These are just some of the questions asked in the current exhibition at Science Gallery which probes the space between reality and the impossible and where designers meet scientists to explore the future. IF I was in London I would be attending this exhibition as it's curated by my tutors from the RCA, Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby.

Anthony and Fiona are know in the design world as the grand masters of creating "Design Fictions". So what exactly is design fictions? It is a kind of storytelling practice as a way of articulating ideas where you craft material visions of different kinds of possible worlds. Through this practice one bridges imagination and materialization by modelling, crafting things, telling stories through objects, which are  conversationalist pieces in a very real sense. These stories may appear real and legible, yet that are also speculating and extrapolating, or offering some sort of reflection on how things are, and how they might become something else.

Julian Bleecker has just published an essay entitled Design Fiction: A Short Essay on Design, Science, Fact and Fiction. Its available at The Near Future Laboratory's website.  I'm also keen to read the book "NonObject" Design Fiction. Experience centered design philosophy that explores innovation through design beyond physical boundaries. (should be published in early 2010). In Julian's article he writes about Anthony Dunne's call for mass speculation (in political science, genetics, ethics, economics, pretty much every discipline). Anthony and Fiona taught us that "Today we don't just need solutions, we also need dreams." He is right—designers that are too polite to take chances and postulate wild hypotheses are doomed to simply churn out next year's model. As Julian notes, Dunne's idealized designer functions kind of similar to a science-fiction author, an individual engaged in a projective practice that aspires to produce novelty and innovation rather than style.

Storytelling matters when designing the future even more than the real thing in terms of their ability to inspire the imagination of  people. Ideas are more powerful than a crappy product that aspires to the idea. I label myself as a designer and a storyteller because I see my role as a designer is to share my stories. I'm constantly developing my dreams of "how it could be" into a full story with real life people or objects. A moving story rings true at every level, your more likely to remember a story than a whole page of facts as story's are multi-dimensial, they embody us in space, time, values and emotions, they can reveal aspects of ourselves that are sometimes invisible. 

Story telling is fundamental to what it is to be human. To be a person is to have a story to tell. Every one of us tells stories, every day; story-telling is not something that only "real authors" or "real screenwriters" or "real designer" can do. Every day we make up stories about the things that happen to us, and tell them to our family and friends. 

I will write more about storytelling but for now lets experience some stories.

WHAT IF...Data from our banker, doctor and therapist determined when we should conceive?
by Revital Cohen
http://www.revitalcohen.com/

The promises posed by new reproductive technologies such as IVF, test tube babies and egg freezing, are blurring perceptions of the reproductive cycle amongst women, and consequently, the age of conception is constantly being challenged.

The female body clock relies on moonlight to regulate the menstrual cycle. The use of artificial light and contraceptive hormones, along with the growing pressure to develop a career, are distorting the body's reproductive signals. The artificial biological clock compensates for this increasingly lost instinct.

This object acts as constant reminder of the temporary and fragile nature of fertility. Given to a woman by her parents or partner, it reacts to information from her doctor, therapist and bank manager via an online service. When she is physically, mentally and financially ready to conceive the object awakes, seeking her attention.

WHAT IF...Human tissue could be used to make objects?
by Tobie Kerridge/Nikki Stott/Ian Thompson 
http://www.biojewellery.com 

 

Bone tissue cultivated outside a patient's body will soon be used in reconstructive surgery. As the bioscience behind this application develops, the promise of the technology provokes curiosity and speculation about alternative uses. Biojewellery explores such an alternative, providing couples with a symbol of their love.

Biomedical engineers, designers and clinicians set out to create unique biojewellery rings for couples. Bone tissue was cultured in a hospital laboratory, using cells from chips of bone donated by the couples during wisdom tooth extractions. The bone was combined with silver to create the rings. 

WHAT IF...We could farm medical products on our bodies?

by Michael Burton

http://www.michael-burton.co.uk/
 

Future Farm reflects the current body farm industry of people in severe deprivation using their bodies for income including selling hair, kidneys or incubating other people’s babies. The project focuses on new scientific and technological discoveries that radically change the perceptions of our bodies and extend the possibilities of their exploitation for industry.  With the promises of stem cell technology to create replacement organs and even sperm from adipose fat tissue, Future Farm presents a vision of this where people use their body to produce and sell adult stem cells, to incubate pharmaceutical products, alongside hosting clinical trials.

WHAT IF...We accept co-evolution with bacteria, microbes and parasites as a healthy option?
by Michael Burton

For every one human cell in your body there are ten nonhuman cells - bacteria, viruses, fungi and other microbes - living inside and on you. They are vital to many of your daily functions. 

The Race responds to this outcome and human metagenomic research to reconsider our approach to healthcare as a co-evolved organism and conglomeration of vital bacteria, microbes and parasites. The project scrutinizes our inadvertent creation of superbugs like mRSA through the misuse of antibiotics to offer alternative enhancements, new behaviors and objects for a more symbiotic future as an extraordinary balanced ecosystem.

WHAT IF...We could use smell to find the perfect partner?

by James Auger

http://www.auger-loizeau.com

Smell has been until recently a neglected sense. The current low status of smell is a result of the re-evaluation of the senses by philosophers and scientists of the 18th and 19th centuries. Smell was considered lower order, primitive, savage and bestial.  This project explores the human experiential potential of the sense of smell, applying contemporary scientific research in a range of domestic and social contexts. The design concept acknowledges that smell is a complicated sense requiring a level of control for both input and output emissions. This control is then applied to several situations exploring the possibilities and potential of smell as raw information.

WHAT IF...Our emotions were read by machines?

by Bernhard Hopfengärtner

http://www.berndhopfengaertner.net

Facial micro-expressions last less than a second and are almost impossible to control. They are hard wired to the emotional activity in the brain which can be easily captured using specially developed technological devices. Free will is now in question as science exposes decision-making as an emotional process rather than a rational one.This ability to read emotions technologically could result in a society obsessed with emotional reactions. Emotions, convictions and beliefs, which usually remain hidden, now become a public matter. ‘Belief systems' is a video scenario about a society that responds to the challenges of modern neuroscience by embracing these technological possibilities to read, evaluate and alter people's behaviours and emotions.

WHAT IF...We could evaluate the genetic potential of lovers?

by Dunne & Raby.

http://www.dunneandraby.co.uk/
 

Evidence Dolls consists of one hundred plastic dolls used to provoke discussion amongst a group of young single women about the impact of genetic technology on their lifestyle. How will dating change when DNA analysis can reveal the presence of undesirable genes?

Evidence Dolls come in three versions based on penis size (small, medium and large). A black indelible marker is provided to note down any characteristics on the dolls body. Hair, toenail clippings, saliva, and sperm can be stored in the penis drawer.

WHAT IF...Nanotechnology allowed objects to change shape and function as needed?
by Chris Woebken

http://www.woebken.net

Rather than focusing on the current development of nanotechnology, such as creating lighter and stronger materials, this project focuses on exploring its potential further, creating more manipulative prototypes such as organic electronics. 

What does organic computing look like and how will our relationship with these products change? Can organic electronics with biosensors open up new possibilities for sensual and poetic designs? 

Seeds contain material and information needed to grow organisms as well as algorithms for device networking. Using seeds as a simulation for smart dust, it allows one to easily visualize new interactions such as breaking, sharing, throwing away and mining data. These new interactions not only generate new behaviors but also redefine existing stereotypical electronic products.

WHAT IF...We lived in a society where our every thought was public?
by Bernhard Hopfengärtner, Gunnar Green

 Extra Room exists in an imaginary world where neuroimaging is used to ‘read' the human mind. As the mind becomes transparent in this world a new need for protective self discipline emerges. The Extra Room, is built into the basement of a multi storey building, where it is shared by the building's inhabitants. Utilising effects of sensory deprivation and methods used by the military to break someone down, this room enables subjects to adjust their thinking and beliefs. 

WHAT IF... We had to rent trees to offset our carbon footprint?
by Dot Samsen
http://www.dotmancando.info 

Carbon credit brings the ‘convenience' back to the ‘inconvenient truth'. Global warming has been driven by capitalism. Now we are trying to solve global warming through capitalism. Is this possible? From an ecological perspective, CO2 is a by-product of the living, either directly or indirectly. From the economic perspective, CO2 may become the world's largest commodity market. What do we consider the price of our own by-products? This project aims to criticize the carbon trading system as well as raise awareness of how good we are at destroying the planet.

Both conferences presented an inspiring mixture of research projects that engage with topics that include sustainability, live arts and the technological arts of life, both organic and nonorganic,  Augmentation, Cognition and Nanoscale Interventions.

Super Human was spired by the 150th publication anniversary of The Origin of Species, Darwin’s evolutionary treatise, Super Human: Revolution of the Species turns the spotlight on collaborations between artists and scientists and the impact these investigations have on what it means to be human, now and into the future.

Some of the big question that the speakers addressed were -

• How do scientific and artistic bodies of knowledge intersect with human, social bodies? 
• Does art serve simply as a representational tool for the sciences or is there more to the picture than that?
• Does research into bodies and their systems offer an insight into aesthetic, or is confined to the purely functional? 
• How do the media arts change? 
• Through innovation, accident, discovery, mutation or crisis? 
• How did contemporary media arts come to look and sound like they do? 
• What options and potentialities and eccentricities in the history of media have been lost or overlooked or suppressed? 
• What hopes have been realised and which dashed? 
• What is the history of speculation on alternate histories, and how have they altered the course of media art history? 

As there where to many talks to blog, I will post a few of the works from artists I meet and talked to at the conference. 

Drawing Breath
by George Khut with John Tonkin
www.georgekhut.com 

George's art explores our experience of ourselves as physiologically embodied subjects –  our body as a fundamental aspect of who and how we are in the world –  and as a process through which we  become alive to the world inside and around us (the moves we make, the sounds we hear, the things we look at etc.).

Drawing Breath is the name of a series of breath-responsive works developed with artist and interaction designer John Tonkin. A belt worn around the participant’s chest translates breath-related changes in chest diameter to a computer that transforms these movements into a dense array of trailing 3D particles and breath-like noise textures.

You interact with the work by placing your hands onto a pair of wireless heart-rate sensors. These sensors measure moment-to-moment changes in heart rate that can be influenced by breathing and stress/relaxation responses. These changes in heart-rate interval are translated into colours, patterns and sound textures, that you can eventually learn to influence through a combination of breathing and sustained mental/emotional focus. George is also working on the - 

The Heart Library Project

The Heart Library Project is a traveling interactive art exhibition that invites you to spend some time observing and reflecting on interactions between your heart, nervous system and mental/emotional focus via sounds and visuals that respond to subtle changes in heart rhythm. The project was designed for presentation in health-care settings (i.e. hospitals), but recent exhibitions have also taken place in art galleries and science education centres. 

After your interaction with the biofeedback part of the work, you are invited to share your experience inside this work with other visitors, through the creation of a personalized experience-map and interview. Lines, textures, colours and words applied by the participant to a generic outline of a human body are used to describe aspects of their experience: sensations, memories, images and patterns of intensity. Participants can then describe how this map relates to their experience, by way of a short interview.

The resulting collection of experience-maps and interviews are displayed alongside the biofeedback artwork, transforming the exhibition into a public research studio, where visitors can explore the diversity of our lived experience of the body: the body as a centre for inspiration, strength, healing and delight.

text and images taken from the artists website.

Emotion Pods 
by Leah Heiss
http://www.elasticfield.com

The Emotion Pods are small interactive elements which investigate social behaviours. The devices all utilise electroluminescent cable which is activated by sensors. Some of the units illuminate when cradled in the hand while others slowly illuminate as darkness falls.

The Emotion Pods question how the adoption of new ways of connecting might impact upon our relationships with each other and our technologies.  Also by Leah -

The Diabetes Necklace

 The Diabetes Neckpiece is a wearable applicator device to apply Nanotechnology Victoria’s NanoMAPs to the skin. NanoMAPs are small (10 x 2mm) circular discs which have an array of micro needles on their surface. They allow for pain-free delivery of insulin to the body, replacing syringes. The Diabetes Rings work in conjunction with the Diabetes Neckpiece. The rings are designed to keep the nano engineered insulin patches against the skin once they have been applied. They are designed as discreet housings for therapeutics. Philosophically, they question how we might ‘enable’ our favourite jewellery/artefacts with functionality above and beyond the aesthetic

Micro'be
by Donna Franklin 
http://bioalloy.drobel.com.au

 The fashion that starts with a bottle of wine...

The Micro‘be’ project investigates the practical and cultural biosynthesis of microbiology – to explore forms of futuristic dress-making and textile technologies. Instead of lifeless weaving machines producing the textile, living microbes will ferment a garment. It smells like red wine and feels like sludge when wet, but the cotton-like cellulose dress fits snugly as a second skin. The material is very delicate, comprising micro-fibrils of cellulose. The colouration of the fabric will depend on the wine used, red wine - red fabric, white wine or beer - a translucent material. A fermented garment will not only rupture the meaning of traditional interactions with body and clothing; but will also examine the practicalities and cultural implications of commercialisation. This project redefines the production of woven materials. By combining art and science knowledge and with a little inventiveness, the ultimate goal will be to produce a bacterial fermented seamless garment that forms without a single stitch.

Another living art piece by Donna is  Fibre Reactive. Fungi, a material that has traditionally been used to dye cloth for centuries, is living in symbiosis with a dress. The living garment is encrusted with growing funghi. The project aims to raise questions about the commodification of living entities, the implications of manipulating living organisms and the production of biological art.

I will be blogging in the next couple of months more projects that are pushing the creative boundaries in material design.

The Electric Retina
by Jill Scott
http://www.jillscott.org

I'm facinated by Jill's work. On her blog she regards "the body" as "the society" and both are interfaces with players and interactive communities, who live not only in the evolving zones of physical reality but also in high-tech-spheres. Her works involve the construction of interactive media and electronic sculptures based on studies she has conducted in neuroscience.

The Electric Retina combines retinal research and interactive media art with metaphorical associations about visual perception. The work, a media- sculpture based on the study of photoreceptors and their neural behaviour, enables viewers to gain a greater understanding of how our visual and cognitive reactions are affected by genetics, disease and degeneration.

E-skin
http://www.e-skin.ch

Jill is also work on "E-skin" which is a set of wearable interfaces, which constitute our past and present http://www.e-skin.ch attempts to electronically simulate the perceptive modalities of the human skin: pressure, temperature, vibration and propioception. These four modalities constitute our biggest human organ, constantly detecting and reacting to environmental realities. The interfaces explore the cross-modal potentials of tactile and acoustic feedback, the enhanced orientation of cognitive mapping and the need to embody the interaction in the digital environment.

The Synthetic Kingdom
A Natural History of the Synthetic Future 
by Daisy Ginsbury

http://www.daisyginsberg.com 

BIOELECTRONICS: LUNCHTIMER
Using a synthetic oscillator called a REPRESILLATOR, these living timers are programmed to express the pink protein DsRed2 at lunchtime.

CMYK PLAQUE

Full set extracted from a 34-year-old man with poor dental hygiene. Replacing artificial colours, modified E. coli self-organise into dot-shaped biofilms used in pharmaceuticals and foodstuffs.

POLLUTION-SENSING LUNG TUMOR

Terminal pathology from female smoker, 64 years of age. Analysis identified a novel species of silicon fabricator containing DNA from Japanese carbon monoxide detectors (manufacturer’s DNA tag intact). A double disease: her lungs grew carbon monoxide-sensing crystals in response to the presence of pollutants in her lungs.

How will we classify what is natural or unnatural when life is built from scratch? 

Synthetic Biology is turning to the living kingdoms for its materials library. No more petrochemicals: instead, pick a feature from an existing organism, locate its DNA code and insert it into a biological chassis. From DIY hacked bacteria to entirely artificial, corporate life-forms, engineered life will compute, produce energy, clean up pollution, make self-healing materials, kill pathogens and even do the housework. Manufacturers will transcend biomimicry, engineering bacteria to secrete keratin for sustainable vacuum cleaner casings; synthesise biodegradable gaskets from abalone shell proteins and fill photocopier toner cartridges with photosensitive E. coli.

Meanwhile, we’ll have to add an extra branch to the Tree of Life. The Synthetic Kingdom is part of our new nature.

Biotech promises us control over the natural world, but living machines need controlling. Biology doesn’t respect boundaries or patents. And in simplifying life to its molecular interactions, might we accidentally degrade our sense of self? Are promises of sustainability and unparalleled good health seductive enough to accept such compromise?

In many ways science and art are profoundly similar. The best of each rise up from the depth of human creativity, nurtured by an individuals commitment to and passion for the discipline.  In other ways science and art are profoundly different. Science is viewed as empirical and objective, art and speculative and subjective. It is easy to make the assumption that art and science contradict one another.  Yet in spite of this, artistic and scientific practices have many commonalities, collecting, archiving, observing, speculating, abstracting, modelling, experimentally examine and using analogies and metaphors. 

 The theories and discoveries of modern science will, prove limitless in their potential to inspire human emotion and wonder. So while the artist and scientist approach to  creativity, exploration and research can be seen in different ways and from different perspective, when working together they can open up new ways of seeing, expiring and interpreting the world around us.

This month i will blog a few examples of the many projects  that are created in a scientific context, the lab. Artist who are discarding more traditional materials for those of living cultures or transgenic organisms.

The tissue Culture and Art Project
by oron Catts and Ionat Zurr 

http://www.symbiotica.uwa.edu.au

A prototype of stitch-less jacket grown in a technoscientific Body

By growing Victimless Leather, the Tissue Culture & Art (TC&A) Project is further problematising the concept of garment by making it Semi-Living.

The Victimless Leather is grown out of immortalised cell lines which cultured and form a living layer of tissue supported by a biodegradable polymer matrix in a form of miniature stich-less coat like shape. The Victimless Leather project concerns with growing living tissue into a leather like material.

This artistic grown garment will confront people with the moral implications of wearing parts of dead animals for protective and aesthetic reasons and will further confront notions of relationships with living systems manipulated or otherwise. An actualized possibility of wearing ‘leather' without killing an animal is offered as a starting point for cultural discussion.

Skin and the supple boundaries of self. 
by Peta Clancy. 
http://www.petaclancy.com 

C-type print, from the series "she carries it all like a map on her skin


Peta Clancy holding a bacteria drawing from "Visible Human Bodies"

The series, Visible Human Bodies where developed during the artist's residency with the Cell and Gene Therapy Laboratory at the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute. Visible Human bodies a series of photogrpahs of human figures drawn in Petri dishes using live bacteria. To make the figures Clancy dots pathogenic bacteria into a nutrient agar and incubates the dish for several days to allow the figure to grow. Like the latent photographic image, the figure drawing only becomes visible after a process of development in a suitable environment. Constantly changing as it grows, the bacteria can cause the figure to mutate in unexpected ways. These Visible Human Bodies consequently remind us that even in controlled environments, the body remains vulnerable and volatile - constantly transforming itself within ways which are beyond our control.

Her work also investigates the relationship between skin and the self by focusing on the delicate skin of the eyelids and lips. Notions of the eyes as windows to the soul, or the mouth as a space through which our emotions and thoughts are conveyed, problematically maintain the binary opposition between the body's inside and outside that Clancy seeks to unsettle in her work. To Clancy, her sense of bodily presence is embedded in the skin. As an organ of perception and communication the skin gathers and stores a range of emotional and corporeal sensations. "she carries it all like a map on her skin" address how these sensation inscribe themselves in the skin to form a map of physical and psychological traces on the body. Wether her engagement is with the skin or the microscopic forms that can so profoundly affect our lived experience, her photographs challenge us to consider some of the many ways that our sense of self is continually formed and reformed in a dynamic relation between culture and the body.

It's not easy being green.
by Eduardo Kac. 
http://www.ekac.org/specimen.html

Eduardo Kac engineered this transonic bunny with scientist Louis_Marie Hondebine and Patrick Prunet at the Biology of Development and Biotechnology Unit. Kac implanted and enhanced GFP gene in an albino rabbit, which normally has pink eyes and white fur, under and ultra violet light the rabbit glowed bright green. Unfortunately the research laboratory which censored the rabbit and refused to let Eduardo keep it. The artist then starts a campaign to liberate the rabbit and have it live with him in Chicago. My favourite action is the Alba Flag (2001) which he installed in front of his house to mark her absence.

2000 was a rather trubled year, people in France were still talking about the infected blood scandal , the mad cow disease, people were afraid of a future made of cloning and health uncertainties, digital doomsday, etc.The press jumped on the story but was actually more interested in the conflict between the lab and Eduardo than in the project itself.

Specimen of Secrecy is about Marvelous Discoveries is one of Kac's latest works. For the series, the artist made some "biotopes", living pieces that can be hanged on the walls of a gallery like a painting. Except that the works are living, they change during the exhibition in response to internal metabolism and environmental conditions, their exoskeleton is the frame. They are both subjects and objects. Each of them constitutes a self-sustaining ecology comprised of thousands of very small living beings in a medium of earth, water, and other materials. If you provide them with light and water, their color explode. The rabbit never left the laboratory but the bacteria of Kac's Specimen of Secrecy about Marvelous Discoveries could leave the lab, they are pet bacteria.

Hullabaloo and Oblivion

In NATURE? 

by Marta De Mendezes 
http://www.martademenezes.com/

Marta De Mendezes creates live butterflies with wing patterns never seen before in nature. The artist achieved this by interfering with the normal developmental mechanisms of the butterflies. The butterflies are simultaneously natural (their wings are made of normal live cells, without artificial pigments or scars) but designed by an artist. This work was performed during a residency in Paul Brakefield’s laboratory at the University of Leiden, in The Netherlands. The work was exhibited for the first time in Ars Electronica 2000, Linz, Austria.

http://www.thisisnotart.org/
http://www.electrofringe.net
http://criticalanimals.org/
http://soundsummit.com.au/
http://www.youngwritersfestival.org

I’m trembling with excitement, that warm fuzzy feeling at my first downunder festival! No wellies needed! Its going to be sunshine on the coast in Newcastle. Ok not the prettiest of shore-lines but it’s a beach and a supercharged convergence of writers, performers, thinkers, independent and industry musicians, creative researchers, electronic artists, dilettantes, and DIY culture makers in a showcase featuring over 400 local, national and international artists.

It has exhibitions, screenings, performances, panels, workshops, talks, gigs, interventions, live art and special events in five days of creativity and absolute madness! See you there.

These images transcend a time or place, yet they tell a story that seems magical, they appear strange, wondrous and weird. They lay for careful analysis, the contrast and manipulation of reality, show in an extraordinary way - where anything is possible, yet they also seem to warn us of something, a post–apocalyptic moment. Concepts from our own world in new ways.

So while I’m trying to bridge my own concepts for a potential PhD subject, I can honestly say, I’m struggling with the weight of possibilities. I’ll take some respite from the suffering with these beautiful images. Supposedly narrowing the many themes that interest me is the hardest part of the PhD. So as I gather my own fuzzy logic, moving further to the edge of chaos in hope that some novel idea may present itself or at least an emergence of self-organised thoughts I’ll take inspiration from these images.

 my thoughts so far....

 I am drawn to Mythology for the role it has played in the development of society and culture. Not simply childish stories or mere pre-scientific explanations of the world but serious insights into reality. They exist in all society, they are the fabric of human life, expressing beliefs, moulding behaviour and justifying institutions, customs and values. These stories transcend over time including both the imaginary and the real, fanciful truths and embellished truths.

 I’m interested in what cultural transformation are happening and being affected by technology, what relationship myths have with technology in shaping our personal, social and environmental relationships. How we now encounter the myth and how we continue to be influenced by them. What qualities of the past had displayed and what of the present ought to emulated?

 Jung, held the view that contemporary western society had somehow become divorced from its mythological, some may say spiritual roots. I’m interested in how we may have failed to hold onto these meaningful symbols. Jung felt their currency has been debased and replaced with the poverty of symbolic expression. Have we lost our ability to appreciate myth, with modernity’s obsession with repetition, speed, and anonymity?

 Operating in the realm of emotion, what is missing? Technology is changing our notions of self and body, of individual and community, some say technology is leading us astray from the reality of our own existence, from the limitations of time, distance and space, constraints of our own body.

 So what is this missing? The emotion is something akin to longing, but implies a previous connectedness to the thing missed.  What symbols, totems, exotic otherness, spirituality, dream elements convey universal truths about one’s personal self-discovery and self-transcendence, one’s role in society, and the relationship between the two? As the artist can my work evoke the recognition within the spectator? The spectator recognises that which is missing.

 It is an interest in storytelling and fantasy which is important, as seen in my past work in which fictional characters are created and elaborate situations are made in which the individual strives for a self, which is better. This works hints on are we more glorious, inadequate, imperfect or better figures of human once we acknowledge our imperfections and shadow selves.I want to continue working with the human complexities, our vanities, our loves, our worries, and our doubts. Creating installations and multi-part works that trigger archetypal fears, working with the 9 personality states and what underlines and illustrates the absurdity of human condition and unease of the individual.

With my new work I’m continuing with the same themes of storytelling, loss of…missing, shifting nature of the ego, transformation. What will be new to this work is how I decide to include the re-entrance of the myth. My current research is delving into how the myth has lost its integrity and fragmented, but by breaking it up into a number of parts, can they be recomposed as new entities.  What comparisons can I make between enchantment, disenchantment from our own culture of emotions and that of the realm of myth making. How can I interweave the old and the new, enquiring into the possibility of re-working a narrative, of reconsidered meaning?

When old myths are lost, new ones are needed. Myths flourish and fade and die, but new myths are born, old ones are resurrected, and hybrid forms combining new and old emerge when times change or cultures mingle.

 Recently I have been working with textiles and wearable computing. The fabrication of these garments - objects uses conductive ink and threads. What makes this interesting is, the tradition of electronics design and manufacturing is to produce hard components encased in boxes. The tradition of textiles is to produce soft structures that encase the human body. I believe by merging the two, we can create soft circuits and develop new methods for electronics design this is often called “soft computation”

I have also been exploring colour-changing inks that are screen printed in tradition methods. The colour of the painted surface changes when the thermo chromic ink reaches a threshold temperature, becoming transparent and revealing the colour of the underlying surface. The inks turn colourless at 40 degrees C. I have been experimenting with several techniques that generate heat through the resistance of printed copper wires that are 5 microns thick and about 100 microns wide. The wires are integrated into a fabric that sits behind the colour change layer. Depending on the current sent through the wires and how long they have been programmed to stay on, the fabric takes anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes to heat up, and 10-20 seconds to cool down again, creating poetic changes of colour on the fabric.

Mystery and magic comes to my mind when constructing these objects, hiding all the hard wires and processors in embellished compartments or hidden behind fabric. I love the word magic; it’s not just limited to the tricks performed at children’s parties. Even if science could explain everything, there would still be a place for magic; it can refer to anything that resists explanations, from cognitive illusions to high tech wizardry.  I see a kind of magic in technology, while so many users have no idea of the actual workings of the technology they use. Magic can comprise of inventions that baffle us until we understand them.

As albert Einstein suggests that “ the most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious”.  I would like my work to explore the intersection of magic and technology while delight in the mystery.

Fabrics cantilevered out from the walls or ceilings, seeming weightless, incorporating stitching, weaving, binding entangling the boundaries between object making, sculpture, craft and technology. I would like my work to unsettle our understanding of fabric and technology, so as I search for a strategy and language relevant to this age, I will also return to “ traditional” values and techniques not because I’m sentimental and mourn the death of the old, but instead to celebrate the birth of a new aesthetic experience.

Edible estates
by Fritz Haeg
www.fritzhaeg.com

With one small gesture, architect/artist/salon-owner/school-master Fritz Haeg made a great disruption to the "toxic uniformity" of suburbia. By convincing a suburban family in Salina, Kansas to tear up their manicured lawn and replace it with an edible garden, Fritz transformed a standard and consumptive lawn into something idiosyncratic and productive. Edible Estates questions assumptions of beauty in the American lawn, as well as the responsibility of private-space, standards which really haven't really shifted since their first inception in the 1950's suburban developments of Lakewood and Levittown. Edible Estates is one of a host of projects under gardenLAb, Fritz's answer to "the self-reflexive culture of art and design, where formal novelty, hermetic discourse and the latest software dominate." GardenLAb intiates projects that test and reflect on our relationships, communities and environments, provoking discussion, exchange and new forms of expression. Fritz found a home for these communities and intiatives when he moved into his geodesic home on a Los Angeles hill. In this imaginative space, he opened the Sundown Schoolhouse, devoted to "gently radical design" across a range of disciplines.

Guerrilla gardening
www.guerrillagardening.org

Guerrilla Gardening is a group of London activists who are staging a war against neglected public spaces, under the blanket of night time they transform areas of neglect into beautiful places by planting flowers and vegetables. Having lived in hackney east London for a few years I have personally come across some of the areas that they have targeted, I salute the spirit of Guerrilla Gardening and think more models of “collective” action like this are needed to encourage community feeling.

The pictures are taken on streedman street London SE1 on the 6th March, courtesy of the Guerrilla Gardening website.

Emotional Cartographies
by Christain Nold
www.emotionalcartogography.net

Artist Christian Nold is using bio-mapping devices that are a “Galvanic Skin Response sensor”. The biosensors, which is based on a lie detector, measures changes in the sweat level of the wearers fingers. The assumption is that these changes are an indication of emotional intensity. The GPS part of the device allows Christian to record the geographical location of the wearer and pinpoint where that person is when these emotional changes occur. This data can then be visualised in geographical mapping software such as Goggle earth. The result is that the wearer’s journey becomes viewable as a visual track on a map, whose height indicates the level of physiological arousal at that particular moment, mapping peaks and troughs. The final printed map includes the emotion data as well as images of the places visited by people on their walks, annotations with descriptions of their experiences.

What I find interesting with this project is how the mapping both becomes social and personal as participants emotional states can be mapped into communal averages and patterns. Creating a collective narrative of the local area. The project is being commissioned as an alternative public consultation project by local government in collaboration with urban developers. By getting people involved in what’s going on locally in a new refreshing way, as often people don’t like to go to council meetings, it is a way of breaking down barriers and giving people a voice. Urban planners/local governments are able to see how in/effective certain public places are. Our worries at poor lighting at night, frustration with traffic, pleasure at wide-open spaces etc. How each of us ‘feels’ about each other and our environment is the foundation stone upon which any democratic decision-making has to be based.

As Christian explains “ To do this, we first have to enable people to focus more strongly on their own experiences, reflect and question them and then articulate them, share them through a political process where their personal experiences are valued and not disregarded. The challenge that this map presents to all local stakeholders is how to use this document productively and include it within the process of politics. It is this complexity and difficulty of how to situate the content of this map that should also give it a value and meaning for a wider audience who are interested in new ways to represent local and intra-local issues or ways to investigate the local public spheres.”


Although the emotion map attempts to map human perception and experience, it does loom heavily over the idea of being able to see what people thing and feel. Taken into the wrong context/hands, equally this technology could exploit people; it could be used as a clever marketing ploy to help companies decide which areas are emotionally productive. Christian’s intentions for the project supports community and social responsibility, it does not hold a particular agenda. It does not filter the collected information in order to persuade people to implement or build something

In reflection, It’s inevitable that we are going to see and use technology that monitors our biometric data in future products and service How and why we want to use this tool for self-awareness is up for debate.

Finally…

I have been taking an interest in money saving “credit crunch alternatives” for a while, It seems the press has final taken wind of “the grow your own” trend as I read in the times that Gordan Brown being urged to plant a vegetable patch at 10 Downing St. I love the idea of string of beans growing up the iron railings of no 10. The National Trust is seeking to persuade every household, office and company to grow its own vegetables in a campaign that will create 1,000 allotments on its own land.
View the article here

Anyone interested in applying for a National Trust allotment or to work on a community one can register at www.landshare.net

The exhibition’s aim was to get people thinking about death, often a taboo subject in society but how can new technologies help us to create new ways of grieving and mourning.

The exhibition introduces some interesting questions.

What happens to your online profile after you die? Do you want it to remain online, so friends can leave a message in your memory? Or do you prefer having it deleted, so no confusion can arise about your death?

Running alongside the event was a workshop“ a coffin for your beloved” family members worked together with a contemporary artist to create a personal coffin for their beloved.

I enjoyed the photo series
The Travelers by Elizabeth Heyert.
www.elizabethheyert.com

Over the course of one year (2003-2004) Elizabeth Heyert photographed the deceased members of a Baptist community in Harlem. Heyert took her photos at the funeral parlour of Isaiah Owens, one of the few places where the old tradition of festively dressing up the dead lives on. Isaiah Owens shared the stories of these people with Elizabeth. In this way Elizabeth learned about their lives, and it helped her to convey the humanity of her subjects in the photos.

photo from artists website

Simultaneously with the opening of the Ik R.I.P. exhibition, Mediamatic Lab launched a new website:

www.ikrip.nl

On this website you have the chance to decide how you want your profile to look after you die. Do you want someone to make changes to your profile for you? Would you like to send a message to your friends on the internet? Can they leave condolence messages for you?

This reminded me of a project

Digital remains
by Michele Gauler.
www.michelegauler.net

Digital Remains is concerned with the role data plays when we remember deceased people. It assumes a world in which our data is stored on the network creating digital archives of generations of people.

Personal access keys are used to remotely log on to the digital remains of a person and receive their data on our own digital devices. Based on data tags and meta data, search algorithms dig through a deceased person’s data, presenting us with content that is most likely relevant to us. For instance, a photograph from a holiday we spent with the person 10 years ago or the person’s favourite piece of music, which they typically listened to while writing e-mails.

photo from artists website

Good Friday party

I attended the good Friday party the last night of Ik R.I.P where were guided towards the white light, before our ascent into the afterlife we had our fortunes told, my earthly time wasn’t to end just yet…to many technology projects to create….although I enjoyed my angelic moment it was a quick decent back to the bar for deadly tunes and high-speed coffin making and decorating. The night turned into a crafty party and by the end of the night the floor was covered in coffins and enthusiastic coffin decorators. Although we were busily drawing away I was wondering who was going to use them. In the spirit of the exhibition someone suggested we make a procession to the local park to create a make shift graveyard. Playing with coffins was a lot of fun.

After my decent from the light and return from grave making it was time for some serious lectures from the guys at Steim

Steim
www.steim.org

A good friend of mine is working with biosensors, so I have recently become very engaged into the field of body data and emotional state monitoring.

I attended a talk by Ben Knapp & Nick Gillian on Controlling Music and Sound Using the Recognition of Physical Gestures and Emotional State and Adinda van 't Klooster on emotional lights

Ben and Nicks talk explored the broad area of using kinematic (motion) and physiological sensors (motion and emotion) for interacting with sound. They then went on to discuss the details of the measurement and recognition of these signals and the patterns within.
1) Understanding Gestures and Emotion
2) Simple Pattern Recognition Techniques
3) The SARC Eyesweb Toolkit

Fascinating ideas, especially as it’s really the first time I have been able to see how the software Eyesweb is used for recodering the biometrics.
photos from Steim website

Next on the agenda was

Adinda van 't Klooster is a UK based artist who has worked with a wide range of media such as video and sound installation, animation, sculpture, and computer-generated performance. She presented the The Emotion Light project that is a light emitting sculpture, with sensors embedded in its handlebars. The holder’s heart rate and GSR (galvanic skin response) will be tracked live and analysed by bespoke software to create changing light patterns that respond closely to the users feelings.

Watch the lectures here.


Platform 21
www.platform21.nl

I have been interested in the work of Platform 21 as I’m curious about the future and this is how Platform 21 describes them. So when I meet some of the crew at a dinner party I knew they now deserved a bog space.

Helping us all to beat the credit crunch blues Platform 21 show us some great ideas for repairing, hacking and re-assembling everyday object we may have around the house.

I’m putting their repair manifesto into action….
I particularly like their re-working of Ikea products, disgruntled that Ikea sell everything, for parents, for kids – they’ve thought of everything, simply everything. From knobs for your kitchen door to cheap ice cream after you’ve finished shopping, there's nothing that has escaped the minds of our Swedish interior overlords. But... where's the sex? Anything even hinting in that direction is totally absent in IKEA. Time for a change: let’s hear it for the IKEA LOVE TOY!

Ikea sex toy. Designer: Mark Hoekstra

GYNEA by Sander van Bussel - Photography Leo Veger
photos from platform 21 website

There are a lot of other qualities which lead to that success, but they would be worthless without the Fool's willingness to trust and be open to that journey.

Sometimes you have risk, to go against everything society says is 'sensible' or 'wise', to act rightly. In some things, you must trust your inner voice, not those of the many people in your surroundings and society willing to tell you 'the smart thing to do'.

The Fool is about those positive forces within us which influence us in our choices - trust, belief in the ultimate goodness of creation, ideals - the 'hope of a bright tomorrow.' But above all, this card tries to assure us that there is a point to such an endeavor, that life has a point, that trust has a point.

And yes, if you look at the evil in the world, at the loss of young lives, at the failure of principle, believing in some rightness of existence, some point in hoping and trusting, can look pretty futile, pretty pointless, pretty ...foolish.

A paraphrase of an old Zen teaching story, but the closest I can recall;

A monk was out walking in ancient Japan. He encounters a wild cat, and as he is fleeing, he slips over a cliff, but manages to grab hold of a gnarled root at the edge of the cliff. He looks down, and sees sharp broken rocks below. He looks up and sees the wild cat, snarling at him. As he looks around, he also sees beside him a bush with a single bright, succulent berry on it. He looks up, then down again. He plucks the berry, and pops it in his mouth.

How sweet it tastes!

That's the Fool.

The wise Fool. ( Or so one old fool thinks.)

I have been fascinated by the realm of sleep for many years and often attend courses at the Academy of Dreams on Shamanic, lucid, Tibetan and Jungian dreaming. So when I came across the artist Luke Jerrams installation and talk at the Ica investigating the hidden realm of dreaming I thought it would be an interesting project to blog.

I share an interest with Luke in where do people go when they dream, what do they see and what do they experience. What is most interesting about Lukes project is how can the shape of dreams be influenced as the dreamer is sleeping. The dream director explores the boundaries of participants conscious and subconscious minds, prompting questions about the ethics of and possibilities for, creating art in dream space.

The dream director invites people to sleep overnight in a gallery. Specially designed “pods” house the dreamers who don eye-masks that detect rapid eye movement, indicating the dreaming stage of sleep. When the dreamers reach their dream state, their eye masks trigger ambient sounds via a computer, which are played into small speakers mounted into the pod, in an attempt to affect the nature and content of their dreams.