Acquired Immunity. Art and Biology at Cultivamos Cultura

The Microdocumentaries and Q&A of Acquired Immunity art and biology at Cultivamos Cultura

Acquired Immunity Exhibition

Acquired immunity displays artworks arising from our residencies and invited artists. We bring together artworks that were created as a response to challenges from the local environment: natural, social, and other artists. A response that we compare to the way the immune system responds to new challenges.

Algorave by Toplap Barcelona (ES) 
Toplap Barcelona (ES) 

LIVE PARTY/ MUSIC EVENT Algoraves bring together the improvisation and the code scope of a live coding session with the languages and the rituals of the dance floor. During the live writing and reading of the code, and the unfolding of the musical improvisation, the audience dances, thinks and listens in a uniquely intertwined way, helping musicians make sense and do the real creative work in making a great party. 

On Code. The Uncertainty Of Meaning And Doing
Lina Bautista (CO), Daniel Moreno Roldán (ES), Agnès Pe (ES), Ángel Faraldo (ES), Carolina Jiménez (ES), Lluís Nacenta (ES) 

ROUNDTABLE: How does code interfere with the listening process? Code allows the ear to navigate the listening interface, while it happens to narrow its sensitive scope. It crosses the interface, the membrane which separates but also connects, unfolding the vibration of the air, the zone of inter/intra-action, negotiation and distribution of attention and meanings, between the (dis)orders of the emitted and the heard sounds. 

Imagining Godzilla
Andy Best (FI/UK)

The sea is a place of uncertainty. It is never still, always sighing even on the calmest of still summer nights. The Baltic is the second largest inland sea in the world, composed mainly of brackish water, a mix of saline inflow from the Atlantic together with fresh water run-off from its huge catchment area, which is four times the size of the sea itself. Today, the Baltic is one of the most polluted seas in the world. The continual flow of commercial shipping bringing raw materials, food and retail goods to ports around it leaves trails of pollution in its wake. The run-off of agricultural fertilizers, particularly nitrogen and phosphorus, via rivers on the coast, have led to eutrophication and the growth of massive algae blooms that are a feature of both the coastlines and open sea regions. Many factors, local and global alike, affect the continuing ecological catastrophe facing the Baltic.

Facing Uncertainty and Its Discontents 
Pau Alsina (ES), Roc Parés (ES/MX), Marina Garcés (ES), Joan Soler-Adillon (ES), Tere Badia (ES), Pau Waelder (ES).

ROUNDTABLE: While we get used to dealing with those events in which the probability of a certain situation occurring is not known: what does it mean to live in a context of uncertainty? How to take the risk of uncertainty and try to slide their gains? How arts, sciences, technologies and thought have learned from it and propelled their practices of uncertainty?  

Acquired Immunity - Guided Tours

Guided tours of the exhibition by the curator, Marta de Menezes, an artist, Adam Zaretsky, and an immunologist, Luis Graca, will provide different paths within the real and virtual spaces.

Liquid Matter
Laura Beloff (FI)

The boundary between wet and dry is blurring. Similarly, our expectations towards solid or soft objects and machines are being redefined. These developments are impacted by many different factors, from developments in biotechnology and life science to innovation in new materials and their behavior, among various other areas. Also, in the humanities and the arts, there has been a recent surge of interest towards material agencies and processes that are based on inorganic or biological matter and executed by non-human organisms. It could be said the realms of technology and biology – that is, the biologically grown and the artificially constructed – converge in liquid matter. This can be seen when looking into the methods and practices of biology, biotechnology and biochemistry, which involve technological tools and approaches to investigate biological organisms and create chemistry-based experiments, all of which typically take place in wet environments.

Acquired Immunity Guided Tour 1 - with live Q&A
Marta de Menezes

This episode features a guided tour of the exhibition by curator Marta de Menezes, followed by a live Q&A.

Acquired Immunity Guided Tour 2 - with live Q&A
Adam Zaretsky

This episode features a guided tour of the exhibition by invited artist Adam Zaretsky, followed by a live Q&A.

Acquired Immunity Guided Tour 3 - with live Q&A
Luis Graça

This episode features a guided tour of the exhibition by immunologist Luis Graça, followed by a live Q&A.

An Uncertain but Irresistible Revolution 
Héctor Ayuso (ES) with Carla Cascales Alimbau (ES), Xavi Cardona / Boldtron (ES), Enric Godes / Vasava (ES

ROUNDTABLE: In a technological world in which the present has eternalized and the oblivion is the security of the next innovation, what we call reality is a magma in which floats an endless number of images, data, pieces of information, flashbacks and promises of liberation. This fact requires us to find other rules, other ways of reading and new ways of looking through unexpected paths. 

Uncertainty with AI-terity
Koray Tahiroğlu (FI/TR)

The composition Uncertainty keeps the musician in a hesitant state of performance, providing a non-rigid but identifiable musical events, followed by ever shifting new sounds. Uncertainty is a composition written for the AI- terity instrument that comprises computational features of a particular artificial intelligence (AI) model to generate relevant audio samples for real- time audio synthesis. The unusual behaviour of the Al-terity puts the performer in an uncertain state during performance. Together with being able to move through timbre-changes in sonic space, the emergence of new sounds allows the musician to explore a whole new range of musical possibilities. Composition turns into a continuous state of playing, reformulating an idiomatic relationship with the Al-terity and opening up a fresh variety of musical demands.

Art and Science of the Political Ecology of Disasters 
José Luis de Vicente (ES), Joana Moll (ES), Andy Gracie (UK), Israel Rodríguez (ES), Ingrid Guardiola (ES), relator Vanina Hofman (AR) 

ROUNDTABLE: Catastrophes and vulnerability have brought us to the forefront the urgency of acting against the consequences of the Anthropocene. We will explore all the possible futures ahead, facing the interactions between biological and ecological systems, but also the media ecology, within a relational ecology of practices where art, science and technology collide. 

On Bio_Sonic_Agencies. 
Brandon LaBelle (US), Robertina Šebjanič (SI), Oscar Martín (ES), Vanessa Lorenzo (ES), Laura Benítez (ES). 

ROUNDTABLE: In a world dominated by the visual, could contemporary resistances be auditory? What is the materiality of sound? How does the materiality of sound affect listening? What resistances can be configured from working with biomaterials and sound? Do these bio_sonic_agencies open up other possible spaces that do not exist in the visual regime? 

A Face or a Factory: Holey Surface
Aljaž Rudolf, Eva Smrekar (SI)

A Face or a Factory is a family, a corporation and a laboratory of faces, masks and new identities. By creating new personae based on harvesting DNA material and a 3D scan of each individual seller ― who in turn is offered a seat in the company, along with a specific share of its assets― the project aims to modulate different heteronyms ―their biographies, professions and precise function― in contemporary corporative capitalism.

Web Gardening

Web Gardening is a workshop hosted by gardeners in the Third Garden. It creates web gardens where participants can experiment with images, sound, and games online based on the keywords visual, auditory, and interaction.

Seoul Garden Exhibition

Seoul Garden is an exhibition space built in Mozilla Hub, which a foreign artist acting as a reporter has constructed into a 3D gallery documenting her exploration of Seoul's urban garden.

Two Hands Performance

Two Hands is a combination of Korean traditional shamanism and contemporary media performance, raising the question of whether future technology can dominate the human mind and soul. Alluding to Roy Ascott's Technoetic Arts, which talks about the connection between technology and spiritual means, Two Hands focuses on the spiritual experience that will present a new possibility to expand the limits of technology.

MoneyLab#8 | Minting a Fair Society
MoneyLab

MoneyLab explores the imaginaries of artists, researchers, activists and geeks in search of other possible economies, and urgently interrogates a different financial discourse. Can we use technology critically to support alternative values of cooperation and “commoning” in a world dominated by individualism and competition?