artists in labs
Artists in Labs (AIL)
Organisation:
Prof. Dr. Jill Scott, Projektleitung und AIL-Forschungsgruppe
Rene Stettler (Symposia) Prof. Marille Hahne und Dr. Priska Gisler
Viele Kunstschaffende erkunden gegenw?rtig wissenschaftliche, technologische und kulturelle Entwicklungen des 21. Jahrhunderts und engagieren sich kritisch in ethischen Debatten. Das Ziel des AIL-Programmes ist es, gemeinsam Ideen zu produzieren und zu teilen, den Dialog zu erweitern und Augen zu öffnen: Für Beiträge, die Kunstschaffende und Wissenschaftler zu den grossen Herausforderungen unserer Zeit liefern. Die Kreation eines Forschungsumfeldes, das diese Experimente ermöglicht, ist der entscheidende Schl?ssel dazu. Das AIL-Programm sucht die Zusammenarbeit mit Schweizer Spitzen-Laboratorien und ist bestrebt, die Entwicklung von primären kreativen Kräften zu stimulieren: Die Suche nach Interpretationen der Natur, der Materie und der menschlichen Wünsche wie auch das Interesse zu verstehen, zu entdecken, zu kreieren und nachhaltig neue Ideen zu entwickeln. (Text: AIL)
Weitere Informationen: www.artistsinlabs.ch / www.unibas.ch
Fusion 05, Kultur- und Kongresszentrum Luzern
THE BOOK
Buchvernissage am 4. April 2006, 17 00 Uhr, Vortragssaal HGKZ, Zürich
Artistsinlabs Processes of Inquiry:
Ed. Prof. Dr. Jill Scott
Editorial Office: HGKZurich, ICS, 2006
SpringerWeinNewYork
136 Pages with color Illustrations.
Inc. DVD 13 documentaries from the artists-in-lab projects
Available now through: www.springer.at/main/book.jsp?bookID=3-211-27957-1
ISBN 3-211-27957-1
This book verifies the need for the arts and the sciences to work together in order to develop more creative and conceptual approaches to innovation and presentation. By blending ethnographical case studies, scientific viewpoints and critical essays, the focus of this research inquiry is the lab context. For scientists, the lab context is one of the most important educational experiences. For contemporary artists, laboratories are inspiring spaces to investigate, share know-how transfer and search for new collaboration potentials. The nine labs represented in this book are from the Life Sciences, Physics, Computing and Engineering sciences. An enclosed comprehensive DVD documents the results, the problems and serves as a guideline for the future of true Art/Sci experiments.
AUSSTELLUNG
The Process of Inquiry:
19. - 22. Mai 2005 , Vernissage: 19. Mai 17:00 Uhr
KKL - Kultur- und Kongresszentrum Luzern, Terrassensaal
In Kollaboration mit dem Festival Science et City + Woche des Gehirns / BrainFair
www.festival05.ch
SYMPOSIUM
Fusion 05:
21. Mai 2005 14:00 bis 18:00 Uhr
KKL - Kultur- und Kongresszentrum Luzern, Terrassensaal
SYMPOSIUM
Fusion 04:
5. und 6. Juli 2004
Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst, Zürich
Wissenschaftslabors und Artist-in-Labs-Künstler/innen:
ARTIFICAL INTELLIGENCE LAB, UNI ZÜRICH: Margarete Jahrmann (A), Max Moswitzer (A), Adrianne Wortzel (USA ). / COMPUTATIONAL LABORATORY, ETH, ZUERICH: Tiffany Holmes (USA). /
CENTRE SUISSE D?ELECTRONIQUE ET MICROTECHNIQUE, ALPNACH : Margaret Tan (Singapur). /
GEOBOTANISCHEN INSTITUT, ETH, ZUERICH: Thomas Isler (CH). /
INSTITUTE OF INFORMATION, ETH, ZUERICH: Axel Vogelsang (UK/D). /
PAUL SCHERRER INSTITUT , VILLIGEN: Dominik Bastianello (CH), Nigel Helyer (UK/AUS). /
PLANETARIUM, VERKEHRSHAUS DER SCHWEIZ, LUZERN: Andrew Quinn (I/AUS), Clea T. Waite (D/USA). /
ZENTRUM F?R BIOSICHERHEIT UND NACHHALTIGKEIT (BATS), BASEL: Shirley Soh (Singapur). /
ZENTRUM F?R MIKROSKOPIE (ZMB), UNI BASEL: N.S. Harsha (IND), Isabel Rohner (CH).
The Process of Inquiry, Kultur- und Kongresszentrum Luzern
Isabel Rohner
Wounds - or the search for a cybernetic system
"Within the whole body of who he is, an incision was made - and so it is with injuries, that even when they are minor, a part of oneself vanishes into them" (Cees Nooteboom).
I began my work at the Centre for Microscopy at the University of Basel (ZMB) in April 2004. The first month was spent familiarising myself with the labs, equipment and facilities. In front of a ten-meter-long adhesive tape line, on which I drew one centimeter spaces, I contemplated until units like micro and nano-meters lost their abstract character. I spent two weeks working on the light microscope and the Stereo Lupe, photographing everything that passed through my hands: epithelial tissue and other pieces of tissue, drosophilae, but also my own fingers and miniscule wounds that I had inflicted upon myself. With various materials and dissecting instruments, I attempted to manufacture mini-sculptures under the microscope. I kept my mind open to any possible results, avoided making any value judgments, and attempted to counter any target-oriented selection of the objects of my observations.
"Art is dealing with one's own self-generated uncertainty" (Niklas Luhmann).
Guided by this sentiment I worked myself through the second and third months. I exploited the microscopy lab as a service department providing various scientists and research groups with images. In this way I became familiar with the following three projects:
Skin Burn
A skin burn experiment, derived from an old scientific publication dating back 30 years, was carried out with the aim of illustrating the fact that in cases of very serious skin burns, patients die not as a result of a septic but a toxic shock. This is due to a protein complex that polymerizes in the skin during the burn, developing a toxic activity. (My thanks to Michel Mallaun)
Is reproductability of experiments the highest maxim? How does hierarchy function in research? What structures and specific obligations exist within the system of science? How do publication indexs, quotation indexs and time pressures influence research? What kind of knowledge emerges from an institution producing knowledge? What kind of knowledge does scientific knowledge preclude? What responsibilities does an institution carry in generating knowledge? Can knowledge be objective? To what extent is knowledge based on our perception, our senses? Do we invent the world or do we discover it?
Cardiomyocytes
This research project focuses on an analysis of the calcium binding ending protein S100A1, its localization in the neonatal cardiomyocytes and its function. The experiments undertaken took place in vitro in cell cultures and in vivo in a transgenic mouse specially bred for this purpose. It was the cardiomyocytes which gave me access to the highly sensitive area of the animal holding pens in the basement, where, among other things, transgenic animals are being manufactured. I was able to accompany and observe an animal keeper at work - witnessing the way in which blasto cysts were removed from the fallopian tubes in female mice in order to genetically alter them in the lab and reinsert them into carrier mice for birth delivery. (My thanks to Melanie B?rries, Doctor of Medicine, PHD in Cell Biology and Roland Geiser, animal keeper)
Is a heart cell, which in vitro begins to contract again, an expression of life? Why do the cardiomyocytes attach to one another after a couple of days and begin to synchronously contract? What is information? What is energy? Where does life begin?
Drosophilae
What would gene research be like if the drosophilae were as large as dogs, peering out at us with their gigantic, sympathy-inducing red eyes?
Although images of ectopical eyes had already been effectively spread by the media and some of the experiments took place almost ten years ago, seeing images of drosophilae legs with eyes on their knees myself was a very unsettling experience. It was not really calming to know that these experiments dealt mainly with the understanding of the developmental process at gene level. There was a clear conflict within me between reason and emotion.
What roll does the media play in the discussion of ethics? Are legislation and the research ethics commissions not merely always one step behind reality, i.e reactive? Can a line be drawn between the natural and artificial? Where would that be, then? How natural is a high-powered cow? Will humans, through gene technology, turn into time-machines? What kind of influence do mental models derived from a cyclical and linear time process have on science? What effects do the irreversible processes initiated by humans have on our future? Why was God abolished? Do I believe science?
At this time, I began carrying out my first set of interviews with various scientists. I noticed that the longer those questioned have been a part of the "science system" and the higher their position in the system hierarchy, the more carefully and guarded their answers were formulated. Also, their awareness that discussion fragments, when taken out of context, could be strongly manipulated in their meaning, influenced the answers in just the same way that a misleading experience with a journalist might. Derived from the world of the thoughts of Heinz von F?rster, my CD "schnitte", which I had compiled out of interview fragments, was a successful reflection of the different aspects of hard and soft sciences. Natural science uses the method of reduction, fragmenting its objects of observation into miniscule parts until it is dealing only with a single gene, one protein, in order to then grasp the whole. In the humanities and social sciences research systems, understanding the individual parts plays a lesser role in understanding the function of these systems as a whole because the characteristic features lie in the interaction between the individual parts of the system.
Parallel to this work, the idea for the fa?ade performance slowly began to crystallize. Whereas scientists observe the tiniest complex systems through the microscope in order to understand them, I focus on the architectonic body with its entire inner life. Dimensions merge, big becomes small becomes big. The house as an organism, the individual research labs as organs, the researchers as the transmitters, chemical messengers and the building exterior as the skin, the epidermis, the borderline tissues between the outer and inner world. Six building stories each containing 7 fields, a performance for 42 artists. I found it exciting to question the notion of authorship within this working environment, and to act as scientists do and perform as a group rather than as an individual, which is why I invited the Basel performance group Labor to collaborate in this performance.
After a three month summer break I developed the fa?ade performance Epidermis and Innards and was able to present the project within the framework of the Basel Art Awards in the Kunstmuseum Baselland. I continued to carry out my series of interviews as well as focus intensely on the topic of skin; I collected skin stories and made images of skin compounds on the scanning electron microscope (SEM). The soles of feet, scalps, skin covering the body - extracted from cadavers and prepared as probes. Skin as a projection surface, skin as a shell, skin as a border which the eye of the beholder cannot see beyond. I decided to make a self-portrait in order to intensify the self-focus and subjectivity - a contrast to the expectation of scientists to remain objective. I had a piece of my skin excised by a dermatologist at the Cantonal Hospital of Basel which enabled me to re-experience the complete preparation process of a probe on my own skin. Fixation in glutaraldehyde, exchange of water through an increasing alcohol concentration of alcohol through CO2, critical point drying, fixing of the specimen on the microscope slide and sputter. In this context I also noticed from various reactions around me that self-attempts made in the name of art, and not science, are evaluated differently by scientists and by society in general, because they apparently do not receive the stamp of scientific legitimacy.
In order to clarify my view regarding the roles allocated to science and art, I should mention the scenario for the developing facade performance:
42 artists stand inside the 42 frames of the concrete grid placed in front of the fa?ade. Each artist pulls out a white mouse from their costume, holding it from its tail at arms length over the railing. In response to a secret signal, which the audience is not privy to, all the performers let their mice fall. . .
After a first month spent familiarizing myself with the surroundings, a second month of deeper immersion and enthusiasm, the third month involved questions of doubt, as well as a bit of a crisis. In the last two months following a three month summer break the emotional ups and downs gave way to a certain soberness and concentration on my art work. Although an intensive exchange between art and science took place during the AIL project, a collaboration similar to the vague notion I had held for years did not. My experience has shown that two conditions need to be met in order for a real collaboration to take place. First of all, a period of familiarization and, when possible, deep understanding of the subject matter must precede the actual work, not only that of the artists approach to science, but also the scientists to art, since I would like to assume that there are two equal partners involved in a collaboration. Secondly, the project, the line of discourse or goal would need to be formulated in a combined effort and also be wished for by both sides.
Nevertheless, during the five months at the Bio and Pharma Center I was able to lay the groundwork for the possibility to approach a future collaboration or a form of fusion of art and science into a third entity, something new.
I would like to sincerely thank
Dr. Markus Dürrenberger
Ursula Sauder
Vesna Olivieri
Daniel Mathys
Marcel Düggelin
Dr. Melanie Börries
Roland Geiser
Michel Mallaun
Manuel Holler
Performancegruppe Labor