Скачать или смотреть Bricolage - Video Documentation

Bricolage is a research project surrounding the creation of autonomous, animated, living, biological entities that have the ability to self-assemble and are hosted in a suspended vessel (Incubator) custom made of clay, metal and glass. These living automatons are derived from sources loaded with the engrained cultural associations of three main materials: blood, heart and silk. Bricolage develops these associations and explores their cultural meanings, whilst at the same time manifests the visceral behaviour of heart muscle cells via movement.

The automatons are made from bio-engineered human heart muscle cells that grow on bodies (scaffolds) made of silk. The muscle cells beat in real time, manipulating the automatons' movement, and at times self-assemble to create a larger structure visible to the naked eye of gallery attendees.

The materiality of Bricolage is at the heart of the project as we have stripped the vital animated biological matter from the obscuring box usually given to it for practical reasons, and bring it alive and exposed to the public.

Beating heart muscle cells are embedded in/onto custom made silk bodies (scaffolds) and perform spontaneously throughout the duration of the exhibition. Viewers are positioned submissively under the cellular performance making it a challenge to view for extended periods, among other things, questioning the so called superiority of humans over non-human entities. The automatons have a strong physical presence in the gallery, where visitors can see them with their naked eye as we deliberately and successfully have grown them to a scale that doesn’t requires technological mediation (such as cameras, screens or microscopes) to view their movement or performance.

The stem cells that we are using to transform into beating heart muscle cells have originated from a drop of blood. We reprogrammed blood cells from human donors to become stem cells using cutting edge stem cell technology and then use differentiation protocols to transform these cells to cardio myocytes or heart muscle cells. The automaton’s bodies are made of silk for one because of its inherent cultural associations but also its widespread use as a biomaterial. We have successfully grown beating heart muscle cells over tiny silk scaffolds, thus creating autonomous movements of designed structures at a macro scale.
These are our living automatons.

The nature and relationship of the materials we use, blood, heart and silk are the driving force behind the project. We believe that the biological sorcery, or alchemy, that enables the conversion of a drop of blood into a living animated entity is something that needs to be explored from a cultural perspective. This is an intriguing, challenging and frankly, quite disturbing prospect.

Bricolages automatons are vital, ever changing and alive. They explore the conceptual and practical relationships between life and perceptions of vitality, whilst at the same time confront the viewer with their visceral performative presence.