Kevin Blackistone, Amir Bastan: Microbiospheric Engineering
Artist(s):
Title:
- Microbiospheric Engineering
Exhibition:
Category:
Artist Statement:
Microbiology invokes features of our environment that are often unseen – interacting without our direct intent or involvement, while automation conjures views of large-scale, tightly controlled mass-production. As our technology has progressed, our abilities to manufacture have extended into the micro world, aided by ever more refined industrial machinery. At the same time, these technologies have allowed us to further populate our own world while extracting from it ever greater resources. I seek to explore this convergence through a merged visual metaphor, involving human bacterial colonies, their interactions amongst wild-spawning micro- flora, and the automated systems that will be used for their surveil- lance. This is to be achieved through a clear sphere upon which shall be a layer of sculpted microbial growth media. Human seeded bacterial populations monitored by automated microscope shall present visual landscapes and satellite-style vistas of their expansion. Each day, further growth shall be visible upon the mountains, valleys and planes of the agar topography. The combined built and spontaneous cartographies shall provide means to internalize pop- ulation expansions and resource depletions of our own biosphere, while the proximal automata presenting these unseen worlds draws focus on the approaching micro : macro interactions of mechanical : biological manufacture and our own potential technological limits of growth.
