Tendrils
An exhibition of works in progress, hosted by BioDwelling at The OME, Newcastle University, 20-23 March 2023
As the sweet pea climbs towards the sky, tender green shoots lead the way, blithely spiraling in search of support, with no way of knowing what they might encounter. So too is our search for ways to cling to the surface of the earth in uncertain times. Unfurling delicate tendrils that we hope might find a firm hold.
The researchers at Newcastle University’s Hub for Biotechnology in the Built Environment (HBBE) have sent out such tendrils. Promises of multispecies sustainability seeking purchase against a backdrop of climate uncertainty and capitalist extraction. Tendrils in the form of new materials, systems and processes that twist and turn, in search of sustenance. Built structures grown from mycelium and knitted fabric, bacteria that can generate fuel or food, or that die as calcified mass to fill cracks in walls, seasonal building façades fashioned from bacterial biofilms. Just as the tendrils of the climbing plant cannot know what they will encounter, we cannot know with certainty which of these new endeavours will find traction and spiral towards the light.
The BioDwelling project flows through these tendrils, a chemical signal from tendril to surface, sensing the environment. BioDwelling brings audiences from outside of the HBBE into contact with research projects to share knowledge on how and whether such tendrils might find ways to hold fast.
Tendrils with no way of knowing is an exhibition of the points at which tendrils from within the HBBE meet outside contact. The works on show are the result of growing relationships prompted by questions seeded at the outset of the BioDwelling project. Questions such as, What role does responsibility play in making and living with biotechnological materials? How can we build responsible and sustainable relations to more-than-humans? How can we relate to a building that lives? Does it become part of the family? These questions are posed both to and with a growing community of BioDwellers – people who have come together from outside of the academic institution to consider and contribute to the work of the HBBE through creative practice.
The exhibition shares work inspired and supported by the research of the Hub for Biotechnology in the Built Environment, which the BioDwelling community have contributed to through events that took place from April 2022 to March 2023.
Photo credits: Saya Rose Naruse, Helen Johnston
Works
Photo Credits: Saya Rose Naruse
HOME to OME
Sneha Solanki
Home to OME is a family album which charts a family’s history through durational cohabitation from 2003 to 2023 with the living body known as a SCOBY – Symbiotic Colony of Bacteria and Yeast.
Over a period of two decades, we have grown, nurtured and ingested the liquid made by the viscous spongy and jelly-like body of the SCOBY.
Living with this organic body, also known as Volga jellyfish, sponge, Nile river algae, sea treasure, tea fungus, elixir of long life, little Japanese mother, Egyptian seaweed, tea mould, tea heart, pellicle, charitable mushroom to name a few, we have benefitted, interacted and infected each other in our ambient living.
Wall Companion
Hazel Brill
Wall Companion is a domestic object emerging from ongoing studio experiments that intermingle bacteria cellulose, metal, AI generated designs, and physical mechanisms, in a process of human collaboration with different types of ‘life-forms’; artificial and microbial. Inspired by biotechnology and gothic horror fiction, recent works imagine building materials as hosts for fictional and bacterial life. A chatbot companion has been advising research decisions.
Listen with Mother?
Concept: Louise Mackenzie, Kaajal Modi, Ruth Morrow
Installation Design: Louise Mackenzie
Listen with Mother? is an audio installation that feeds conversation to a living kombucha culture whose fate remains uncertain. Situated voices from architecture, artistic and domestic practices explore diverse perspectives on more-than-human care, kinship, control, nurture and culture from the lab, the gallery and the home through the expanded concept of the ‘mother’.
OME Brew
Concept Beer
Louise Mackenzie, Greg Young, John Allan
Beer analysis by Brewlab Sunderland.
Label Design: Holger Ballweg, Brian Degger, Katarina Gladkova, Jamie Hall, Rebecca Huggan, Shelly Knotts, Louise Mackenzie, Dan Raskl, Jim Spendlove and Greg Young
OME Brew reuses household waste to create beer from bacteria that feed on waste-paper. Combining biotechnology with ritual, and science with news stories, OME Brew is a (nearly) quaffable beer washed clean of inflated promises claimed through biotechnology headlines. The project highlights the potential for community household waste fermentation practices.
Sh*t Happens!
Louise Mackenzie
Paper design and print in collaboration with George Stewart, Overlay Press; natural inks, Katie Pollard; illustration, Jim Spendlove.
Sh*t Happens! is a collaborative project supported by the HBBE, East Street Arts in Leeds and The NewBridge Project in Newcastle, which explores perceptions of human waste and considers how we might create sustainable toilet facilities in urban settings. The first output from this project is a toilet-based audio installation and (conceptually) flushable toilet paper zine publication. Although biodegradable, the solubility and flushability of the zine has not yet been tested in volume, we suggest reading with pleasure and flushing with caution!
VonFabric
Iulianiya Grigoryeva
VonFabric is a biomaterial made from household leek waste. The aim of the project is to create circularity by using leek waste as biomaterial within a domestic environment. The process can potentially can adopted with similar food waste, including onion skins, garlic, green onion etc., which conceivably will decline food waste volume.
VonFabric is supported and inspired by HBBE research projects Culina@OME and Energising Waste.
FOOD WASTE RECIPES for growing bacterial cellulose
Roxana Caplan
Acknowledging the large amounts of food becoming waste every day, this project investigates the potential of using food waste as a resource for biomaterial creation, in order to expand the scale, production and use of bacterial cellulose in uncontrolled DIY settings. The project, aspiring to find circular methods that use local waste to grow local materials, explored ways of synthesising bacterial cellulose from nutrients contained in various food wastes, instead of using raw, often expensive, ingredients, aiming to identify working recipes and to find a proactive solution to reduce food waste.
FOOD WASTE RECIPES is supported and inspired by HBBE research projects Culina@OME and Energising Waste.
Biographies
John Allan
University of Oxford, Engineered Biotechnology Research Group
John is a synthetic biologist working as a postdoc in the Department of Engineering Science at Oxford University. His research concerns exploring control of synthetic genetic programs, developing new chassis organisms and developing biotechnologies with synthetic bacterial communities.
Hazel Brill
Hazel Brill works across video, sound, sculpture, puppetry, and animatronics, creating theatrical multi-media installations that attempt to animate the inanimate. She graduated from her Fine Art Media MFA at Slade School of Fine Art in 2017 and is currently in second year of a funded PhD at Newcastle University.
www.hazel-brill.com | @hazel_brill
Roxana Caplan
Roxana Caplan is a Masters of Architecture student at Newcastle University in her final year, interested in the potential of emerging biomaterials in architecture, and in how the implications of designing for and with other forms of life might influence and change the traditional design process and practice of architecture. Her work has been supported by a Climate Leader Scholarship from Newcastle University and the HBBE, and publicly presented as workshops in collaboration with BioDwelling and Arthouses.
Iulianiya Grigoryeva
Iulianiya Grigoryeva is a Masters of Architecture student at Newcastle university and an artist with interest in the circularity of food waste, primary focusing on creating new bio materials from food scraps in the domestic environment. Her work has been supported by a Climate Leader Scholarship from Newcastle University and the HBBE, and publicly presented as workshops in collaboration with BioDwelling and the Great North Museum.
@gin_architect
Louise Mackenzie
Louise Mackenzie is an artist, curator and post-doctoral researcher at the HBBE. Her practice explores human relationships with both humans and non-humans, using methodologies based in process, chance, appropriation and translation. With an interest in experimental and experiential practices, sound and biotechnological media play an important role in her work. Mackenzie leads the BioDwelling project and is curator of Tendrils.
www.loumackenzie.com | @louisekmackenzie
Kaajal Modi
Kaajal Modi (she/they) is a multidisciplinary designer and creative researcher making with (and learning from) more-than-human symbiotic assemblages in diverse cultural contexts. Their practice works through co-design, participatory practices, cross-cultural interactions and live art to create situated and lively encounters between organisms (human, biological and ecological) with whom we share worlds.
www.kaajalmodi.com | @casualmouldy
Katie Pollard
Katie Pollard is an artist based in Newcastle upon Tyne. Her practice involves researching and experimenting with natural dyes and inks for use with natural fibres and materials. Exploring ways that natural dyeing can be used as a tool to boost wellbeing and connect people to each other and their local environment, Katie creates space and time for community building through natural processes. Her work has been publicly presented as workshops in collaboration with BioDwelling and the Great North Museum. @borrowedcolour
Sneha Solanki
Practicing as an interdisciplinary artist, Sneha Solanki’s work engages with the emergent, precarious and the overlooked. Solanki often produces works and events that utilise open, participatory and collaborative methods to engender knowledge and intersectional thinking. Her work encompasses microorganisms, modified biological life, invisible signals emitted from military bases, computer viruses and early media & net art. Solanki’s current research is focused on food ecologies through the lens of art, science and speculative design. http://electronicartist.net
Greg Young
Greg is a microbial ecologist interested in observing and harbouring the diversity of microbes. His work uses molecular techniques to survey which microorganisms live where and what traits enable them to colonise their habitats. As a big fan of beer, OME Brew was a perfect fit for his interests and expertise.
The BioDwelling Community
BioDwelling would like to acknowledge the support and involvement of our extended ‘family’ of BioDwellers. In this we include researchers at the Hub for Biotechnology in the Built Environment (HBBE) who have contributed to BioDwelling projects and all participants to BioDwelling events.
All of the works in this exhibition feature contributions from members of the BioDwelling Community. Some works are made by members of the community and others feature the voices and contributions of members of the community.
Further details about the BioDwelling project can be found here
Supported by
