About the course
“....a hands-on, in the lab, exploration of art and biology – gooey-technics, slippery-ethics, performance protocols, toxic transformations and becoming individuals" (from the course blog)
Course instructor: Boo Chapple
Course blog: http://conqueringlife.wordpress.com/
This year's edition of the Bioart Honours class of Leiden University was termed "Conquering Life? Questions at the frontiers of art, philosophy and the life sciences" and led by artist and researcher Boo Chapple.
Student projects were presented during the festival SOWOHLALSAUCH, an Art Science Cinema Lab Night organized by the The Arts & Genomics Centre.
Hands-on (2009): a look into lab protocols from the perspective of the hand
How does a protocol look like from a hand’s point of view? How do my hands and other people’s hands function during the same protocol? What kind of space is being generated onto the laboratory bench during a protocol?
Hands-on is an investigation initialized during the Bioart 2009 honours class. Early thoughts on the project are documented here. Working with bare hands over the bench made me place my own hands in focus and question their perception space. Our presence in the lab, with many of us being unfamiliar or awkward with lab practices, highlighted our deviations when striving with a protocol. And my involvement with information visualization made me wondered of alternative notations/ visualizations to represent and understand a lab procedure.
keywords: perception, umwelt, protocol, notation, space, hand tracking
hands-on
hands-on
(screenshot)
Hands-on (2009): a prototype
1- Footage
I constructed a simple wearable prototype to capture live footage from both hands. Using the equipment, five volunteers executed a zebrafish toxicity assay.
The captured imagery was, to me, quite exciting: I found it not only aesthetically pleasing but also particularly challenging in terms of reconstructing the performed procedure. And I was glad to experience clearly different approaches by each one of the performers.
2- Presentation
I wanted to present the captured footage in contrast with the idea of a reproducible and universal protocol. A suggestion of this 'universality' can be found in the act of notation, or the attempt to meaningfully abstract a process for the sake of reproducibility.
I investigated different visualizations and notation systems that involve the use of hands. Influenced by Edward Tufte's praise on the information visualization qualities of magician's manuals, I ended up studying 19th century books on magic tricks, coming to realize that the analogy between a protocol and a magic trick is worth trying. Not having enough time to describe/visualize my protocol in the manner of these manuals, I opted for their aesthetics.
For the SOWOHLALSAUCH festival, I displayed the captured footage inside a 'kijkdoos' (peep box). A voice over of the performed protocol is overlay with comments of the performers while executing the protocol.
installation- kijkdoos view
Hands-on: future directions
While the captured footage is interesting on its own sake, I realize that this prototype was mostly an exploratory exercise. This experiment and the produced footage actually got me fascinated with the three dimensional space produced by the performing hands. My next step in investigating lab protocols from the perspective of the hand would involve tracking the trajectories of the performing hands and attempting to materialize this new space generated on the bench. But this will require somewhat more elaborate equipment than my current camera gloves!