Andy Gracie's Hostprods

fish, plant, rack - 2004

(The artist's statement)

My artistic practice is characterised by an in depth engagement with process, scientific methodologies and the nature of experiment. Here 'experiment' refers both to the act of acquiring knowledge and information through testing scenarios, and to the act of trying unknown or unexperienced processes.

For a long time my work was concerned with the information systems contained within living organisms and ecosystems and how they may be processed through technology with the aim of creating relationships and meanings. This work reflected on the ideas of umwelt and biosemiotics as developed by Jakob von Uexkull and Thomas Seboek in as much as it aimed to find how signs, symbols and signifiers may form the common ground between artificial and natural intelligences. The notion of important information and signifiers in organic perception has remained central to my research and projects even as it moves into new areas.

I am interested in using organic cultures as processing systems for artificially generated, or technology based, data in an effort to provoke behaviours that contain meaning. This interest extends to examining how organic and inorganic systems can be wired together through various channels, where communication and presence are realised by agency.

This process of investigation has led me to use a variety of approaches to robotics, artificial intelligence and biological practice. My research has led me through a diverse range of fields including microbiology, astrobiology, satellite and space exploration, wilderness exploration, hiking and mapping, as well as the majority of the more 'usual' digital art practices including coding, video and sound production.

The majority of my work is realised in the form of installation, often employing robotics, custom electronics, sound and video alongside biological practice and live organisms. In the recent years I have moved from working with larger organisms such as fish and insects through to smaller organisms such as bacteria and protozoa. More recently still, my work has led me to cultural analysis of the science of astrobiology and life science research in the space environment.

Increasingly I have been engaging directly with the realities of the relationship between the arts and the sciences, specifically how their differences can be exploited to generate moments of artistic value. While following rigorous scientific methodologies and maintaining a strong critical viewpoint my work is faithful to traditional artistic principles of metaphor, ambiguity and a strong sense of wonder.

fish, plant, rack - 2004

quasi symbiotic environment for machine, fish and hydroponics

‘fish, plant, rack’ allows the navigational electrical discharges of the virtually blind elephant fish ‘gnathonemus petersi’ to instruct the actions of a robot whose task is to monitor the development of plants in a hydroponic system. Using the AI system ‘DharmAi’ designed by Brian Lee Dae Yung, the robot listens to the audible incoming stream of pulses from the fish and interprets emerging patterns and densities of clicks as parameters for actions. Gradually building up a more and more comprehensive understanding of the hidden language within these signals, the robot is able to go about its tasks in a way that is increasingly dictated by the fish. The robot is also free to express its ‘feelings’ about the conditions of the plants and its relationship with the fish through a series of sound and light signals and motions configured to convey excitement, awe, anxiety and disappointment.

Ultimately the fish is (we believe) unaware that it is indirectly maintaining watch and at times care over the plants – its only feedback being the images relayed to a screen near its tank from the robot’s on-board micro-video camera. The plants are (we believe) unaware that they are being maintained by a fish. The robot, despite its sophisticated intelligence, is a slave to the fish and to the plants and is caught in a one-dimensional arena which allows it to express itself only within prescribed limits.

In a situation that accommodates three different forms of intelligence, what might evolve when each is being shared or exchanged with the others?

Autoinducer_Ph-1 (cross cultural chemistry) - 2006

bio-artificial ecosystem for growing rice

Concept
Autoinducer_Ph-1 (cross cultural chemistry) exploits a traditional rice cultivation technique from SE Asia where Azolla is grown in large quantities and used as an organic, nitrogen rich fertilizer in the rice paddies. In the installation this process is reworked in an overly complexified, industrial, laboratory style way as a reflection on western agricultural techniques, our modern relationships with nature and the networked, machinic nature of ecologies.

Featuring an assemblage of pond-like structures, electronics, laboratory and hydroponic equipment Autoinducer_Ph-1 probes into and interferes with the symbiotic relationship between the cyanobacteria Anabaena and the water fern Azolla. Notions of data and information systems inherent in the relationships between the organic protagonists of the installation, and how they may be augmented, are realised by a synthetic software-based bacteria that interacts with them in its assumed roles of part time symbiont and part time parasite. Video projections which display evolution of the GCS graphic environment, and highly magnified video of Anabaena cultured under a video microscope.

Outcomes of this complex relationship and its proximity to symbiotic or parasitic characteristics determine the behaviours of the robotic rice farming system that forms the physical bulk of the installation. The installation loops biological, electro-robotic and computing processes together in a literally fertile interaction where the “primal soup” aspect of the Anabaena and Azolla cultures, and fragility of the young rice shoots, contrast strikingly with the computer-generated artificial chemistry molecules of the GCS.

Autoinducer_Ph-1 (cross cultural chemistry) - 2006

Drosophila titanus - 2011 - ongoing

Selective Breeding for Titan

Drosophila titanus is an ongoing project which through a process of experimentation and artificial selection aims to breed a species of fruit fly that would be theoretically capable of living on Saturn's largest moon Titan. While being a virtually impossible project to 'successfully' complete, Drosophila titanus sites itself as a process within the ongoing discourse surrounding the complex relationships between art and science. By necessity the project needs to adhere to a rigourous scientific methodology, however it endeavours to extract artistic metaphor, poetry and ambiguity from these apparent creative restrictions. Concurrently the work embraces several interwoven narratives and concepts related to issues of species, artificially created organisms and the disquieting quest for biological perfection.

Drosophila titanus - 2011 - ongoing

Xanadu_1 - 2012

Xanadu_1 is a scale diorama of the area of Titan in which the Huygens probe landed in 2005.

The diorama is created from obsessive attention to Cassini and Huygens data, the wealth of maps, charts, radar scans and photographic images at our disposal. Ultimately these dioramas will recreate the exact same conditions as they are found on Titan, with cryogenic systems allowing temperatures low enough to allow liquid methane and the formations of organic aerosols such as tholins.

Xanadu_1 – the first in this series – is an overview, a visualisation of a 4km radius around the location in which Huygens landed. Dense atmospheric smog, persistent rain and rivulets are present, but using water in liquid form and ultrasonically produced vapours at room temperature this time.

A remote controlled camera positioned at a certain height and trajectory above the landscape from which Huygens reported back some of its most astounding images allows us to place our awareness momentarily within the descending probe. While our broader attention is directed to the wider landscape before us, the detail of the emerging mountain tops and eroded features begins to become apparent. Our attention is split between the real and the virtual, consistent with our common experience by proxy afforded to us by space probes and planetary landers. We are there and we are not there.

Xanadu_1 - 2012

small work for robot and insects - 2002 - 2003

a robot attempts to share information with colony of live crickets

'small work for robot and insects' has evolved over a period of three years. v1 was a commission from digitalsummer01: inter[face] to produce a small sound based piece of work, and formed part of a series of investigations into interfaces between natural and technological systems. The work consisted of a group of crickets and a simple quadruped robot existing in a large glass tank, seperated by a glass divider. The sound of the cricket song was transmitted to the robot which made a series of random movements in response.

v2 was commissioned by Arnolfini Live and is a much more sophisticated work. A new hexapod robot was designed and built from scratch and a neural network brain was programmed by Brian Lee Yung Rowe of Muxspace, New York. The robot is now able to listen intelligently to the cricket song and attempt to devise a unique language with which to communicate with them or provoke them into certain behaviours.

small work for robot and insects - 2002 - 2003