arctic field research trip will look at fresh-water pearl oyster shell – generates freshwater pearls – is rare; also a gold rush in the area…

Ideas for Additional Materials

• Podcast or broadcast of plant growth
• Publication or kit or booklit with various components from each researcher – could be modular
• Files with information
• Uniforms on display (like Beekeeper outfits)

Finland: a north-oriented Orphadites

What is the connection between the various points of inquiry that we undertake?Which way is North?  Goals include identifying an overarching narrative, scientific process, or mythology of the project, as well as the component parts of the whole.  This could be represented with a flowchart identifying the various modules and whose main areas of interests intersect.

The most identifiable aspect of each component is a shared scientific methodology:  using scientific experimentation, inquiry, and curiosity as a starting point.

Main themes or forms drawn from working session I in Athens:

• mechanized; mechanical aspect
• migrating ecology
• inter-species interaction and communication
• interfacing with plant and nature in multiple modes – data, physical interaction, communicating, suspense with narrative that has a real connection
  

Broad themes identified during work session II in Finland:

• migrating ecology
• time
  

Annick Bureaud questions:
What is the relationship of inter-species communication to time perception of plants?
Do we really want to communicate with/to other species?

What are we interested in?

Saoirse poses:
What is our role as artists working with scientists?  She points out that our component inquires resemble a “real” laboratory.
We are the connective tissue bringing the scientific researchers’ work together.

Her specific interests from our exhaustive list are: nature as a machine; migrating ecology: “matter speaks;” Listening to ecology; plants’ perspective; objects in process; evolution (biosensors to translate); grafting parlor; printing 3D objects – leads into printing genetic materials; plants that generate electricity; passage as a methodology (introduce this subject with science advisors)

She talks about the small robots on mars created by Rodney Brooks!  Lucy would like to make mechanical bees, since the bees are dying, and Saoirse intends to do site-specific research at the bee museum in Northern Italy, where she will visit.

A primary interest for Saoirse is the ongoing discussion of nature and sound / acoustic ecology, and what she refers to as Listening to Ecology.  Points of this discussion:

- plant’s sense of time, plant leaves as a speaker (from Dr. Paul McCartney, a child-sized member of the board of directors)
- Kelly’s past project translating people’s voices into birdsong
- Jim Cummings reference – losing biodiversity, birdsongs and language
- Estonian theorist who bases all senses of organisms and time to musical tones

Nurit Bar-Shai brings up conceptual and theoretical background of science and evolution, including Darwin’s finches and the potential of working with yeast (also a specialty of advising scientist Natalie Kuldell).  Regarding her interest in yeast, she draws a connection between digital copy/paste and asexual evolution (yeast reproduction).  Nurit questions how the science that we develop can be interactive with the public and viewers.  We take and plants give…  This is a one-way relationship – how do we alter this one-directional relationship?

Regarding our working method, she suggests that we take a scientific process and apply to each research module, that we begin with plants…and then expand.  Or contract.

One of Nurit’s references – again referring to the discussion on birds, is the artist Étienne-Jules Marey, who attempts to map motion.  In his study of bird flight he maps movements with a roller machine.

Lucy Hg is interested in merging practical and imaginative lab work as well as interacting with the scientific community.  She is directly related to creative biology. Lucy’s great uncle Bob is one of the world’s primary “inventor” of daylilies: http://magazine.uchicago.edu/0008/features/daylilies.htm

The bird and mechanical bee ideas return to a shared area of interest in mechanics. Leonardo da Vinci’s studies of bird motion and his mechanical bird models and flying machines are a precursor to Marey.

Antti Tenetz is quite connected to the scientific community of the arctic, and is planning two site visits for the group, with field research as the objective.  He is a strong resource for the ecological and geophysical studies taking place in the area, and has access to data as well as visual and audio materials that he has produced in conjunction with arctic research projects. His own ecology-related materials that he collected and produced for various research projects are potential resources for the project.

About the sites:

Kemihaara – an isolated research station in the woods on the border of Finland and Russia, in a lowland area with rivers and many mosquitos – natural resources station, researcher; biggest park of Finland (border of Russia) – Kemihaara is the birthplace of the whole river system, including of the river in Rovaniemi, called Kemi Joki . Kemihaara means “crossroads,” and kemi means 3rd largest river.  Across the border in Russia there is another place of the same name, as a watershed lies at the border.

Sodankylä Geophysical Observatory (www.sgo.fi) – an observatory and research station of the University of Oulu located 120 km north of the Arctic Circle.  The observatory is the site of an “allsky camera,” with real-time video of the Aurora Borealis, multiple datasets that are interpreted live into visuals as well as number sets.

There is potential in incorporating some area of data from the observatory into the project, perhaps as a method for congealing the various research components – though utilized and interpreted in distinct ways.  Perhaps there is a narrative that comes from the Sami that could be tied to Greek mythology and an historical event in Vienna?  The question remains – what is the overarching narrative?

There is consensus that the Orphadites researcher uniform should includes mosquito net hat! 

“Plants have a different sense of time.”

An extension of the conversation regarding plants’ perception of time…

University of Lapland rector Mauri Ylä-Kotola talks about organizing administrations, universities, and other bodies around reindeers, whose wisdom underlies Sami tradition. He references Alexander Davidoff, director of an ecological institute in Northern Siberia who focuses on the concept of time and how church bells interrupt and shape community and individuals’ experiences of time.  Ylä-Kotola challenges the idea that digital technologies have introduced non-linear time, as human memory systems have long recalled and catalogued moments from isolated areas in an individual’s personal timeline.  

“Time is not here but always.” – Mauri Ylä-Kotola

Instead, he sees the potential for new technologies to composite these moments into a catalog in another way, so that the moments become accessible all at the same time. He wonders what comes next:  what computer-based sensibility or sense will become the next way of experiencing, of perceiving and shaping reality?  Mauri Ylä-Kotola suggests the writing of philosopher Henri Bergson on space and time – integral to media sciences on how to consider digital time:

http://www.brocku.ca/MeadProject/Bergson/Bergson_1910/Bergson_1910_toc.html

In Estonia, a thinker thinks of all time as based on musical tones:  all of biology, all organisms have different tones associated with them.

Saoirse Higgens points to happenstance, just after the birds are quiet – the “eclipse moment.”