Installation by Unicamp professor and Californian artist is awarded in the United Kingdom
On the table, inside a glass dome, a book is (literally) eaten by fungi. Each letter that disappears makes it difficult to understand what is written. The growth of the microorganism and the destruction it causes, step by step, are transformed into publications on the @hellofungus profile on Twitter. Next to the bell jar, the behavior of the fungus is reproduced digitally, on an electronic screen. This time texts searched on the internet, by an algorithm, are defaced. The work classified as a biohybrid digital work of art brings together an artificial intelligence system, living organisms and a social network.
But what do these words say to deserve such a fate? They talk about how man can (and even should) modify and interfere in nature. They speak of a natural, and supposedly beneficial, domination of the human species on the planet, something that needs to be questioned, especially in this way: with a work of art.
“The chosen books record the idea that man is better than other species, a type of discourse known from the Bible to the work of Renaissance, or modern, Roman thinkers. Nowadays we still reproduce these patterns in geoengineering or climate engineering, for example”, highlights professor Cesar Baio, from the Institute of Arts (IA) at Unicamp, one of the authors of the Degenerative Cultures installation. The work received the award Lumen Prize British Computer Society Artificial Intelligence, a global competition from UK-based institution Lumen Art Projects Ltd dedicated to promoting digital artists around the world.
Baio worked with Californian artist Lucy HG Solomon. The duo maintains the collective Cesar & Lois, which aims to bring together artists and scientists to create works that involve technology and nature.
Since his postdoctoral studies at the University of Plymouth, in the United Kingdom, Cesar Baio has studied the patterns of cultural and social behavior assumed today by people “that carry misinformation and that, in some way, threaten the continuity of social integration, or even the very existence of the species.” According to the professor, this also has to do with the growth, for example, of false messages. “It is common today for us to meet people who are resistant to facts, who behave more because of what they believe than because of what they see.”
Starting from global discussions about climate change and the Anthropocene (a time in which humans would take control over nature) the professor states that behavior, which leads to misinformation, can also lead to the production of the extinction of human beings, authorizing decisive actions for the ecosystem such as the extinction of species and the extinction of native forests. And these are the same ideas that, according to the professor, are taken as the basis for the narratives of the book to be destroyed by the fungus. In other words, the artists' idea is to make people reflect on human interference in nature, deconstructing such narratives.
“We want to change the world - starting with technology. If we redesign our methods of interacting with others and with nature, this will gradually gain strength to influence other interactions. At the heart of this project is the premise that humanity has assumed that, as a species, we can not only control but also reshape nature. But what if, instead, we designed society and technology from nature? Looking at the ecosystem we can find much more efficient systems to manage growth, make decisions and distribute resources”, reflects Lucy.
Cesar states that people in general do not have the ability to understand the ecosystem. “We don’t know what the ecosystem is. We disrespect the ancient ancestral knowledge of the indigenous people, of the various eastern peoples who establish a completely different relationship with nature.” The professor believes that technology is increasingly understood as a product, and not as a process, a method or instrument by which new things can be created. “A discourse thus develops that technology is so complex that we cannot understand how it works. This discourse is a consequence not of the technology itself, but of a power project.”
Degenerative cultures it also seeks to corrupt the technological system with the growth of the fungus, digital, programmed or natural, as occurs with the book in the dome. Cesar and his partner artist had an interdisciplinary team to research and assemble the installation. The artists worked together with a biologist to choose and manage the fungus Physarum polycephalum, known as slime mold. “This organism has been considered 'intelligent' because it can create links between different sources of food in a very strategic way”, highlights Cesar.
The work has already been exhibited in Italy, in an exhibition in the city of Ravenna, and also in San Francisco, California, in addition to Brighton, in the context of the award. “Art offers a space to introduce new utopias. With Degenerative Cultures, we envision a future society that balances human and non-human, natural and technological systems”, state the authors.
