Ken Rinaldo
- Medium Type
- Interactive installation
- Year
- 2020
- Genre
- Bioart
- Process
- Robotics control and
agar biological culturing
of human microbiota
- Tools
- Arduino, microprocessors,
passive IR sensors,
agar and code
We may think of the self as an individual. However, we are a multispecies community of trillions of human cells, symbiotically intertwined with trillions of bacterial, fungal, and viral microbes. All have a common ancestor.
Together with other species, water, light, earth, air, and atmosphere form a holobiont. A holobiont is a complex and dynamic ecosystem composed of hologenomes, us, and other associated genomes interacting and coevolving constantly.
The Scatter Surge installation celebrates our symbiotic connections to microbial life living in and on us, the material nature of that life, and new forms of algorithmic life forming.
When you enter the installation, infrared-triggered microprocessors switch whisper fans on to propel the mobiles forward and collect your skin microbiota. The mobiles constructed with branches and stones support the rocks and microbe-collection units.
Light-green lichen is growing on the branches, itself a fungus symbiotically joined with algae, as researched by Dr Lynne Margulis.
As they spin, fans suck your human skin microflora through white filter paper placed on plexiglass masks cut in the shape of pluripotent stem cells.
I am intrigued that skin cells can be turned into embryonic stem cells and then into any other cell type, such as heart, lung, brain, or eye.
During the run of this installation, the microbe samples collected on the filter paper were grown in liquid agar as holobiome snapshots. They revealed various symbiotic bacteria and fungi living with participants who entered and interacted with the works.
Staphylococcus and Corynebacterium bacteria are shared on our skin, though there are about 1000 species known to live on our skin. Later, these collected skin holobiome portraits were put on display in the exhibition.
This installation celebrates and draws attention to the fact that human, bacterial, and fungal cells are descendants of early bacteria. With this work, I am further asking questions about the relationship between the microbes that reside in and on us, cellular tuning and health, and their evolution and connection to our material planet.
The stones are a prominent element in this installation, both as counterweights to the mobiles and the hanging rocks referencing gravity, the formation of planets, and the mineral and material substrates involved in the origins of early life. The essential amino acids of our bodies have their origins in the elements of these same rocks and stones.
The red and brown earthy stones are between 4.7 billion and a few hundred million years old. Some reveal clear crystalline structures that have been part of giving rise to early life, and others are visibly fossils, frozen imprints of past life.
The unique properties of rocks that allowed life to emerge have now been exploited by humans with technological advances, as silica has become silicon.
While humans benefit as hosts to all the acquired genes of those who are symbiotically intertwined with us now, the silicon and algorithm present new possibilities for obtaining and manipulating memes, and a more integrated human, machine, fungal, and bacterial hybrid is emerging with artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Crispr CAS9, the trick where bacteria use genetic scissors to snip DNA, has been discovered by humans. These accurate DNA scissors unifying with silicon-based bioinformatics will allow us to rejoin, by design, and further integrate all the beneficial DNA and genomes of our microbial forebears.
Living systems as a model have always been THE tool to critically interrogate technology, itself now enacting evolutionary survival instincts and emergent self-aware software agents.
As biological species have emerged, so too an algorithmic species arises. The availability of knowledge at the fingertips of most has changed the nature of how we imagine and create, and the individual now joins an emergent cognition of web knowledge. Technology is recapitulating phylogeny. We are all composites from multiple species and now technology has become the latest semi-intelligent form to be incorporated into our evolution. Digital visualization and fabrication technologies are increasingly supplanting the hand of the artist, and the computer has become an ideational amplifier.
Epistemology has always been about lenses, and when lenses were analog and made of glass, they changed our world views profoundly. Our lenses are still made of glass, though now silicon and artificial intelligence algorithms are supplanting optical lenses. Instead, data-based algorithmic ways of knowing are becoming predominant. These technologies, in association with biological procedures, such as CRISPR and the AlphaFold Protein Databases, will undoubtedly mean a semi-living constructed species can and will appear.
Rinaldo is focused on theories of life, symbiogenesis, trans-species communication, and providing models for how technological systems can use structural and process lessons from nature to be more sensitive to all living species. Bio-art, interactive installation, non-violent action, animation, food systems, transspecies artworks, robotic sculpture, and rapid prototyping are all areas of expression. The critical use of technology influences, changes, and further mutate my ideas, while the algorithms increasingly become a selective pressure in a co-evolution with intelligent machines.
Biography
Ken Rinaldo is internationally recognized for artificially intelligent interactive robotic and bio art installations, 3D animations, 3D prints, and AI-derived 2D works. Rinaldo’s artworks evolve hybrid ecologies with humans, machines, algorithms, plants, and animals by constructing idealized social, biological, and machine symbionts. His works focus on trans-species communication, animal agency, insect, bacterial, and emergent machine intelligences. Rinaldo’s bio art, robotics, 3D animations, prints, and hand-drawn works have been commissioned by museums, galleries, festivals, and private collectors internationally.
Rinaldo’s works have been exhibited at: CAFA Museum Beijing, The National Museum of China Beijing, New Art Fest Lisbon, World Ocean Museum Russia, Ars Electronica Austria, VII Moscow Biennial of Art Russia, Australian Center of Photography, Peabody Essex Museum US, Platform 21 Holland, Centro National des Artes Mexico, Transmediale Berlin, Arco Arts Festival Spain, The Ulrich Museum of Art US, Contemporary Art Center Winzavod Russia, Revoltella Museum Italy, The Field Museum Chicago, Biennale Electronics Arts Perth Australia, Centro Andaluz de Art Spain, Third Moscow Biennale, Tweed Museum of Art US, V2 DEAF Holland, and The Itaú Museum Brazil.
He has received commissions for new works from Nuit Blanche Toronto, Vancouver Olympics, Te Papa Museum NZ, Kiasma Museum Finland, A-Life 16 Cancun Mexico, Sunderland Museum England, and Lille International Arts Festival France. His work appears in 100s of books and art reviews while traveling to over 35 countries. Rinaldo received an Award of Distinction at Ars Electronica, first prize at Vida 3.0, and A United Nations Green Leaf Award for the Farm Fountain as well as being awarded as a cultural Olympian from the Vancouver Olympics.
His works have been featured in Wired Magazine, the NY Times, CNET, BBC, ORF, CNN, CBC & and a 1/2 hour special on the Discovery Channel. Select publications include Art and Electronic Media by Edward Shanken, Evolution Haute Couture, and Art and Science in the Post Biological Age edited by Russian curator Dmitry Bulatov have featured his works. He is author of Interactive Electronics for Artists and Inventors, The Phantasma Pop Coloring Book, Do Robots Dream of Spring and Machinic Drift, and he has written numerous chapters in books on art, living systems and technology.
Rinaldo is a member of the Senior Academic Board for Antennae Journal of Nature in Visual Culture. In 2022 Rinaldo completed a 262-page Antennae Journal on Microbial Ecologies and Art with Editor in Chief Giovanni Aloi. Emeritus Professor Rinaldo ran the Art and Technology Area in the Department of Art for 22 years, with Professor Amy Youngs.