Chimera of #biotech

Chimera of #biotech
(Work in progress/Proposal)

 

This artwork employs an algorithm that creates an abstract creature based on a kind of generative collage made of textures of various animal/plant body parts. This algorithm adapts Game of Life: a mathematical, algorithmic game that constitutes a kind of simulated ecosystem, and it can be used to generate an ever-changing, organic visual pattern. Based on the pattern made in Game of Life, the work automatically cuts and pastes the different textures into one body. In effect, the spliced, chimeric creature appears on the screen, moving lifelike, and appearing unidentifiable, uncanny and constantly transforming.

The creature mutates every time a new Twitter feed marked “#biotech” is tweeted. This is as if the creature feeds off the biotechnology related advancement and news, to renew its uncanny appearance. And, every mutation can be recorded and transferred to a 3D virtual space that is an archive of the specimens of the mutated bodies, and the viewers can explore this space.

The twitter-trigger operation responds to how our perception of uncanny is made and being updated by constant advancement of science that keeps renewing the blurred boundaries between the natural and artificial, life and technology.