art science collabo–what is there to it?
getting to the end of my time at SymbioticA and wanted to share probably my favorite art-science collaboration + collaborators, Silent Barrage.
SILENT BARRAGE
“An analogy for shaping Art-Science Collaboration”
Figure 1 Photograph of Hitler in front of the Eiffel Tower, 1940
The word collaboration is derived from the Latin word ‘collabarare’ meaning to work with. During the Second World War, etymologists show how the word ‘collaborate’ acquired a dark tone when it was used to describe French cooperation with the Nazi regime in the town of Vichy, implying a form of treachery through working with the enemy.[1] In this sense, collaboration has been used to describe situations where unlikely, external or even opposing parties work together. In this paper I shall use the acclaimed art and science piece, Silent Barrage, as a tool for describing and constructing art-science collaboration. I focus on one main theme, the relationship between the artist and scientist, as a way of self-referencing ideas embedded in this piece by its collaborators and in doing so develops a system, laden with values and processes for art-science collaboration. In this process of development, the piece itself Silent Barrage attains its own form of agency and commentary on art-science collaboration depicted in the sub-theme of space, distance, and scale that may compliment and construct beyond those of its producers/consumers.
The function of analogy here is twofold, providing both navigation and bridging between two discursive realms. In ‘Babies in Bottles and Tissue-Culture Kings”, Susan Squier’s exploration of the use of analogy in the development of reproductive technology shows us how the ability to visualize and understand an idea’s counterpart in another culture is a tool for participating in both. For example, in her analysis of the literary text ‘Tissue Culture King’, the main character Hascombe identifies African tribal religion as analogous to Western scientific practice and uses it as a means to apply and represent Western medical techniques to new subjects. Indeed while this story has its own set of complex and ethical dilemmas in its choice of analogy between ‘minister-population’ and ‘animal-human’, its relevance to this essay beyond description and construction lies in its identification of analogy’s limitations and dangers. She identifies the didactic nature of analogy as a way of obscuring important differences between cultures and conversely draws each party into a fragile position of control and manipulation to serve each other’s needs. These differences and positions are discussed in the first and most important theme of this essay which considers the relationship between artists and scientists.
Lastly, the use of analogy in each of the themes pays attention to what the author terms as the ‘domaining effect’, which are subtle shifts that take place in ideas when they move from one cultural or social context to another. Whereas the “Tissue Culture King” asks questions of how analogies between human and animal reproduction shift when they travel between the realm of fiction and the realm of ‘construction of scientific facts’, we are faced with a different set of spaces in Silent Barrage. How does the analogy between Silent Barrage’s loop and art-science collaboration shift as this interacts with academia, the public or within circles of artists and scientists?[2] If artists and scientists through their collaborations develop new language and methodologies for creating their work, which are then employed by each of their cultures, can these exist in symbiosis with existing languages and methodologies? If not, what specific methodologies in their former cultures are in a sense displaced?
I. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF SILENT BARRAGE
The 2009 Ars Electronica exhibition of Silent Barrage in Linz, Austria consists of thirty-two white cylindrical poles positioned in a grid pattern. Supported by a four-legged base, a sleek white cylinder rises to the ceiling above the heads of the audience. An octagonal-like disc caps the customized metallic plate and wired body of a robot, which zooms up and down the pole repeatedly, stopping only at precise points to draw a line around the cylinder’s circumference. A singular pole represents a position of an electrode in a culture of nerve cells sitting in a petri dish, thousand of miles away in Steve Potter’s Lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The movement of the audience in the exhibition space is photographed and mapped using remote sensing technology and this camera determines the electrical stimuli patterns that are then sent on the Internet to the nerve cells in Atlanta.[3] As the electrical stimulations in a region of the Petri dish reach a threshold, the nerve cells respond thereby by generating stimuli causing the robotic arm to move up and down and to draw. The cycle of stimulation, transmission and production forms an interactive loop driven by multiple, unpredictable responses.
II. RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ARTISTS AND SCIENTISTS
The rich history and plasticity of the core group of individuals who have contributed to and directed the project’s ideas is subtly and creatively self-referenced in the landscapes of Silent Barrage. It is important to understand that Silent Barrage itself is not the result of a one-off ‘meaningful-connection’ but rather a maturation of several manifestations of a core idea over time. Therefore as the most recent piece from this collaborative team, which has shrunk and expanded since 2001, the aesthetic and technology bears upon it an accumulated record of different models of art and science collaborations, of which only a small percentage is discussed here.
The booting-up phase of the robot in Silent Barrage, wherein the team simulates a ‘learning phase’ for the robotic arm through a process of measuring and positioning its movements, can be likened to the initial stages of the art- science collaboration in 2001 when a group of artists and two scientists came together in a project named ‘Fish and Chips’. In this project, the idea of ‘moistmedia’[4] representing a symbiosis between dry pixels and wet biomolecules, was articulated by the SymbioticA Research Group. Using the nerve cells of a fish and silicon wafer technology, a robotic arm mapped electrophysiological stimuli as a 2D dimensional drawing. This initial art and science collaboration was for the artists an encounter and familiarization with technological tools. The core ideas expressed in 2001 ‘Fish and Chips’ showcase in Perth’s Biofield exhibition such as geographical isolation and the robot personna of Meart still persist in Silent Barrage, however while the younger robot is concerned embodying the idea of the ‘portrait’, the older Meart focuses on the idea of the closed loop manifested on an architectural and microscale. Furthermore what differentiates the nature of the collaboration after ‘Fish and Chips’ is the idea of studying and defining the robot’s parameters in order to make it function with accuracy and speed. Underlying this incorporation of a ‘scientific method’ was a desire to provide for the needs of the scientist in the project. For Steve Potter, the neurobiologist who becomes a core collaborator with the SymbioticA research group, the idea of Meart provided a unique platform for moving beyond ‘instructing’ nerve cells and alleviating control to the neurons—in effect allowing them to sustain processing data on their own. His phD students, Douglas Bakkum and Riley Zeller Townson at different times, become essential catalysts in developing the software, code source and validation which are the bedrock of their scientific thesis and development of the artwork.
Figure 5 Drawings by Meart based on variations of pen placement, feedback mechanism and population vector
Recording, analyzing and programming codes, quite simply became of way of learning Meart’s way of processing data and communicating this understanding through art, which in turn informed programming. What they learn from this continuous experimentation forms a kind of memory, defining the character of the robot. In this process, artists learn about data analysis while scientists learn about the artistic process, the value of which lies in its ability to communicate and perceive from different vantage points. For the artists and scientists involved their sustained contact in the project is also a process of familiarizing themselves with each other’s habits, languages and interests, which compliment and define the project in important ways. In an interview Guy Ben-Ary, who forms the SymbioticA research group core, two illustrative examples of how these are aesthetically manifested in Silent Barrage is Riley Zeller Townson’s background interests in power-grid which is sustained by artificial neural networks and Phil Gamblen hands-on work ethic which resulted in the motor experiments conducted during an residency in Steve Potter’s lab, directly influencing the up-and-down movements of the robotic arm.
In the neurological landscape of Silent Barrage, the processes of afference and efference serve as appropriate metaphors for the art-science collaborative process. Afference, a process in which neurons carry stimulus from the receptors or sense organs to the central nervous system (CNS) is often seen as the opposite of efference, where impulses are transmitted from the central nervous system to effectors, where reactions happen.[5] Whereas both are defined as distince in some scientific literatures, Silent Barrage constructs these processes as singular. The simultaneous action of afference and efference allow Meart to function normally. These pathways severed are much like the stress caused when these two states of mind are deemed as separate functions and assume the characteristics of hypermetopia and myopia.[6]
If we choose to see the components of the loop as an internal component, we envision that the audience and collaborators as outsiders who are sharing or witnessing the Meart’s internal process of interpretation and transmission. The idea of the audience as a source of stimulation, which constructs knowledge through participation and not by distanced observation is critical.
On various levels Silent Barrage offers a problematic dilemma between who produces, transmits and consumes in this art-science collaboration. The ideas of the audience as a consumer is no longer sufficient, as they are produce stimuli that feed into the loop inefficient in a system of constantly reproducing data. They are drawn into a space for discussion and reflection on ongoing research in neuroscience and art, in this sense it has amplified art as a communicative tool. In effect it shifts the politics of the scientific research, allowing agency to non-scientific practitioners in a transparent and open process. The idea of the artist or scientist as the producer of the artwork is also blurred and their role as productive agents in the response-driven loop is brought to question. Within this critical geography, the agency of Meart as a semi-living entity is advocated for in the next three brief themes.
Lastly, what does this analogy reveal about the domaining effect that happens in the discursive fields of art and science? In many senses the description of this work as ‘one of the few art and science collaborations that is both artistically meaningful and scientifically valid’ alludes to a value system by each party.[7] First it is essential to explain what characterizes art and science in terms of methods of acquiring knowledge, culture and philosophy. Science is defined by the scientific method, a process of forming a hypothesis, experimentation, rational and subjective analysis which affirms, develops or disproves the initial hypothesis. Logical argument and rational expression are paramount in its discourse, even to the extent of identifying rules and conditions which govern the nature of the hallowed term ‘creativity’.[8] The artistic process is plural and fluid, devoid of a set of steps or system that will generate an artistic product. However on a cultural and philosophical level, art and science methods begin to distinguish themselves in terms of how they appropriate such forms of knowledge. For the scientist, the scientific method is a means to proving that there is an implicit reality out there waiting to be discovered, independent of the observer’s mental state or cultural situation. Art on the other hand is an articulation of the complexities of human experience—limited yet unique perceptions and varied interpretations—from the chosen vantage point of the individual.[9] In terms of defining creativity, in the arts an individual may be deemed creative based on how the he/she translates an emotion or adjective into a physical form. In the sciences, creativity mostly infers a particular approach to solving a problem. While the field of cognitive science itself differentiates creativity across the arts and sciences, Silent Barrage comments on creativity as a singular act between artists and scientists based on a particle-pixel analogy.
Figure 6 Pixel-Particle
A more controversial domaining effect arises when one begins to question what makes an art-science outcome meaningful. The artists desire is to creatively translate and communicate decision-making, freewill and research on brain plasticity, addiction, memory, learning, epilepsy, basic neurology and feedback mechanisms. For the scientists, it is an opportunity to simulate and study neural activity for practical applications in each of the aforementioned fields of research. Yet the public’s interpretation of the work and its literature challenge and allocate their own forms of meaning and value to such collaborations.[10] For the collaborators in Silent Barrage, it is seen that meaning is achieved through a process of inclusion of each other’s needs, which becomes inherently linked to the other’s.
II. SPACE, DISTANCE AND SCALE
The landscape of Silent Barrage’s physical and digital spaces articulates the different aesthetics and methodologies of the science laboratory and the exhibition space, however this happens in the other’s space. It is in the exhibition space’s construction of the clean-cut, dynamic sculptures and precise placement of poles in a grid that the audience experiences the scientific laboratory and method. The meaningful marks created on paper, the extent to which the ring moves a certain distance above or below are specific interpretations of the activity of the nerve cell. At Steve Potter’s lab the stimulation of nerve cells caused by movement in an exhibition space allows the scientist to observe the activity of an audience reacting to and within the grid through the visualization of nerve networks. Between the two physical spaces, digital space serves as a medium for translation, closing this loop between geographical locations.
The [Internet is a]continuum that links real events with their transformation into images and media forms know few limits. This is largely because of the power of digital mediation, which is a product of the capacity of digital cultures to aggregate large numbers of phenomena into sometimes quite specific entry portal…We call this the Internet, but that now seems a rather quant way of describing the multi-leveled network that connects individuals and societies with often unpredictable outcomes.[11]
Within the petri-dish itself, another construction of the art-science collaboration occurs when one considers that nerve cells are taken out of their own context and put into new environment, similar to when artists Guy Ben-Ary and Phil Gamblen were immersed in a four-month scientific residency program. Not only are the nerve cells, much like artists, challenged to adopt new languages, make new connections in this neurological landscape they become both nerve centers and periphery effector organs. Their role in the neurological loop, either as depositories of information or sites of stimuli is blurred. The idea of the threshold here is important, linking ideas of human decision-making to neuron stimuli-generation.
Geographical distance is related to how knowledge is situated in art and science. The geographical isolation of Steven Potters lab is a commentary on scientific research’s detachment from external cultural aims while the grid in the artist’s exhibition space, in contact and interaction with the audience can be seen as a likening of knowledge in art as heavily culturally-situated. Digital space as a bridge between the two sheds light on the idea that scientific discoveries are intricately connected to the political, physical and cultural surroundings of a lab. This very idea is also a tool for education, discussion and reflection on contemporary art and science between the artist and audience in the exhibition setting.
Scale in each space also reinforces this commentary on situated knowledge and the importance that art places on the individual and science on the collective. The architectural scale of the project tells the observer that he or she is meant to enter and witness this space; a visitor can relate to the cylinder’s height, lines drawn by the robot and spacing considerations between each column allowing unobstructed movement between each pole. The idea of having each of the nodes represented by a pole speaks firstly to the local inclusion of individuals within a secondary regional scale. These art-science collaborations occurring within this localized builds up knowledge through immersion and experience, from which produces a larger resultant network in another related or discursive field. In another sense the translation of microbiological neural activity to the anthropomorphic realm helps to emphasize the idea of the digital technology as the enabling platform.
Figure 7 Positioning of electrode node in neural network 
Silent Barrage deconstructs the idea of the isolated scientific laboratory from the non-scientist communities through the digital medium connection with exhibition space. The ideas of control situated in centers or peripheries vanish; actors are embedded in a network which requires their participation in generating knowledge through experience. This highlights the importance of the individual’s immersion in a foreign field to form new connections in order become part of a larger meaningful network, in this sense it places an emphasis beyond the individual, which forms the core art-science experience. With digital, biological and robotic systems, art seems to have lost its traditional palette in Silent Barrage, its aesthetic and form of representation shifting to communicate scientific aesthetics and processes. Yet it gains a new aesthetic and palette, creating its own form of identity rooted in its position as a key interpreter of scientific research and new technological means of creating knowledge. The ‘barrage’ of networked activities within the petridish and the larger closed loop is symbolic of the process making connections is articulated in the aesthetic experience of the grid, even in the sound of the ‘lazy Susan’ plates drawing pixels. The very idea of silence, implied by its title, is linked to the quieting of an epileptic attack at the moment in which a ‘meaningful connection’ is made between activities and data in the lab and studio. In a sense Silent Barrage itself is a presumption that a meaningful connection will be made between nerve cells and movement, analogous here to one between the artist and scientist.
REFERENCES
Ascott, Roy (2008) “Pixels and Particles: The Parth to Syncretism” in Mel Alexenberg’s Educating Artists For The Future: Learning the Intersections of Art, Science and Technology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Bakkum, D, Gamblen, P., Ben-Ary, G., Chao, Z. & Potter, S. “Meart: The Semi-Living Artist”. Frontiers in Neurobotics. November 2007. Vol 1: 5
Bakkum, D., Shkolnik, A. C., Ben-Ary, G., Gamblen, P., DeMarse, T. B. and Potter, S. M. (2004). Removing some ‘A’ from AI: Embodied Cultured Networks. Embodied Artificial Intelligence. Iida, F., Pfeifer, R., Steels, L. and Kuniyoshi, Y. New York, Springer. 3139: 130-145
Burnett, Ron. (2008) “Learning, Education and the Arts in a Media Digital World” in Mel Alexanberg’s Educating Artist for the Future. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Da Costa, Beatriz (2008) Reaching the Limit: When Art Becomes Science in Tactical Biopolitics. Boston: MIT Press
Ede, Sian (2005) Art and Science. New York: St. Martin’s Press
Scott, Jill (2008) “Afference and Efference: Encouraging Social Impact Through Art and Science” in Mel Alexenberg’s Educating Artists For The Future: Learning the Intersections of Art, Science and Technology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Squier, Suan (1994) “Babies in Bottles and Tissue-Culture Kings” in Babies in Bottles, Twentieth-Century Visions of Reproductive Technology. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press
Wilson, Stephen (2010) “Art, Science and Technology” in Art+Science: How Scientific Research and technological innovation are becoming key to 21st century Aesthetics. London: Thames and Hudson
[1] United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/es/article.php?ModuleId=10005466. Date accessed: September 21, 2010
[2] Babies in Bottles and Tissue-Culture Kings. Susan Merril Squier In Babies in Bottles, Twentieth-Century Visions of Reproductive Technology. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. 1994. p. 112
[3] Bakkum, D, Gamblen, P., Ben-Ary, G., Chao, Z. & Potter, S. Frontiers in Neurobotics. November 2007. Vol 1: 5. p. 2-3
[4] Ascott, Roy (2008) “Pixels and Particles: The Path to Syncretism” in Mel Alexenberg’s Educating Artists For The Future: Learning the Intersections of Art, Science and Technology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
[5] Scott, Jill (2008) “Afference and Efference: Encouraging Social Impact Through Art and Science” in Mel Alexenberg’s Educating Artists For The Future: Learning the Intersections of Art, Science and Technology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p.127-8
[6] St. John, Robert. “Afference and Efference”. www.metamorphosiscenter.com. Date Accessed: September 5, 2010
[7] SymboticA Press Release. www.symbiotica.uwa.edu.au/media?f=273980. Date Accessed: September 6, 2010
[8] Ede, Sian (2005) Art and Science. New York: St. Martin’s Press. p.2
[9] Ibid
[10] On the network-blogging website, http://www.asquare.org/networkresearch/2009/silent-barrage, an online contributor questions the description of Silent Barrage as one of the few examples of artistically meaningful and scientifically valid art and science collaborations.
[11] Burnett, Ron. (2008) “Learning, Education and the Arts in a Media Digital World” in Mel Alexanberg’s Educating Artist for the Future. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p.123
PHOTOGRAPHIC SOURCES:
Figure 1 Photograph of Hilter in front of Eiffel Tower. http://www.scrapbookpages.com/natzweiler/History/FrenchResistance.html. Date accessed: September 14, 2010
Figure 2 Grid of Poles. http://www.flickr.com/photos/watz/4385986844/. Date Accessed: September 8, 2010
Figure 3 Robotic Arm. www.silentbarrage.com. Date Accessed: September 14, 2010
Figure 4 Electrode position in neuron culture. www.silentbarrage.com. Date Accessed: September 14, 2010
Figure 5 Drawings by Meart showing Douglas Bakkum’s variaton of pen placement, feedback mechanism and population vector. “Multi-Electrode Array aRT- The MEART art-science project’ from Douglas Bukham’s Presentation at a Conference in Shanghai, China. July 23, 2006. Courtesy of Guy Ben-Ary
Figure 6 Pixel-Particle. “Multi-Electrode Array aRT- The MEART art-science project” from Douglas Bukham’s Presentation at a Conference in Shanghai, China. July 23, 2006. Courtesy of Guy Ben-Ary
Figure 7 Positioning of electrode node in neural network. www.silentbarrage.com. Date Accessed: September 14, 2010
Biotechnology, Bioart & bioarchitecture
Reflections upon my first 3 weeks at SymbioticA
Ive been wondering if it was actually safe to let the thoughts Im having in my head as they’ve built up over the past 3 weeks. Its been overwhelming and head-spinning when you touch down on unknown territory. But after our Body, Art, Bioethics Symposium at SymbioticA today, I think its better to offload them all.
Back in the undergraduate utopian environment, it was always novel and easy to discuss and speculate about the idealistic futures of biotechnology and how its products might improve human life. For me, it was riveting to speak of architectures that could incorporate living material (using it to filter, fix and protect as a trajectory of sustainable design). I dont think I had even begun to understand what that really meant: the idea of manufacturing nature, using it as architectural product for human comfort. My idea of biotechnology was more or less confined to articles I read on the internet, hype about advances in the Human Genome Project and my Introduction to Biomedical Engineering Class in my senior year at Tufts University. I hadnt had any substantial understanding of the field of bioart, its relationship to biotechnology; bioartist to biotechnological scientist. And most importantly, bioarchitecture where did it stand in this dialogue? What lessons and knowledge do architects take from bioart and biotechnology? And how do architects apply this in their works?
Let me start with the understanding Ive gained of biotechnology. Simply it is a field of applied biology which uses living materials as a means to engineer products for industrial, medicinal, agricultural, and other fields of technological ends. The extent to which it uses living organisms including animals for these various purposes are extremely varied and wide—rats are created with a cancer tumor for study, a pig’s tissue may be transplanted into a human for organ failure purposes, human cloning, animal interbreeding, in vitro fertilization, the list is endless.
Bioart is a field that uses living material for artistic purposes. When I first read this definition, I had reservations about the works I would encounter. In the past three weeks the range of artworks I have seen at SymbioticA characterize some profound artistic endeavors that aim to attack the very ethical issues that have arisen in the biotechnological field. An example is the artpiece “Victimless Leather” by the Tissue Art & Culture Project which was essentially a mini-jacket grown from mouse cells in a bioreactor…asking us to question the irony of title’s victimless claim…there are indeed victims in the production of such art. And more importantly it probes us to ask ourselves what ethical conflicts do we have with such works?What is it about us as humans becomes unsettled by this? These works lie at the very heart of the artistic endeavor—to question and challenge what it means to be human. In this era of biotechnology, where living material can be easily manipulated by humans (and most especially scientists) …
“Bioart is a way of mediating in an era when engineering is not seperate from biology and nature” ~Oron Catts
For artists it is a challenge, it is an uneasy place to be, creating works which are unsettling to conceive and produce. Some of their end products may not always be beautiful or aesthetically pleasing, in fact many of their works provoke and disturb its audience. Grotesque has been a way to describe works of famous bioart pieces. Think of the idea of seeing Stelarc’s grafted ear onto his arm. The image is still unsettling to me. But this is sometimes the consequence of an artist’s decision to attack our very conceptions of where our discomfort comes from.
eg. What do we conceive as the human body and what transplants are more acceptable to us than others?
Even my roommate who upon hearing I was studying at SymbioticA, said to me “They are the people who get us (scientists) into trouble with ethics!” At first I was completely taken off guard by that statement, it is easy for a person who has a preconceived notion of such art to remain in that state especially if one encounters artists who abuse their practice of one does not understand the context of useful bioart pieces. And its taken me some time to pick out the flaws in this outburst and I can only specifically use the work that Ive seen by SymbioticA artists.
Their work in many regards have begun to tackle and inform ethics regulations for this new field of art (without precedent). In many ways their use of live animals such as the works of Kathy High and Verena Kaminiarz have been to rescue ‘lab-rats’ who were either being discarded after laboratory experiments had been done to them (High’s work) or had developed to model human diseases (Kaminiarz’s work) and instead given them a home where they could recover and become subjects.
There is always the argument that artists do not have the technical knowledge and training to work with such material that scientists have and therefore are not equipped with the methodology, language and tools to ‘tinker’. Which is why perhaps it is funny that of the many artists in this field, it is SymbioticA which should not fall into these unfortunate category. It is the only institution in the world wherein bioart is situated within a university’s School of Anatomy and Human Biology wherein artists have access to and work with scientists. Their work is given the same academic weight as other forms of research within the university.
So what does this mean for bio-architecture, that is architecture that wants to use living material for the purpose of creating buildings that are “in conversation” with its environment. How can being in this art-science collaborative environment help us understood the ethical dilemmas, the technological limits and our power as shapers of the built environment? For me at least it has been primarily an understanding of the limits of such architectural forms built with living matter.
i. Time- The timescale of nature, of how living materials grow changes the lifetime of building a home. Patience. And this is something perhaps only landscape architects understand better.
ii. Aesthetics- The aesthetic of nature recalls forms, shapes, textures, smells and sights that require a broader interaction and appreciation as we move through such spaces. Most especially are we ready to acclamatise to the aesthetic of nature in our living environment even if it is something we perceive it as grotesque? eg. imagine touching a wall made of beautiful red, pink and creamy ‘petals’ which are actually fungi. You might be cringing.
iii. Control- Ideas of our building materials being ‘in conversation’ with our environment have been brought up by architects such as Rachel Armstrong and been well received. In this age, who would object to walls that absorb CO2 and emit harmless products? Or who would object to growing protective layers of limestone around the corroding wooden piles of Venice to protect the city’s foundation as well as breed a favorable reef environment for new aquatic organisms? Well in accepting all this, we must realize that we are yielding some of the control over our surroundings that we have wielded for so long.
There are many other implications for architects, but Im just beginning to scratch the surface…
