Microbiosheric Engineering – FESCH.TV

FESCH.TV INFORMIERT:

Microbiology invokes features of our environment that are often unseen – interacting without our direct intent or involvement, while automation conjures views of large-scale, tightly controlled mass-production. As our technology has progressed, our abilities to manufacture have extended into the micro world, aided by ever more refined industrial machinery. At the same time, these technologies have allowed us to further populate our own world while extracting from it ever greater resources.
This work explores this convergence through a merged visual metaphor, involving human bacterial colonies, their interactions amongst wild-spawning micro-flora, and the automated systems that are used for their surveillance. The manifestation of these concepts comes through a clear sphere layered with sculpted microbial growth media. Bacterial populations are seeded by personal sampling of an array of bodily regions and monitored by automated microscope. This are presented on a large display as visual landscapes and satellite-style vistas of their expansion. Each day, further growth appears upon the mountains, valleys and planes of the agar topography. Participants have the opportunity to reposition the microscope to monitor select regions of growth. When no users are present, the arm will move in preprogrammed patterns.
The combined built and spontaneous cartographies provide means to
internalize population expansions and resource depletions of our own biosphere, while the proximal automata presenting these unseen worlds draws focus on the approaching micro : macro interactions of mechanical : biological manufacture and our own potential technological limits of growth.

Produced by:
Kevin Blackistone & Amir Bastan

with the assistance of:
Interface Cultures, Kunstuniversität Linz
Anastasia Bragina, Ars Biolab
Miriam Eichinger, Fashion & Technology, Kunstuniversität Linz
Grand Garage Linz

and financial support from
Forderungsverein der Kunstuniversität Linz