cicular, linear

Adriano Marinazzo

"In the Beginning 04" 16" x 24". Digital Photo, Chromogenic Print. Image courtesy of the artist.

This series has been created during the recent pandemic. The current restrictions brought me to work in peripheral areas where human encounters are rarer. But even in these places of social exclusion, anthropization (and consequent visual contamination) affects our environmental perception. In these high-resolution negative photographs, we see how electric street wires interact/interfere with our perception of the sky. We can understand how nature, like human beings, is easily vulnerable to contamination, especially in these challenging times.
 

"In the Beginning 02" 16" x 24". Digital Photo, Chromogenic Print. Image courtesy of the artist.

Adriano Marinazzo is an artist, architect, and art historian. His projects are interdisciplinary works that include digital experimentation, spirituality, music, and academic research. Adriano taught digital architecture at the University of Florence. In 2012 he moved to the U.S. to work at the College of William & Mary, where he is the Curator of Digital Initiatives at the Muscarelle Museum of Art. In 2014, Rem Koolhaas invited Marinazzo to participate in the XIV International Exhibition of Architecture of the Venice Biennale.

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Francois-Joseph Lapointe

"Microbiome Selfies - 350th handshake" Digital image. Data visualization of the bacterial communities sampled on my right hand during the 1000 Handshakes performance. These images depict gene similarity networks among various families of bacteria. Two bacteria are connected in the network when their gene sequences are more similar than a fixed threshold. The different clusters thus identify distinct bacterial families. Image courtesy of the artist.

My entire practice revolves around microbes and the dynamics of contamination. By engaging in a variety of experimental projects, I collect microbiome data to track changes in my bacterial identity. The "1000 Handshakes" is an artistic performance as well as a scientific experiment. For this project, I shook hands with as many people as possible in various cities, gradually changing the invisible microbial community in the palm of my hand. Periodically, assistants have taken a microbiome sample of my skin and the DNA collected has been sequenced and analyzed to generate Microbiome Selfies. These digital images depict the changing microbial landscape of my right hand as the numbers of handshakes increase over time. Two bacteria are connected in the network when their genetic sequences are more similar than a fixed threshold, with different clusters corresponding to distinct bacterial families. This work deals with the fuzzy boundary separating us from the microbial world to reveal our complex relationships with viruses, bacteria and other forms of microscopic organisms. Through physical engagement and audience participation, my practice raises awareness about contagion at the social, individual and microbial levels, thus exhibiting how our interactions with others shape the microbes between us, and how it changes over time to reveal who we are.
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"Microbiome Selfies - 1001th handshake" Digital image. Data visualization of the bacterial communities sampled on my right hand during the 1000 Handshakes performance. These images depict gene similarity networks among various families of bacteria. Two bacteria are connected in the network when their gene sequences are more similar than a fixed threshold. The different clusters thus identify distinct bacterial families. Image courtesy of the artist.

Francois-Joseph Lapointe is an artscientist from Montréal (Canada) with a PhD in evolutionary biology (1992) and a PhD in dance and performance studies (2012). As a scientist, he has published over 120 papers ranging from molecular systematics and population genetics to metagenomics. As an artist, he applies biotechnology as a means of creation, and he has created the field of choreogenetics. His most recent project is to sequence his microbiome to generate metagenomic self-portraits (microbiome selfies). His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation (U.S.), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the Fonds de recherche du Québec – nature et technologies (FRQNT) and Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et Culture (FRQSC). His artworks have been exhibited at Musée de la civilisation (Québec), Transmediale (Berlin), SciArt Center (New York), Ars Electronica (Linz), Medical Museion (Copenhagen), Science Gallery (London), and Centre Pompidou (Paris), among other places. 

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Heather Parrish, Elizabeth Hénaff, & Léonard Roussel

"How can we imagine partnerships with unusual organisms for collaborative survival on our changing planet?" The environment of the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, NY, is emblematic of the many post-industrial Superfund sites across the country. These sites were once important spaces for production and manufacturing industries that have since changed locations, leaving behind a material, economic, and social legacy of toxicity. However, the sediment of the Gowanus Canal contains communities of microorganisms adapted to these seemingly uninhabitable industrial conditions. This unique microbiome encodes bioremediation functions such as the degradation of hydrocarbons and industrial solvents, revealing a vibrant ecosystem in conditions previously considered devoid of life as a result of human activity. This perception of existence or lack of life is only bound to the limits of human perception, and this singular example highlights the tenuous interactions that happen between species whose cultures operate at different space and time scales. Here we explore the multiple facets of this complex relationship we have with contaminated waterways and the other species involved: its impact on the environment and, on human health and well-being, but also the sense of place, the politics of pollution and gentrification.
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"Scope" 48" x 48" (16" x 16" each) Cyanotype with translucent screenprint on paper. Cyanotype images are of microbes found in the Gowanus canal. They are overlaid with translucent but shiny images of the human scale Gowanus habitat, visible when viewed at an angle. Image courtesy of the artists.

Our collective is defined by the aim to highlight and question the relative concepts of contamination, collaboration, culture, and exploitation, and how this relativity manifests itself in the context of complex assemblages of nature, culture, and more-than-human agents. Learn more about Parrish's work here, Henaff's work here, and Roussel's work here.

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Laura Splan

"Precarious Structures 5" 18" x 18". Print on paper. Image courtesy of the artist.

My conceptually-based work mines the materiality of science to reveal poetic subjectivities and hidden systems. My mixed media projects destabilize notions of the presence and absence of bodies evoking the mutability of categories that delineate their status. My work compels an intimate engagement with detail calling into question how things are made and what they are made of. I reconsider perceptions and representations of the biological world with a range of traditional and new media techniques and I often combine the quotidian with the unfamiliar to interrogate cultural constructions of self and other. All of my work considers material, technology, and process as integral to interpretation and as catalyst for sensory engagement.
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"Renatured" is a series of prints created with 3D models of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. Using a combination of specialized molecular visualization software and conventional digital imaging tools, I create kaleidoscopic arrangements with coronavirus structures. My work often playfully interrogates the layers of abstraction built into the interfaces of the technologies we use to engage with and manipulate the natural world. My experimental use (and sometimes misuse) of industry tools is part of a continued exploration of interconnected systems as they are affected by both human and natural forces at macro and micro scales. The prints are part of a project done in remote collaboration with Philadelphia biotech company Integral Molecular while sheltering in place during the coronavirus pandemic. Additional project support was provided by The uCity Science Center Bioart Residency, and The Dolfinger-McMahon Foundation.
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"Precarious Structures 2" 18" x 18". Print on paper. Image courtesy of the artist.

​Laura Splan is a Brooklyn-based artist whose work intersects science, technology, and culture. Her biomedical-themed artworks have been commissioned by The Centers for Disease Control Foundation and exhibited at the Museum of Arts & Design and Beall Center for Art + Technology. Splan’s work is represented in the collections of the Thoma Art Foundation, The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and the NYU Langone Art Collection. Reviews and articles including her work have appeared in the New York Times, Discover Magazine, and Frieze. She has received research funding from The Jerome Foundation and her residencies have been supported by The Institute for Electronic Arts and The Pollock-Krasner Foundation. She has been a visiting lecturer at Stanford University teaching interdisciplinary courses including “Art & Biology.” She is currently a Creative Science member at NEW INC, the New Museum’s cultural incubator, and in-residence at BioBAT Art Space at the Brooklyn Army Terminal.

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Jennifer Willet

​"Baroque Biology (Paper Theatre)" presents a series of imaginary biotechnological vignettes where I reimagine biotech processes as feminine, gaudy, beautiful, disgusting, and fantastical in direct contradiction to the norms of contemporary science communication.

"Baroque Biology (Paper Theatre)" is a series of 20 print allegories. Each one shows GMO bacteria growing in Luria Broth Agar Petri dishes illustrating imaginary biological vignettes where non-human organisms teach humans complex biotechnological processes. Reminiscent of artist William Hogarth’s serial engravings combined with fairy tales from a biotech future, each allegory focuses on bacteria and other non-human organisms who try to communicate with humans in a helpful manner about the biological processes they employ for survival, for reproduction, and/or aesthetic pleasure. In “Baroque Biology,” contamination could also be understood as collaboration. Sometimes the human characters are open to receiving the communicated information, and sometimes they are hostile, or ignorant to the messages they are receiving across species.

Each vignette is staged within the context of a paper theatre collage. Petri dishes growing GMO bacteria also contain paper cut outs, gold leaf, and 3D sculptural agar forms. After the bacteria has time to interact and contaminate the collage components in the artist’s laboratory, the resulting microbial performances are documented with photography.
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"Baroque Biology (Paper Theatre)" 20" x 24" each. Project assistants. Jude Abu Zaineh, Lisha Laing, Philip Habashy, Aleeza Tariq, and Gillian Hughes. Photo credit Justin Elliott.

​Dr. Jennifer Willet is a Canada Research Chair in Art, Science, and Ecology and an Associate Professor in the School of Creative Arts at the University of Windsor (Canada.) Willet is an internationally successful artist and curator in the emerging field of bioart. Her work explores notions of representation and body in relation to evolving biotechnologies with an emphasis on ecological metaphors.  She taught in the Studio Arts Department at Concordia University in Montreal Canada from 2000-2007, and completed her PhD in the Interdisciplinary Humanities Program at the same institution.  Willet also taught "Bioart: Contemporary Art and the Life Sciences" for The Art and Genomics Centre at The University of Leiden in The Netherlands in 2008.  In 2009 she opened the first bioart lab in Canada called INCUBATOR: Hybrid Laboratory at the Intersection of Art, Science, and Ecology.

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Ansel Oommen

In toxicology, the orange/red and black color combo is a successful form of aposematism (think monarch butterflies, poison dart frogs, ladybugs) that serves as a visual warning to predators. Indeed, the biohazard label, a ubiquitous and functional item in any clinical laboratory, advertises caution and safe practice. In these pieces, the function and color of the biohazard labels were cut and reconstructed into collages to redirect danger and disorientation during an equally threatening and unsteady time, forcing viewers to stop and digest their own sense of safety. Grief and trauma are metabolized into meaning-making. How do public health, mental health, and ecology overlap? Through the use of a light box, these collages highlight the complex intricacies of life in crisis. 
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"Infection Control" 9" x 12". Collage on paper. Image courtesy of the artist.

Ansel Oommen is a medical technologist, urban naturalist, and horticultural therapist-in-training who resides in New York City. His creative work is an interdisciplinary cross-pollination of his various academic, occupational, and personal experiences. ​

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