Bio Art. Frontiers in Biology and artistic landscapes
Temporary installation MUSE – Science Museum of Trento 30 November 2022 – 8 January 2023
Bio Art. Frontiers in Biology and artistic landscapes
Temporary installation. 30 November 2022 – 8 January 2023
What does it mean to build new living organisms? When it comes to artificial life, what ethical and moral issues need to be considered?
The European project ACDC has developed the installation BioArt - Frontiers in Biology nd Artistic Landscapes to invite people to reflect on these issues.
Two operas are on display: Cloroplastic and Sintetica, which both represent the result of a process of sharing information and public engagement about synthetic biology and artificial life.
Cloroplastic is the result of the Open Talks&Labs events organised by MUSE in November 2022 as part of the ACDC project. It is a collaborative work inspired by the structures of living organisms and able to react to stimuli from the environment.
The structure depicts the tilacoid system present in the chloroplasts of plant cells.
t was constructed with materials derived from living organisms in a participatory manner, using digital fabrication and biotechnological laboratory techniques.
Cloroplastic hosts living plants of the species Impatiens walleriana, implanted by Open Lab participants. The shell was produced through 3D printing by WASP's Hub using plant-derived biopolymers.
Photosynthesis, that takes place in the chloroplasts, is the chemical process by which plants produce organic substances (e.g. carbohydrates) from carbon dioxide and water powered by sunlight.
Light is essential to activate the photosynthetic process, in Cloroplastic how the visitors interact with the the exhibit affects the light generated and as a conquence it will influence the growth of the plants present.
Sintetica is a work by Giuseppe Lo Schiavo winner of the BioArt Challenge launched by the ACDC project.
It is a digital art experiment that possesses many characteristics of living organisms.
it lives on a web page https://www.giuseppeloschiavo.com/sintetica/ and changes according to data collected in real time by the Hedonometer, a tool that measures happiness based on the words used by Twitter users. It feeds on the views it receives, can reproduce, get sick and like all living things die.
The exhibion includes also a video with intervies to researchers working on the ACDC project and to the people who participated in the Open Talks&Labs about what is the ACDC project about, what distinguishes the living from the non-living and if there should be limits to research in the field of artificial life.
See pictures of the exhibition here