o-bean

Important

>>

Product

>>

Information

>>

Guide

O-BeanO-BeanO-Bean

Congratulations, you and your O-Bean were made for each other.

CONTENTS>>

1>>

Ready Eat Up Go>>P3

>>2>>

Plants Human Technology>>P5

>>3>>

Animals Human Technology >>P15

>>4>>

Human Environment Technolgoy Future>>P20

>>

1Ready

>> Eat Up

>>Go

What’s in O-Bean?>>

O-Bean is an organic database carrying the information of our exhibition, Organ-IC, in a genetic way - actually transferring gene into information inside your body, isn’t it REVOLU-

TIONARY (Well, this is not an Apple Product)?

>>

What’s Organ-IC>>

Have you ever thought of what “organic” really means to you? just to eat healthy? Not at all! Being organic is definitely a philosophy - a way how you see yourself, how you see the other living creatures on the Earth and also our environment in a way to understand our relation-

ship.>>

So, Organ-IC is about environment-human(whatever order it is) relationship - in term of technology.

>>Well, isn’t the OB the best medium ever as the interface how you can play with Organ-IC? Imagine. What’s the relationship between us, mankind, and other living creatures and en-vironment on the Earth? Your Pet kept in House? No. Your Plant on your desk? No. Food

is definitely a the most direct relationship between us, right? (Well men could also be some animals’ food and our body just goes back to the earth once we are dead) Food is definitely

showing how energy flow between us, in a very practical and visualized way. So, in this way, OB, well of course it’s still a bean, is already part of the whole system and tells things about this system by using this system to illustrate - and I would consider it as a kind of NEW ME-

DIA coz it carries information in a revolutionary way.

>>

4

2Plants

>>Human

>>technology

Jurema Action Plant>>

“Henceforth it is the ways of living on this planet the are in question, in the context of the ac-celeration of techno-scientific mutations and of considerable demographic growth. Through

the continuous development of machinic labour, multiplied by the information revolution, productive forces can make available an increasing amount of time potential human activity.

But to what end?”>>

This is a very interesting quotation from Felix Guatarri, which suggests us to think about how we, mankind, are related to technology and machines. Jurema Action Plant(JAP) - by Ivan Genriques - definitely brings us a new way to examine how we look at technology in a

way interpreting the relationship between us and other living organisms on the Earth.>>

Ivan Henriques, a multidisciplinary artist and researcher working in multimedia installations examining different perceptions of time, memory and environment. JAP is an interactive bio-machine work which servers as an interface between a sensitive plant, Mimosa Pudica, and

human. But the question is: How does it work?>>

6

JAP reacts on our interaction with the Mimosa - the direct communication between humans and plants makes the machine moves. Well, JAP is not just a machine which allows us to talk to the Mimosa whenever we want - it works with respect to the time perception of the plant!

Dun take JAP as an machine which works just after pressing a button; You might have to wait until the leaves are open so that it enable the plant to feel your touch again. Plants don’t really have nerves, wires nor cables, but they have an electrical signal traveling their cells. So, in JAP project, the Mimosa is fitted with electrodes and places on a robotic structure

where a signal amplifier reads the differences in the electromagnetic field around the plant to determine when it is being touched. In this way, whenever any part of the plant is being

touched, the Mimosa would move away from the person touching it.>>

7

Well, imagine, if the plants could tell the touch and the signals released by the leaves can be measured, does it mean that plants have consciousness? So...if plants have consciousness,

how should we look at them? >>

“Are the mechanics found in some plants species an intelligence? Do plants feel? How do they respond to the environment? Are Plants considered in a lower level than us because they

don’t move and communicate in the same timescale as ours?” >>

JAP actually is suggesting us other ways to understand environment and also other living organisms on Earth - living sustainably and organically is not only apply on our agriculture, but also to think about how we should be living with or communicate with nature. JAP also

suggests us a way how we can understand this world from a view of plant (which actually as-sumes that plants have consciousness - what do you think?). I would say JAP is also suggest-ing us another way of understanding plants as a new medium which carrying information in term of electronics. And also a new way to examine the way how we look at machines - are they just a machinic labour? Is there any organic way to see them as part of our eco-system?

>>By the way, if plants, as mentioned by Ivan, actually have memory, is it possible to write history by their memory as JAP also suggests an interface which allows we communicate

with each other. This is actually a very brand new way to understand our world - human is no longer standing at the middle of the world.

>>What do you think/feel, man?

>>

8

Morphotheque #8 and #9

>>

Why are Carrots Orange? Have you ever thought of that?>>

The image above in fact is showing the spectrum of colours carrots acually we used to have in real world - it is definitely not made by Photoshop for graphic - and in fact we

can find carrots in different colours in the World (Well, at least we can find white ones in Hong Kong). However, in most countries, even in Hong Kong, we tend to say carrots are

in orange - WHY?>>

9

It is political - suggested by Driessens & Verstappen, two Amsterdam based artist couple who worked together especially on generative art since 1990. D & V suggested that “The

Netherlands made orange carrots particularly popular in the 17th century as an emblem of the House of Orange and the struggle for Dutch independence.” Well, although Carrot Mu-seum claimed that this tale is sort of apocryphal - the question raised from this is: How we

modify plants in term of politics?>>

The collections of D & V show us other forms of carrots and potatoes, actually we won’t see them in market, which were rejected in distribution centres just because they don’t present

the “proper size or shape” of a carrot or a potato. Isn’t kind of weird?>>

Here’s the same question again: Is an organic, sustainable life means to eat healthy?>>

Definitely NOT! D & V’s collections in fact raised a question - how we actually see or treat plants? We shaped them because of political or economic reasons - well, just to tribute this to a somebody or just to raise the sales volume - but in fact, the shaped plants are also shaping

us!>>

Whatever the reasons why we shaped the plants in this way, but the stereotyped plants in fact has already rooted in our mind. Well, when you see those carrots and potatoes in “improper

shape, size and colour”, what comes to your mind? Well, definitely you would have regarded them as diseased or genetically retarded. Altering Nature? We Can; but don’t forget - nature

is also altering us, as always.>>

The collections are also interesting in a way that they are presented in a physical archive - which is definitely different from the poster I got from the internet. So...is it the time that we could actually turn some so-called old media into new media again? This is very interesting that we are now in the information age - we take things as 1 and 0 which probably suggests

the way how we understand the World and the way how we manipulate the World.>>

Is it the time for us to take a look if the World is still organic if we simply look at things as how we look at them in digital world - where you could simply create, manipulate or even

delete them?

>>

10

The Fruit Computer Laboratory

>>

How organic a computer could be? Well, The Fruit Computer Laboratory by Alejandro Tamayo is now trying to push the limit. Well, there has been a forecast that we will be using “hybrid” computers running a combination of technology and living organic tissue within 10

to 15 years; But, how does it work?>>

So...in order to understand the fruit computer, we have to make sure we know how the to-day’s computers work - they actually represent binary values, simply take them as 1 and 0, based on little changes in voltage. The values are associated with the physical properties of semi-conductive materials which you are take them simply as switches, which get closed or opened and allow or impede the flow or current and represent this way one electric flow or

no electric flow, 1 and 0.>>

So, Alejandro suggests if we could think of other ways to represent binary information - this is the basic idea of fruit computer.

>>“But, could chemical reactions in fruits be also used to create on-off switches, the basic

building blocks of computer logic and memory? would it be possible to create a computer with fruits? This project proposes to create a temporary laboratory, open to the general

public, that will raise questions and reflections about the construction of a future computer based on fruits”

>>

11

Well, Alejandro has selected two fruits with closed pH values, lemon and mandarin, and try-ing to use two values to represent logic zero and logic one respectively. With the facilitation

of commercial pH meter, adding drops of one juice or another is possible to program and also to reprogram the bit of memory as many times as desired.

>>Although the project are still kind of experimental, it is very interesting that it is where art,

science and technology meet and they are all represented in a so-called organic ways. But, is it really that organic? Of course, i do see a lot of possibilities in this project which is sort of

exciting. First, the project itself is definitely a media art which is trying to use a different me-dium, the fruit, to talk about the future of the medium which we are now mostly relying on, the computer. In this way, it sounds very interesting because computing is based on the in-

sight that we will soon be surrounded by large collections of autonomous systems, which are equipped with sensors and actuators so that the computers could be aware of their environ-ment, communicate freely, and organise themselves in order to perform actions and services

that seem to be required.>>

However, does it change our ways of interpreting how environment-technology-human rela-tionship? I dun know coz Alejandro didn’t really talk much upon this issue. Of coz an organ-ic computer has its meaning, but I bet what we need more is like to think more about how we

could really make use of our technology.>>

If not, why bothers an organic computer? Just because a wetware computer is possible?

>>12

Potato Tree(This is a piece of MINE!)

>>

How’s our information gathered nowadays? Let’s take a look at internet - definitely struc-tured in a shape of a chain of potatoes, which are showing the co-relationship between dif-

ferent fragments - which is sort of another presentation and storytelling of our everyday life, in a way of not being presented in a tree system showing the causes and the results in a very

traditional way.

13

So, have you ever thought of peeping at the future? What’s coming next when we are nearly at the end of the post-modernism? - Potato Tree actually is not an answer but a question

towards this as this is definitely important to us, especially those in his 20’s, as it does not only affect the way how we tell a story and structure our information, but also could be a

philosophy.>>

Potato Tree in fact is a ready-made generative piece showing in OB with different layers of meaning-making. The piece is actually consisted of a glass box filled with dark soil and a

slice of potato. The potato will grow into a plant and then have more potatoes after the place gets faded. And the potatoes left in the soil will develop into another individual plant.

>>This is interesting in a way of suggesting a way of combining two systems into one, which

inspires the way how we think and organize our information.>>

And also, as it is a generative piece, the product, itself, is sort of unpredictable and leave us a large room of self interpretation and self reflection - for example, what if the plants go

dead? a sign telling us the system is actually dying because of the information flooding?>>

Well, is this piece too general? Who knows? Maybe it is also examining the relationship between technology and environment with the minimum manipulation of mankind?

>>Leave those questions to the audience and they will finish the piece, right?

>>

14

3Animals

>>Human

>>technology

Que Le Cheval En MoiMay The Horse Live in Me

>>

May the horse live in me? This is an attempt at bio-art and extreme body art in which the animal foreign body, here the horse, is hybridized with the human body by means of an injection of horse blood, plasma in fact. Marion Laval-Jeantet & Benoit Mangin actually

have been exploring trans-species relationships and the questioning of scientific methods and tools. Over the course of several months, Marion has prepared her body by allowing to be in-jected with horse immunoglobulins, the glycoproteins that circulate in the blood serum, and which, for example, can function as antibodies in immune response. They called this process as “mithridatization”, after Mithridates VI of Pontus who cultivated an immunity to poisons

by regularly ingesting sub-lethal doses of the same.>>

“ I had the feeling of being extra-human,” explained Marion. “I was not in my usual body. I was hyper-powerful, hyper-sensitive, hyper-nervous and very diffident. The emotionalism of

an herbivore. I could not sleep. I probably felt a bit like a horse.”>>

The artists actually take this as a self-experiment which aimed to blur the boundaries be-tween species - but is it really so? Being an extra-human, to me, sounds like still human-ori-ented which is still advocating a hierarchy between species according to our recognition. And another question is like - how’s it different from cyborg? Hybridization with horse is actually trying to putting human and technology together, which I don’t really see it is different from a cyborg, which putting human and machine together. Or should I take it this way - are we

still taking nature as a machine only?>>

I thought this piece is suggesting a total different way of seeing our nature as what “The Race” suggests - which is definitely interesting! Are we still dominating animals, oh i should

say, the nature? Or should we include ourselves in nature and see how we go with it?

>>

16

The Ever Changing Tide

>>Now this is the Law of the Jungle - as old and as true as the sky; and the wolf that shall keep it must prosper, but the wolf that shall break it must die. And as the creeper that girdles the tree trunk, the Law runneth forward and back; For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and

the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.>>

When you are eating food, do you have this in mind? - I bet not; but in fact, food is definitely even more political than this law, as we have talked about potatoes and carrots. Well, now, we are trying to examine the relationship between human and environment in somehow an

economic way.>>

The Ever Changing Tide in fact is a project involves collection, identification and docu-mentation of numerous species of aquatic organism available for consumption at various

Flushing seafood markets. In December 2000, Brandon Ballengee, a multidisciplinary artists exploring the boundaries between art, science and technology, began to search the area for

various species with the intention of collection each kind available. Each week the specimens are documented and preserved. These markets actually are providing amazingly rich frag-

ments for examining sustainable ecosystems.>>

In fact, this project is very valuable in a sense that the content of the archive actually provid-ing us a very maximum way to understand how we are related to the marine ecosystem. Why are we selling those fishes other than other species? How’s the sales related to the way how

we see ocean? How did the technology actually help, or to hinder our fishery industry?>>

Last question: How did we constantly manipulate the earth’s waters and its inhabitants?

>>

17

?

The Race

>>

Who do you think you are? - this is the first question Michael Burton asked in his project.>>

In The Race, Michael asks us to reconsider ourselves to be more than just our DNA, but a highly complex co-evolved organism, part animal part conglomeration of bacteria, microbes

and parasites - which is so interesting that we are now just not to consider ourselves as an organism, but also a container which carries other living organisms in order to offer another perspectives to look at eugenic enhancement, and also to recognise our evolutionary past as

our symbiotic future.>>

The first project is about maggots, which have long been used throughout medical history as a painless way of treating wounds by removing dead and infected tissues while leaving

healthy ones; but we have left using them when antibiotics were first introduced in the 1940s.>>

18

The second project in The Race is Pet Dander. Domestic Animals kept in the home may help our immune systems by exposing us to a wealth of pet dander, which is dead skin cells, hair and parasites the animal harbours. However, thanks to the selective breeding practice and genetic engineering, those nowadays’ pets are designed not to expose us to allergenics like pet hair. As a result, Michael designed a “hybrid” animal, Pet Dander, which is particularly designed to harbour dead skin, pet hair in order to “generously” pass the parasites to the us

when we embrace and pet it.>>

There are other projects in The Race, such as commensal Bacteria, Fingernail growth. They are all designed in a way to explore the co-existence of human and other living organisms.

>>What do you think? Do you think we are really healthier than those who lived before antibi-otics were introduced? As suggested by Hygiene Hypothesis, exposure to infectious agents

in early childhood helps boosting our immune systems against allergic diseases. Well, in this hyper-hygienic era, we seem to be healthier coz we have killed all the bacteria or other micro-organisms around us by spraying our homes with antibacterial products which claims that they can eliminate 99% of all bacteria; but the fact is we are suffering more allergic dis-

eases, like asthma, in more developed areas which are supposed to be more hygienic.>>

So, should we try to understand the other living organisms in another way? Maybe we would have a better life if we won’t regard soil, inserts, bacteria as something dirty which should be

eliminated from our lives; and to evolve with them, rather than just to against them.

>>

19

4Human

>>Environment

>>Technology

>> Future

Game Boy Advanced>>L’Hospice

>>

How we see life? And how we see death? These questions actually affect the way how we see ourselves and also the nature - however, we somehow couldn’t really define what they

are in a very concrete way:>>

“ It is still a challenge for scientists and philosophers to define life in unequivocal terms. Defining life is difficult - in part - because life is a process, not a pure substance. any defini-tion must be sufficiently broad to encompass all life with which we are familiar, and it should be sufficiently general that, with it, scientists would not miss life that may be fundamentally

different from life on Earth.”>>

21

Patricia Piccinini’s Game Boys Advanced may be leading us to find part of the answer - by raising our concerns to cloning, which is definitely about technology, human and also the

environment. This work is really sort of disturbing by showing a couple of boys attached to a handheld video game; but when you get closer, you will see two boys seem to be twins with prematurely wrinkled. Well, they are, in fact, not really twins but clones. Patricia in fact is reflecting on the reports that Dolly the sheep, which is the successfully cloned sheep, was

actually aging at a more rapid rate than would be expected - so should we still keep going in this way to take life? Are we trying to take mankind as an individual medium which carries genetic information without looking at the science-human-environment relationship seri-

ously? Well, sounds sort of philosophic but actually this is one of the ways how we, Chinese, think about life - which advocates the interrelationship between mankind and the nature.

>>Well, whenever there’s lives, there must be death - which means in order to understand life,

we have to think about death too.>>

Gilles Barbier’s L’Hospice, The Nursing House, somehow inspires me to some extent upon this issue. L’Hospice actually is talking about how our societies’ obsession with eternal youth

by showing how american superheroes were sent to vegetate when they got too shabby - somehow its also showing how we fight against aging, a process leading to death. But is it

possible to see it in another way - when you, no matter who you are, face death, you actually could only stand there and wait for it. But what keeps annoying me is that if we have to go to the nursing house when we get old( of coz this is not a must), where should we go when we are dead? This is somehow leading a question how we see ourselves in an organic sense of

eco-system.>>

And also leading us to think about our, as a human, future.

>>

22

HEY, JUST STH MORE>>

Hey, has OB brought you a brand new way of experiencing art? Once I have started design-ing the museum, I have been thinking - What is the position of museum nowadays?

>>I have heard once about how a team works to organize an exhibition - “ They all, guys from public relation department and marketing department, suddenly got so busy. There was a cup with a feather on the desk; there was a guy wearing a weird hat with high-heel; there is an-other gal kept putting on those lips stickers! And then we went to the conference room with

those weird guys.>>

You could see so many pictures hanging in the conference room. I walked around and all pic-tures were about exhibits. Eleanor came and said, “ We are having a surrealist exhibition next

year; what you all see here are the exhibits suggested - they wanna have some advices.”>>

This is actually a story telling what we need in holding an exhibition - creativity! To me, I would say the role of museum definitely has changed - we are no longer just taking museum as a place to display author’s artworks, right? A museum could be part of the context of the work as suggested by conceptualism, it is actually a place where the meaning of the work is

generated! Isn’t it true?>>

In this sense, I am trying to suggest another approach to look at Museology - a museum is actually making meaning of the pieces! Thanks to our digital age, no fixed object = no fixed time = no fixed meaning = no fixed meaning! So, is museum still a place only trying to de-

liver what the author said faithfully to the readers? NO! So why don’t we hold an exhibition trying to twist the original meaning of the pieces?

>>In OrganIC, I am trying to take a first step and see if it is possible - well, not really that obvi-

ously, but at least i have a try.

>>

Reference List

>>

www.we-make-moeny-not-art.com/

>>

Felix Guattari, The Three Ecologies (Athlone Contemporary European Thinkers), ( Continuum, 2008)

>>

http://ivanhenriques.wordpress.com/

>>

http://notnot.home.xs4all.nl/index.html

>>

http://medialab-prado.es/interactivos

>>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life

>>