Summaery 2014

Growing Geometries (tattooing mushrooms)

Fakultät: Gestaltung, Studiengang: Kunst und Design/Freie Kunst/Medienkunst (Ph.D.)

This artistic project investigates the morphology of geometries on living and growing membranes.

Fungi are being cultivated. Young fruiting bodies are carefully tattooed with basic geometries. A tattoo machine as used for human skin is the tool.

While growing, the image also starts to change and expand. Currently mushrooms are tattooed when they are still small and growing. While the fruiting body is growing and the head expands the shape of the mushroom membrane - hence the tattooed image as well - changes:

Can a square become a circle?

This project is still in an early phase, hence in progress.
The exhibition consists of photographs (Lambda prints), video and a growing block of mycelium with tattooed oyster mushrooms (if growth goes well).

It draws references to Giorgio Scarpa's models of 'rotational geometry' and ultimately the old Bauhaus itself with Johannes Ittens basic geometrical forms. Further it is the biological answer to generative and algorithmic design methods where images are created digitally and can be animated to anything.

How can we use abilities inherent in nature to create art that goes beyond making pictures of something pretty? How to succeed in an aesthetic quest of experimental methods, artistic intervention, and the biological uncertainty principle?

Dieses Projekt nimmt am Bauhaus Essentials 2014 & GRAFE Kreativpreis teil.