The new episode of #A.I.L – artists in laboratories, the weekly radio programme about art and science i present on ResonanceFM, is aired this Wednesday afternoon at 4pm (London time.)
My guest tomorrow will be Sascha Pohflepp, an artist and designer interested in the myths and realities shaped by science and technology. Over the past few years, Sascha has been illustrating these investigations by collaborating with a number of artists and scientists on projects that range from the microcosm of synthetic biology to the macrocosm of space exploration. We will indeed be talking space exploration during the show, and more specifically space gardening but we will also talk science fiction, complex science and impossible projects.
Yesterday’s Today, Installation view at LEAP Berlin (Photo: Daniel Franke)
Yesterday’s Today, Installation view at LJMU Gallery Liverpool. The model atmosphere and the real atmosphere mix where the door is open
The focus of the interview, however, is going to be The Supertask, a collaboration between Sascha and Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg that was commissioned by the Southampton University. The work focuses on modeling and its role as a technological lens on the world. The first chapter is the installation Yesterday’s Today (The Supertask). As visitors entered a small room inside a Liverpool gallery, they could experience the temperature which had been predicted one day earlier in Liverpool. “It thus allows a visitor to be in a sense inside the manifest computational model and to experience it in contrast to the reality that is surrounding it.”
We will also take a few minutes to discuss another of Sascha’s project Seasons of the Void (a collaboration with Daisy and Andrew Stellitano) which looks at the new organisms that scientists and engineers are creating so that future astronauts could farm them on the long voyage to Mars. Now it gets even more exciting when you read the full description of the project: Seasons of the Void imagines fruits that are grown from re-designed yeast, feeding on electricity instead of sunlight. Farming seasons over the voyage lead to distortions in the fruit that is growing in a dark tank. As the ship flies away from the Sun, electrosynthesis replaces photosynthesis.
Sascha’s essay Invisible Animals on the notion of living machines will be published in a forthcoming book by MIT Press. And if you’re in Dublin in the coming weeks, you can also see one of Sascha’s work as part of GLITCH at RUA RED, an annual festival that this year is exploring the economic, political and cultural factors that are shaping the Internet. Finally, Seasons of the Void is part of Alive. New Design Frontiers, an exhibition on view through August at Espace Fondation EDF, in Paris.
The show will be aired this Wednesday 4th of June at 16:00. Early risers can catch the repeat next Tuesday at 6.30 am (I know…) If you don’t live in London, you can listen to the online stream or listen to the podcast on soundcloud.