2024
Linda Dement and Laura Splan in collaboration with the Cardiovascular Regeneration Group at UTS
interactive immersive 360° installation with 16-channel spatial soundscape
interactive environment production by Michael Bullo
World Premiere: December 2, 2024
Presented by AusBioprintTM
at UTS DATA ARENA
UTS Building 7, Level 2, Room 025
67 Thomas St., Ultimo NSW 2007
From the deepest mud grows the most beautiful lotus.
—Thic Nat Han
“Bloom” is an immersive interactive experience created by Linda Dement and Laura Splan in collaboration with the Cardiovascular Regeneration Group at UTS. The otherworldly 3D environment invites viewers to traverse a biotechnological landscape layered with artifacts of the laboratory. Circumscriptions of scientific “success” and “failure” are destabilized through an audiovisual entanglement of digital and biological worlds. A landscape strewn with microscopy, molecular models, photographs, and sound recordings creates poetic connections among the often-unseen detritus of the scientific process of experimentation and observation.
In research, as in making art, our hypotheses and ideas meet formidable material resistance when we attempt to make them real. Our physical constructions, more often than not, fail. In failure the real work reveals itself. In failure we are brought to a cruel halt and faced with our errors. Glimmering within that dismay are possibilities that live outside our own assumptions and limited knowledge. Again and again, we deal with the unknown, experimenting with things beyond our current understanding, and watch as our well-articulated theories and preconceived beliefs collapse in the wreckage. From that wreckage though, an authentic trajectory can reveal itself and if faithfully followed, might bring something truly extraordinary into being.
“Bloom” both visualises and connects material aspects of failure and success from the scientific research process. In an underlying swamp of breakage, noise, waste, and infection, giant root systems draw from dark filth to feed delicate glowing molecules of success far above. If we venture close to those exquisite perfect molecules though, they fall apart. In the immersive space we can travel from far down in the black depths up to the glowing surface, venturing closer in or pulling back for a wider view anywhere along the way. Ethereal sounds and animations are triggered as visitors navigate the environment and explore the elements embedded in the landscape.
Root-like structures function as a scaffold that situates both computer-generated and photographically documented imagery. A series of 3D protein models represent the ingredients of hydrogels invented by the Cardiovascular Regeneration Group at UTS for 3D bioprinting. The 3D models reflect AI-generated images created with text prompts that included excerpts from their bioengineering research. Images and textures on the “roots” include photography and microscopy donated from the CRG’s failed bioprinting experiments. The soundscape was composed from the artists’ field recordings made in biotech laboratories including robotic machines, drains, scanners and automated devices as well as direct contact microphone recordings of bioprinters.
From the deepest mud grows the most beautiful lotus.
—Thic Nat Han
“Bloom” is an immersive interactive experience created by Linda Dement and Laura Splan in collaboration with the Cardiovascular Regeneration Group at UTS. The otherworldly 3D environment invites viewers to traverse a biotechnological landscape layered with artifacts of the laboratory. Circumscriptions of scientific “success” and “failure” are destabilized through an audiovisual entanglement of digital and biological worlds. A landscape strewn with microscopy, molecular models, photographs, and sound recordings creates poetic connections among the often-unseen detritus of the scientific process of experimentation and observation.
In research, as in making art, our hypotheses and ideas meet formidable material resistance when we attempt to make them real. Our physical constructions, more often than not, fail. In failure the real work reveals itself. In failure we are brought to a cruel halt and faced with our errors. Glimmering within that dismay are possibilities that live outside our own assumptions and limited knowledge. Again and again, we deal with the unknown, experimenting with things beyond our current understanding, and watch as our well-articulated theories and preconceived beliefs collapse in the wreckage. From that wreckage though, an authentic trajectory can reveal itself and if faithfully followed, might bring something truly extraordinary into being.
“Bloom” both visualises and connects material aspects of failure and success from the scientific research process. In an underlying swamp of breakage, noise, waste, and infection, giant root systems draw from dark filth to feed delicate glowing molecules of success far above. If we venture close to those exquisite perfect molecules though, they fall apart. In the immersive space we can travel from far down in the black depths up to the glowing surface, venturing closer in or pulling back for a wider view anywhere along the way. Ethereal sounds and animations are triggered as visitors navigate the environment and explore the elements embedded in the landscape.
Root-like structures function as a scaffold that situates both computer-generated and photographically documented imagery. A series of 3D protein models represent the ingredients of hydrogels invented by the Cardiovascular Regeneration Group at UTS for 3D bioprinting. The 3D models reflect AI-generated images created with text prompts that included excerpts from their bioengineering research. Images and textures on the “roots” include photography and microscopy donated from the CRG’s failed bioprinting experiments. The soundscape was composed from the artists’ field recordings made in biotech laboratories including robotic machines, drains, scanners and automated devices as well as direct contact microphone recordings of bioprinters.
Linda Dement is an Australian multidisciplinary artist, working in the fields of digital arts, photography, film, and writing non-fiction. Originally a photographer, her digital practice spans the programmed, performative, textual and virtual. Her work deals with issues of disturbance, commingling psycho-sexual corporeality and the digital and electronic, giving form to the difficult territory of the unbearable and conflicted. Dement's programmed and still image work has been widely exhibited internationally and locally, including at the Institute of Contemporary Art London, Ars Electronica Austria, multiple International Symposia of Electronic Art and Impakt Media Arts Festivals in Europe. She is twice winner of the Australian National Digital Art Award and has been awarded a New Media Arts Fellowship by the Australia Council for the Arts. Her work is held in collections such as the Bibliotèque Nationale de France, Australian Video Art Archive, New York Filmmakers Co-op and the Daniel Langlois Foundation. Previous collaborations have included “Moving Forest London” with Shu Lea Cheang and Martin Howse as well as “Eurydice” with Kathy Acker.
Laura Splan is an American artist working at the intersections of Science, Technology, and Culture. Her research-based studio practice and interdisciplinary collaborations culminate in multimedia artworks, exhibitions, and events. Her work reframes artifacts of the posthuman landscape to interrogate the “GUI/gooey” or liminal spaces that mediate our relationship to nature and to our bodies. Through embodied encounters that leverage sensations of touch, light, and sound, Splan’s work engages audiences with complexity through curiosity, wonder, and play. Splan’s internationally recognized artworks and exhibitions have been presented at the Museum of Modern Art (NYC), Brooklyn Museum (NYC), Musea Brugge (Bruges), Museum of Arts & Design (NYC), Centre d’Art Santa Mònica (Barcelona), Pioneer Works (NYC), SÍM (Reykjavík), Galerie FOFA (Montréal), and The Nobel Prize Museum at Liljevalchs (Stockholm). Commissions include projects for the CDC Foundation, Vanderbilt Planetarium, Beall Center for Art+Technology Black Box Projects, and Bruges Triennial. Her research has been supported by the Simons Foundation, Jerome Foundation, EY Metaverse Lab, and NEW INC at the New Museum. Her contributions to contemporary art have garnered numerous awards including AS220’s National Endowment for the Arts Digital Arts Fellowship.
The Cardiovascular Regeneration Group at UTS is led by Dr. Carmine Gentile, an internationally recognized expert in 3D bioprinting and stem cell technologies. His recent studies focus on novel molecular and cellular approaches to treat cardiovascular disease, including myocardial infarction and heart failure. These studies are based on the use of “mini-hearts” he developed as “bioink” for human heart tissues. In 2016, he was invited as Visiting Research Fellow at Harvard Medical School, where he worked towards novel in-vitro models using mini-hearts to study human heart physiology.
Project support provided by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its arts funding and advisory body.
Special thanks to Thomas Ricardello & Darren Lee (Data Arena), Dr. Andrew Burrell, Dr. Monica Monin
Additional 3D environment development by Woody Sullender
