The author describes two recent sculptural projects with bacteria that produce electricity while decomposing organic matter, in a technology known as a microbial fuel cell. These works encourage a ludic relationship to microbes, allowing us to acknowledge their aptitude for building ordered societies that sustain many life systems in the environment and within us. Relationships between humans, technology and microbes emerge in these theatrical scenarios.

This essay discusses a series of collaborative artworks by Joel Ong and Mick Lorusso envisioning a "Microbial Witness," a quiet but powerful protagonist founded in the interstitial spaces of science, art, and mythology. The artists systematically catalog its umwelt--the environmental factors that affect it-- through the "Microbial Atlas." Ong and Lorusso propose that, through exposure to this artistic research process, their audience may also adopt an ecological/moral responsibility through a shared empathy with, and respect for, the microbial world. This work continues their joint artistic querying of the role and position of the artist as “witness" in the spaces and artefacts of the scientific laboratory.

No abstract

No abstract

The Art|Sci Collective invited the POM conference's audience and colleagues, to jump collectively with us from one space of possibility-where quantum mechanics asserts, we 'don't know' and 'can't know', to the next -in which experimental techniques such as time-resolved microscopy, ultrafast spectroscopy, single molecule spectroscopy, or even single particle imaging, enable us the precision of observing and measuring infinitesimal dynamics at very small length and time scales. What does quantum biology offer us as multiplicities and alternative realities when considering the attempt to subvert and confront absolute order, stability, and control in the socio-political sphere? We offer a randomly guided immersion in a sequence of live and pre-recorded video performances and videopoems, speculating on quantum effects in living systems, using DIY microscopy, data visualization, generative 3D modelling and animation, machine learning, and other media art techniques.