The video installation: HOST responds to my artist residency at the ‘bee house’, Queensland Brain Institute; where I have had the unique opportunity to find out first-hand just how it feels to enter an environment filled with bees and become a part of their world. My first surprise at the ‘bee house’ was that, for everyday experiments, protective clothing is not worn! At the beginning this made me feel vulnerable but before long I appreciated being without a barrier between myself and the bees. The connotations of this proximity became central to my artwork rationale as it developed. Research scientists: Carla Evangelista and Peter Kraft trained the bees to come and feed on honey smeared over the palm of my hand. After initially circling around me and then flying away, the bees began to land on my hand and feed - one at a time at first - but then in twos and threes. It was fascinating to watch them so closely and to feel the delicate vibrations of their wings as they hovered over my hands. The slow motion digital video footage of the bees feeding from my hands formed the source material for the video: HOST. It revealed not only the bee’s flying and navigational skills but also rare moments of nuanced intimacy between human being and bee. The menace of their sting was always present but, when seen in such great detail, the bees appeared unexpectedly vulnerable in what was essentially a perilous and poignant contiguity for both artist and bee within our fragile ecosystem.

…(y)ou have entered into the heart of a research project as a core participant. You were at once subject and object, (experimenting on) your very “ground-state” – your own material This project came about through the intersection of three seemingly disparate topics. The first of these was my on-going research into the “pluripotent” characteristics of adult stem cells; the second was recent theories in the area of mitochondrial DNA and the third my rediscovery of two of my grandmother’s favourite books. Whilst each of these subjects has individual significance, together, they became the starting-point for the artwork: “Changing Fates _matrilineal”.

Mellifera consists of an on-line interactive environment in Second Life which is linked to a complimentary series of real-time exhibitions in gallery and museum spaces. Central to this innovative, ecologically sensitive artwork is the artist's direct engagement with various aspects of bee behaviour at Queensland Brain Institute, where researchers are investigating cognition, navigation and communications in the honey bee. The artist's poetic and scientific interactions with the bees has inspired the development of mellifera's experimental series of human / computer interfaces that provide modes of sensory delivery for both virtual& real-world participant interactivity. www.mellifera.cc This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body. Supported by: Visual Arts Initiative, Caerleon Isle and the Visual & Sensory Neuroscience Group, Queensland Brain Institute (QBI), The University of Queensland.

“dolly 00121” references the short life of Dolly the cloned sheep, contemporary developments in biotechnology and a futuristic factory assembly line that produces replicated human “dollies”. The ‘dollies” resemble paper cut-outs of handholding girls from childhood craft classes however; here they are inflected with a dualistic configuration of the female as machine – both productively and reproductively. Their hybridity and ambiguous relationship with machines hints at cyborgian outcomes in the biological sciences when humanness may be a matter of degree… The videomicrograph time-lapse cellular image date shows fibroblast cells from Trish Adams’ forearm undergoing ‘apoptosis’ (induced cell death) in the laboratory. The image data has been digitally modified, recontextualised and combined with 3D animation footage. It forms part of Adams’ aesthetic enquiry into contemporary biomedical engineering’s implications and effects on expressions and representations of corporeality.

‘machina carnis’ involves both cutting-edge scientific stem cell research and an interactive installation. It aims to probe the role of interactive new media art in crossing the consciousness divide. Collaborating with a leading scientist in the field of Biotechnology, in the laboratory environment, Trish Adams cultured stem cells from her blood using a unique chemical formula that modified their development in order to convert them into cardiac cells which matured, clustered and began to beat. Adams considered that using her own stem cells was vital for developing viewer identification and empathy with the cellular image data to be used later in the installation. It also created a unique model where she became a “human guinea-pig” and was both the subject and the object of the research. The subsequent immersive installation: machina carnis, incorporates the digital videomicrograph image of Adams’ cells in a multi-layered interactive installation. Interactive technologies and a modified stethoscope are programmed for participant use. Viewers are encouraged to participate and engage with the installation; thus completing the artwork through their individual interactions and generating outcomes that involve their own “body machine”. 

In this animation I creatively re-interpreted time-lapse digital videomicrograph image-data of cultured fibroblast cells from the epidermis of my forearm undergoing ‘apoptosis’. ‘Apoptosis’ is the scientific term for “induced cell death” and I wanted to see how one of my own cells would look when subjected to this process. The outcomes of this experiment provided me with my first experience of looking at cellular behaviours in detail. I found that I had a tendency to attribute anthropomorphic characteristics to the cells and that these situated readings were shared by my scientific collaborator also. The animation: mitosos explores this human/cellular connection and is a playful parody of the issues of morphing, cloning, structural change and militant territorial attitudes that I attributed to the cells under fluorescence in culture. They are alluded to in a humorous, sensual and quasi-realistic manner that is emphasised by the unsophisticated use of 2D animation. My parody of the anthropomorphic traits that I purportedly observed in the scientific image data is illusory, subversive, and whimsical

Prior to the advent of computers scientists used machines called ‘kymographs’ to record data such as: ‘oscillations and other small temporal intervals’. The interactive installations: “Temporal Intervals” and “Wave Writer” reference the disparity between the ephemerality of data and the analogue processes of obsolete machines. Developing internet technologies were included in these installations enabling viewers to leave fragile traces of both real time and virtual interactions. The structure of the installations created a complex interplay between participants, machines and locations - merging and rupturing identities, data and spaces – and exploring constructions of presence and embodiment.

Wave Writer is an extended version of Temporal Intervals. It took place in Tallinn, Estonia as part of ISEA2004. Here, I had the opportunity to reconfigure the original work for a new gallery space and to explore the ways that developing internet technologies at that time enabled viewers in other locations to log onto the Wave Writer website and interact with both the machines and the participants in the real-time gallery space. Consequently, once again, the structure of the installation created a complex interplay between participants, machines and locations - with a particular emphasis on international engagement through widespread publicity in connection with ISEA.

Although it may be argued that, in its widest sense, interactivity has always played a part in the viewer’s relationship to art; the structure of the installation: ‘in vitro’ invites an explicit physical engagement. It provides an opportunity for individual participants to complete the work; to effect a symbiosis at the interstices of the fundamental subtleties that connect viewer and artwork. An array of glass petrie dishes glimmer dimly below one languid, suspended light source. A discrete, analogue mechanism allows a single participant to activate this light; bringing the installation to life in response to each individual who interprets the work according to their personal experience of it.