Hybrid
Hybrid evolved from the IAS project ‘Material Imagination’ led by Prof. Margarita Stoykova and Prof. Tiago Moreira. The aim of the project was to imagine new types of materials, Living Materials, which emerge as an interaction between human and non-human species. These materials would have the capabilities of their living components to reproduce, heal and respond, and could potentially improve life, mitigate climate crisis and create a shared environment.
The concept of living materials (made of living cells and artificial scaffolds) and biohybrid materials that are deigned to exhibit life properties, are central to this research and seeks to frame human and non-human ecosystems and materials as collaborators and co-creators.
The research of prototyping such biohybrid systems is ongoing in Staykova's lab. Staykova’s team have created living capsules, by encapsulating bacteria in giant lipid vesicles that self-propel through a solution powered by the cells inside. This project is part of the study of the long-time behaviour of these systems, with the prospect of creating living materials that can adapt and evolve in response to their environment, and to their interactions with the user.
This project presents symbiotic systems interrupted by digital translations, forming hybrid art/science artworks/objects/apparatus that consist of living matter, mechanical and digital media, creating a tension and dialogue between the digital and the organic. This tension echoes our relationship with and within ecosystems, raising questions of the bounds of ecosystems, the role of technology in future ecologies and its social implications. The resulting bacteria controlled digital artworks would present part-synthetic-part-organic ecosystems able to collaboratively produce audio-visual performances in real-time. This may lead to a performative body of multimedia artworks with bacteria as performers. The long-term goal is to produce feedback systems that result in a networked output between material, stimulus, apparatus/equipment and participant/audience, achieving new bacterial responses, and new ways of interacting with and guiding biohybrid materials.
The initial stage of the project translates data from experiments with biological organisms into video using the programme Touchdesigner, which facilitates real-time, audio-visual, interactive digital outputs. This requires developing code to translate the data from the experiments (in the form of microscopic images converted to numerical outputs) into various artistic audio-visual outputs. For example, detecting a directed motion of the biohybrid capsule could allow the artistic video to appear/disappear/change form or resolution. This will establish an aesthetic language to visualise the behaviour of the living material, thereby overcoming the scalability problem of artistically working with microscopic phenomena. As a further development, we will guide the motion of the biohybrid capsule towards an injected chemical trigger which would transform the digital artistic output. The development of the chemical trigger will facilitate feedback systems, allowing colonies to self-regulate their environments. It may also be possible to develop a system that allows the original biohybrid colony and its behaviour to affect the environment and multiply into separate colonies, each capable of directing its own video output. A controlled nutrient delivery system will manipulate the behaviour of the biohybrid system while changes in the system (directed motion, growth, death) are reflected in the responsive real-time audio-visual outputs.
Bioart networked systems of a combination of self-regulating and independent bacterial environments, real-time animations, raises themes of symbiosis, agency and autonomy of material. The biological/digital and present/remote nature of the work suggests that symbiosis could escape biological confines to span technology and disconnected geographies, raising questions about a technological singularity and decentralized systems of natural intelligence. This brings into question whether the finely tuned relationship between nature, humankind and technology is a matter or care or control, or if multi-species cooperation can be achieved by constantly shifting our position along this spectrum.
Hybrid is in the research and development phase and is supported by the Biophysical Sciences Institute, Durham University