GMU:Winning natural habitats/Natalia Gay Pintado

Water landscapes microscopic photography

The feeling of looking through a telescope into the vastness of the night is also found in the microscope.

The microscope functions as a portal to the sub-universe of the micro, of organised forms hidden in the larger terms of "more complex" organisms.  But in reality it is a portal to the complexity of life, a venture into understanding from the smallest.

Under the microscope hides a multitude of surprising micro-organisms, but also a multitude of abstract forms, colours and textures. In this project I try to forget the scientific use of the microscope and use it as a tool for creation,

looking through it with the greatest sensitivity and a naive and inexperienced eye. I don't photograph

beings that I find but forms and sensations that catch the attention of my eyes.

In this way, the tool allows a normalised approach to these beings. Once you understand that they exist,

they will become an object of study and then a look without scruple for their size,

without objectification but poetisation of the matter.

Images are created to tell stories

But we can make images have a memory of their own.

What happens when we use a scientific image and generate a narrative with them, a narrative in intimacy.

The scientific image becomes the poetic

Symbiotic music

Sample sound made out of physarum policephalum and afterwards make music with it, as if it was another member of the band

- another idea is make a full band out of organisms. each organism has a specific sound and it sounds depending of the electricity

1.Grow Physarum Policephalum

2.Connect it to Arduino and have data

3.Transform real life data to sound

4.Create a symbiotic set to perform with the Physarum

PROBLEM:: I hurt the slime mould while doing it if it is Live music

NEW IDEA:: capture signal from physarum, transform it to sound and put the speakers in some place where physarum can be growing, (dark places of a forest), ampliphaying and making noticiable the organism for humans.

Empathy box

This project is based on the "Empathy box" concept of the book Do Androids dream with electronic sheeps? from Philip k. Dick. In the book the empahy box is an object with a monitor and two handles. And when you hold it by the handles you enter to a dimenssion where you connect with other persons that are conected at the same time sharing an experience between all the users. This experience is based on the feelings that they are experiencing, so they are sharing their feelings, even if it is a good or a bad feeling (somehow comunist way of sharing feelings). In the book it is part of a religious discipline called Mercerism. I see a comparisson here with social media, seeing it as a totality where we share and store/archive feelings. On the other hand, micellium is known for being the connection of the forest, it connects the forest through the ground, where it grows helping with the "comunication" between different species and organisms. Information is exchanged between organisms both within and between kingdoms and species. The final product will be a simulation of this empathy box made out of micelium and connected to an arduino that captures the electricity, datificating it and transform it in some way to sound or image.

Followers of Mercerism grasp the handles of an electrically powered “empathy box,” while watching a monitor that displays seemingly meaningless patterns until the handles are grasped. After a short interval, the user is transported to the world of Wilbur Mercer, where they immerse their mind in an experience shared with everyone who is currently wearing an empathy box. Users of empathy boxes, when using it, relive firsthand Mercer's eternal rise and feel how the stones hit them, just as they hit Mercer. Those in the empathic boxes resent Mercer's rise, they feel Mercer's suffering, emotions are shared among all users.

https://www.meer.com/es/69988-las-plantas-se-comunican-mediante-una-red-formada-por-hongos >>"Mycorrhizal fungi can unite the roots of different host plants, forming mycorrhizal networks. In mycorrhizal networks in forests, trees are nodes and interconnected fungal hyphae are links. The topology is similar to that of neural networks in the human brain."

1.Create a mold with the shape of a box with two handles.

2.Grow micelium inside

3.Connect micelium with Arduino to catch the energy and transform signals

4.

References

Damien Hirst, butterflies:

• https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-5363059
• https://www.artetrama.com/en-de/blogs/news/about-butterflies-in-the-work-of-damien-hirst
• https://artwizard.eu/young-british-artists-%E2%80%93-the-death-and-yet-alive-butterflies-of-damien-hirst-ar-112