The outline of paradise (sustainable luminosity, video)

25.06.2012

This artwork has initially been produced as a produkt provided from super-cell.org, a supermarket offering speculative products related to Synthetic Biology:

What would our cities look like if advertising messages were produced not from artificial lighting but
from swarming midges, glowing like fireflies? Would this natural light production not also be sensuously
much more appealing than the techno aesthetic of conventional advertising? The “Outline of
Paradise” explores the promises and capabilities of technoscience and develops an installation out of
these narratives. It sets the technology towards a natural, sensual aesthetic, which would be natural
and sustainable.
In order to implement this new technology, a natural light source, which has been produced by
nature, should be used and modified: from those animals that live in the dark which have formed
their own light organ. In the deep sea, it enables orientation – at night it helps a firefly in attracting
a mate. „Sustainable Luminosity“ takes up this suggestion of nature and makes use of this light emitting
capability.
Sustainable Luminosity should take as a model the form of a swarm of glow worms in the act of
wooing a partner, and develop new advertising media for cities. For the installation we would train
non-biting midges (Chironomidae) to fly in a way that their swarm takes the shape of advertisement
messages. The insects are genetically modified to glow in the dark and to alter their genetic make-up
according to the training and sound input we provide them. This initial training would be inherited
over generations and keeps the swarm in shape. In this manner breeding for larvae can be purchased
as an individual product and therefore introduced into the market.

With super-cell.org we founded in 2010 the first online supermarket of synthetic biology. It was
created by my students as a speculative design project within the iGEM competition, a student competition at MIT in Boston. The team was a collaboration of students of Prof. Roland Eils, Bioquant /
Ruprecht-Karls-University of Heidelberg, and staff and students of my chair at the Bauhaus University
Weimar.
As part of the super-cell, I developed the product „sustainable luminosity“ as a model for the subsequently
resulting products of my students.
Today I wish, unlike my students, to experience my work as an artist not only virtually – therefore I‘ve
started to breed mosquitoes, their larvae made available to me from the Senckenberg Institute, to
train them in a sound feedback Installation so that their swarms fly in formations. The installation
shall examine formally the material and installative realities the tasks that in everyday interactions
would occur when fantasies become real.
Today I wish, unlike my students, to experience my work as an artist not only virtually – therefore I‘ve
started to breed mosquitoes, their larvae made available to me from the Senckenberg Institute, to
train them in a sound feedback Installation so that their swarms fly in formations. The installation
shall examine formally the material and installative realities the tasks that in everyday interactions
would occur when fantasies become real.

Situation at ACC – a swarm looses its shape

Video edited by Thomas Hawranke

For our experiment, we pretend to train non-biting midges (Chironomidae) to fly in a way that their swarm takes the shape of advertisement messages. The insects are genetically modified to glow in the dark and alter their genetic make-up according to the training and sound input we provide. This initial training will be inherited over generations and keeps the swarm in shape.

How can letters be tought to insects? How can we teach the alphabet to midges?
As chironommidae are sensitive to sound, we use a real-time sound spatialisation system to teach the midges. Until now we are only able to produce clouds of midges forming a simple LED font

Natural midges (chironomidae) form swarms with the shape of a circulating sphere. The swarms consists of male adults congregating for courtship. They are organized through the sound of the wingbeats of the male midges. Our system uses the sensitivity of chironomidae for sound and organize them with synthetic wing beat sound.

Larvae, visit at a production facility in Poland
Selection facility
Training station for midges
Code assigned to letters

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