(Vienna/Linz, 03 September 2024) The Art&Science research area aims to explore unconventional contexts in which science is less interested for methodological reasons. This approach is epitomised by Ars Electronica, the world's leading festival for interactive, digital, biological, AI and sound art (Sept 4th-8th). The Art&Science group of the Centre for Public Health, led by Prof. Dr Klaus Spiess and Emanuel Gollob from the University of Applied Arts, presents a project funded by the FWF (AR 687) on the transgeographical culture of the microbiome, combining scientific research with an artistic approach.
A tenor sings in a transparent double-walled bioreactor in which his oral microbiota grows, which is sonicated with the Caruso aria and technical sounds, both from Werner Herzog's biopiracy film Fitzcarraldo. The tenor uses a phonograph to struggle for phonetic convergence with a fictional speaker of the endangered Amazonian Mura language group, known for its phonetic poverty and high linguistic and microbiological diversity. Italian and Mura speakers differ strongly in the number of their speech sounds (30 vs 12) and their microbial diversity (20 % vs 100 %). These differences represent the speculative starting point for the work presented here. It has been sufficiently investigated how the cytoskeleton, metabolism, growth and diversity of the microbiota change when exposed to different frequencies. For example, E Coli bacteria grow faster at frequencies of 3000 and 8000 Hz. Microbes 'incorporate' or 'capitalise' certain frequencies to their own advantage, for their metabolism and growth. On the other hand, certain frequencies from chainsaws, machines or city noise damage the microbiota, sounds like those depicted in Herzog's film. Based on real-time and archival data from the group and deep learning, the metabolism, diversity and damage of the tenor's microbiota now determines the multi-day phonetic approximation between the tenor and the Mura speaker. The incorporation of the sounds by the tenor's oral microbiota, between advantage and damage, links the group not only to colonial incorporation in the context of a scientific and artistic colonialism that collects language and microbiota, but also to Amazonian cosmology, according to which one only understands oneself in one's own uniqueness when one hears oneself through the voice of the other after its incorporation. This myth abolishes the hierarchy in the coexistence of different people, between coloniser and colonised, and different species. Themes of assimilative assimilation and identity formation are given particular attention in both contemporary art and microbiome research as a question of the appropriate compensation of indigenous Amazonians.
The Ars Electronica Festival will take place at PostCity Linz from September 4 to 8, 2024.
Links:
https://ars.electronica.art/hope/en/events/anthropophagic-myths-biopiracy-and-opera/
https://ars.electronica.art/hope/en/anthropophagic-myth-biopiracy-and-opera-in-the-amazon/