Rachel Armstrong

Meta.Morf X – Digital Wild / Dokkhuset, March 6 – 7, 2020 / Curator: Zane Cerpina

Rachel Armstrong [uk]
Living Architecture: Cultivating the Digital Wild

Our understanding of physics, chemistry and biology at the subatomic level is bringing disparate worlds together in new ways. From a quantum perspective, convergent technologies increasingly uphold the operations of life, where electron flow unites life with the “digital” realm. This is not just a matter of degree – whereby we are “becoming” machine – but a question of kind, where new expressions of the living world are possible. Such expressions challenge the implicit fatalism of ecocide – this is why they are important.

No longer simulacra and assemblages of metals and semiconductors, the heterogenous landscapes of complex, organic circuits that characterise 21st century technologies exceed the understanding of classical science. Blurring the boundaries between the born and the manufactured, these lively matrixes form the canvas for the digital wild. It is less a “rational” engineering project, than the “mad” art of microbes – the creative, wet and quantum principles of electron flow characterised by weak forces and labile structures, bringing unpredictability to matter. Taking diversions rather than following the path of least resistance, depolarising membranes, seeking new alliances in the contortions of proteins, this expanded platform is not an assemblage of parts, but a coherent substrate, which synthesises new kinds of life.

My expanded talk introduces the strange, distributed body, sounds, ethics and aesthetics of the Living Architecture project. Conceived as a domestic infrastructure that transforms organic waste into a range of valuable products within the home such as cleaned water, organic compounds and electrons, it lacks a “true name” – not apparatus, but “being”. It is capable of self-awareness on its own terms rather than those ascribed by humans. Within its modular body of soft plastics, biofilms, liquids, ceramics and electronic circuitry, excreted bacterial electrons enliven window-opening robots, charge mobile phones and generate images on screens. Flickering bursts of activity, are governed by an artificial intelligence that, like a chemical metabolism, enables this novel being to optimise its activities within any given context. It has no “brain”, no face – nothing by which we can see ourselves mirrored. 

In the thick of this digital wild, ethical challenges proliferate and these we cannot circumvent. We are past the point of asking whether such a thing should exist; we must now grasp our duty of care towards this nonhuman and its kin. 

Rachel Armstrong
Rachel Armstrong is Professor of Experimental Architecture at the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, Newcastle University, United Kingdom. Exploring the transition from an industrial era of architectural design to an ecological one, she combines a new materialist philosophy with a technical practice based in the origins of life sciences, which is applied through the technology of living systems. Working with matter at far from equilibrium states, which shares some of the properties of living systems she calls the synthesis that occurs between these systems and their inhabitants “living” architecture. Collaboratively working across disciplines to interrogate these principles, she builds and develops design-led prototypes that couple the computational properties of the natural world. These are then explored through an ecology of practices which span a range of experimental approaches from the modern laboratory, to the field and gallery, which are explored in the EU projects that she coordinated: Living Architecture (2016-2019) and ALICE (2019 ongoing). She is Director and founder of the Experimental Architecture Group (EAG) whose work has been published internationally as well as exhibited and performed at international venues. She has published a number of books including Vibrant Architecture: Matter as a codesigner of living structures (2015), Star Ark: A living, self-sustaining spaceship, (2016), Soft Living Architecture: An alternative view of bio-informed design practice (2018), Liquid Life: On Nonlinear materiality (2019), Experimental Architecture: Prototyping the Unknown through Design-Led Research (2019), as well as fiction books including Origamy (2018), Invisible Ecologies (2019) and The Decomposition Comedy (In Press), which are ‘worlding’ experiments that bring to life aspects of the pending ecological era.

www.ncl.ac.uk/apl/staff/profile/rachelarmstrong3.html#background

Richard DeDomenici

Meta.Morf X – Digital Wild / Dokkhuset, March 6 – 7, 2020 / Curator: Zane Cerpina

Richard DeDomenici [uk]
Multiple Flygskams

Richard DeDomenici is a big fan of Norwegian pop music. Indeed, the first piece of recorded music he ever bought was from Norway. 

Richard still doesn’t completely understand the meaning of the notion of the Digital Wild, but hopes to find out during his talk by describing a number of his works, before asking the audience if they think that such examples fit the theme of the conference or not. 

Each time they agree, he will sing an excerpt from one of his favourite Norwegian Eurovision songs.
However, if none of Richard’s case studies are Digitally Wild enough, he will sing his least favourite British Eurovision song instead.

As part of his Digital Wild presentation, Richard will discuss the successes and failures of his Carry-Ok portable karaoke system, invented in 2009 to solve the problem of not being able to sing karaoke whilst walking down the street. His first outdoor tests of the system involved singing The Sun Always Shines On TV by Norwegian band A-ha on Shibuya Crossing in Tokyo. Richard will debut rare footage from this test in Trondheim for the first time. 

Before revealing his theory about how the high standard of living in Trondheim is related to a gang of middle-aged women in a park in Guangzhou. 

DeDomenici toured China with his ongoing Redux Project, which attempts to destabilise cinema by making counterfeit versions of scenes from famous movies, in the original locations where they were filmed. 

The project is only possible due to a perfect storm of inexpensive digital technologies, and will inevitably end with Richard either getting sent to jail for copyright infringement, or hired to direct the next Transformers franchise. Richard is therefore excited that his visit happens to coincides with the Trondheim International Film Festival.

He may also discuss why his fake digital watch might get him sent to Guantanamo Bay, and the progress of his long-gestating Anarchitecture project – in collaboration with an architect he met on Instagram – which if successful has the potential to destabilise the property market. 

If there’s enough time, he’ll accuse Boris Johnson of plagiarising his work, explore how 3D-printed adult toys could de-gentrify London, and unveil his plans to transform intercontinental travel using a distributed sexual power-grid.

If Richard is able to find a swivel-chair he may invite you to take part in his new sport, which he hopes to demonstrate at the Tokyo Olympics. 

He’ll probably also attempt a live test of his new peer-to-peer political protest methodology, designed to circumvent draconian public assembly rules near the British Parliament.  

Afterwards he will attempt to purchase a sandwich using his proprietary cryptocurrency Knitcoin.

Richard DeDomenici
Richard DeDomenici makes work that is social, playful, critical, political and beautiful – although rarely all at the same time. He specialises in urban-absurdist interventions that strive to create the kind of uncertainty that leads to possibility. DeDomenici’s 2015 adaptation of his inexplicably popular Redux Project for BBC4 was called ‘one of the smartest, strangest, subversive half hours of television I have ever seen’ by critic Matt Trueman. His touring installation Shed Your Fears debuted at Tate Modern in 2017. Richard has taken numerous shows to the Edinburgh Festival, although none of them made a profit. He has had many books published, however they are all quite small. His regular collaborators include Bryony Kimmings, Cheap Thrills, Forest Fringe and Jess Mabel Jones. DeDomenici has conducted residencies at festivals and institutions including TPAM in Yokohama, Akademie der Künste in Berlin, NSCAD in Halifax Nova Scotia, and Tansquartier in Vienna. 

When he was 11 he won the BBC London Marathon Poster Competition, an achievement he did not match until he sold a pair of cowboy boots to Kylie Minogue when he was 17. Richard also won a prestigious art prize in Iceland in 2012, but has still not received the prize money. He has been shortlisted for the Arts Foundation Fellowship, nominated for the Jerwood Trust Moving Image Prize and was an Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award finalist. 

DeDomenici is the longest-serving member of Home Live Art’s board of trustees, and would quite like to move to Hong Kong. He’s performed in over 30 countries and in 2020 he will unveil his most ambitious commission yet for the Radical Independent Art Fund, and devise a large scale theatrical work about the Eurovision Song Contest.

‘DeDomenici is one of the most intellectually gifted, imaginative and dedicated performance artists in the UK today.’ The Scotsman
‘DeDomenici is one of the most fascinating artists to have emerged from the British performance art scene in the last decade’ Herald
‘One of the most creative artists I’ve ever met… Beautiful acts of absurdity highlighting more serious issues.’ Guardian
‘Richard DeDomenici is a performance artist whose artwork is cerebral, accessible and subversive.’ The List
‘Turning what we think we know on it’s head. Resolutely enjoyable art’ Arena

www.dedomenici.com

The Center for Genomic Gastronomy

Meta.Morf X – Digital Wild / Dokkhuset, March 6 – 7, 2020 / Curator: Zane Cerpina

The Center for Genomic Gastronomy [no/us]
Food Phreaks: Exploits, Experiments and Explorations in the Human Food System

The Center for Genomic Gastronomy was launched in 2010 by an American artist and a Norwegian designer with the belief that there was not enough work being done trying to bridge developments in the life sciences and the burgeoning food movement. Biologists and food activists were attempting to reinvent the way food is grown, processed and eaten, but the belief systems and methods they employed could often be in direct conflict. We wondered if creative research methods could be used to create novel experiences and engagements with the human food system and bring unlikely guests to the same table. Our artistic research has been shaped by our desire to meaningfully engage very diverse groups in the process of imagining a more just, biodiverse and beautiful food system—scientists, hackers, farmers, chefs, food activists and general public on the street. In order to disrupt the rationalist rhetorical strategies deployed by corporations, think tanks, science labs and NGOs we drew on arational rhetorical strategies of joy, generosity, delight, antagonism, bewilderment, awe and disgust, taking inspiration from phone phreaking and biohacking. Although we have continued to keep our focus on the area where art, science, food and open culture overlap, our decade of research has taken us in unexpected directions. For example, Smog Tasting has become a very important artistic research project that we have staged in more than 10 countries around the world, but it deviates from our initial explicit focus on organisms as ingredients, instead focusing on Aeroir: the unique atmospheric taste of place. However, over time this project has led us to create unexpected connections between smog, climate change and the industrial food system. In this talk, we will describe some of the collaborators, methods and outcomes of our work and open up a discussion about the ways art and food can be used to understand and shape how humans inhabit spaceship earth.  

The Center for Genomic Gastronomy
The Center for Genomic Gastronomy is an artist-led think tank founded by Cathrine Kramer (NO) and Zack Denfeld (US) in 2010. They study the organisms and environments manipulated by human food cultures—exploring the biodiversity and biotechnologies of food systems. Their mission is to map food controversies, prototype alternative culinary futures and imagine a more just, biodiverse & beautiful food system.

The Center presents research in the form of public lectures, research publications, meals and exhibitions. They have collaborated with scientists, chefs, hackers and farmers in Europe, Asia, and North America. The Center’s work has been published in We Make Money Not Art, Science, Nature and Gastronomica and exhibited at the World Health Organization, Jeu de Paume, V&A, Kew Gardens, Science Gallery, Dublin and others.

www.genomicgastronomy.com