12/12/2024
performative lecture
Photosynthesis
Kuba Bąkowski and guests
- As part of the Photosynthesis performance lecture, Kuba Bąkowski and invited guests – scientists, robotics engineers and specialists in industrial bio-processes – will talk about the latest bio-sculpture project. It will take the form of an autonomous, robotic, and AI-controlled rover integrated with a glass photo-bioreactor. The reactor will be inhabited by a colony of microscopic, intensively photosynthesizing algae. The bio-sculpture will follow sunlight depending on the time of day, falling from different directions in the interiors of the museum, gallery or other space presenting the project.
- Some species of algae consume up to a dozen times more carbon dioxide than vascular plants of the same biomass. In the process of photosynthesis, they release correspondingly more oxygen, which means that the bio-sculpture will actually improve the atmosphere in the building.
- Currently, university laboratories and industrial research institutes are conducting research on the possibilities of using algae, among others, as bio-cells producing electricity. Photosynthesis will reveal its true potential when algae begin to supply photoreceptors that initiate the rover’s movement systems with the current they produce. Then, the ability of the object to move towards the light will depend on the algae.
- Photosynthesis is a project in which Kuba Bąkowski, evoking the figure of the hybrid, proposes to consider it in the context of such interpenetration of the biosphere with the technosphere, where artificial intelligence algorithms cooperate with living organisms in a forced mutualistic relationship.
- Bąkowski’s artistic practice combines themes from various fields of science, technology, anthropology, natural history, and art, as reflected in his experimental projects in the domain of photography, sculpture, and multimedia. Bąkowski has exhibited his works at the Foksal Gallery, the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, and the Zachęta National Gallery in Warsaw, the Museum Moderner Kunst in Vienna, the Museé d’Art Moderne in Saint-Etienne, Artspace Sydney, Palazzo delle Arti Napoli, Chelsea Art Museum in New York, and the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh. He was a grant holder of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, the National Centre for Culture, the Capital City of Warsaw, the Trust for Mutual Understanding, Creative Scotland, and the Canada Council for the Arts.
