Ars Electronica Garden Bangkok

Psych Garden: Spanning Metaphysical Geographies

Tentacles Gallery, Freaklab Thailand, Jennifer Katanyoutanant (TH)

Psych Garden uses physical sensations and auras to guide you through multiple planes of being, hosting virtual tours of Thailand’s tastes, sights, sounds and energies. The tours invite viewers to think about how our physical bodies absorb information through all of our senses. We travel for our survival or in search of fulfillment, and marry our psyches with our sensory understanding of the world and/or of other worlds. This exhibition shows snapshots of the search.

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Psych Garden: Spanning Metaphysical Geographies

As you join us from home, watching through your own computer frame, travel takes on a whole new meaning. We move viewers through experiences that explore panpsychism and animism rooted in Thai culture, asking visitors to wonder: How do we understand planets, inanimate objects, engineered microorganisms, etc. through a cultural framework? How do scientists, anthropologists, and artists outside the Western canon formulate their perception of the observed world?

Jennifer Katanyoutanat and Scott Kildall have each created different ways to share remote sensations. With collaborator Michael Ang, Scott has created a live streamed audio installation that gives voice to Thai plants. Jennifer and her collaborators Grace Cong Xin Wong and Zden Brungot Svitekova have created a pathway to explore remote sensations through a taste-based guided meditation. Visitors are encouraged to bring their own garlic.

Moving on to the wider world, Tentacles and FREAK Lab Thailand investigate the cultural lens of our observed world through three different journeys exploring life, synthetic biology, geopolitics and geology, and the future of space exploration.

MESSE@Spaceth.co
MESSE@Spaceth.co
Credit: Spaceth.co (TH)
Lunar Rock
Lunar Rock
Credit: SpaceZab (TH)
Botanic Quartet
Botanic Quartet
Credit: Scott Kildall (US)
Botanic Quartet
Botanic Quartet
Credit: Scott Kildall (US)
Botanic Quartet
Botanic Quartet
Credit: Scott Kildall (US)

Timetable

Program

Unnatural Language: Botanic Quartet
Scott Kildall – Xenoform Labs (US), Michael Ang (CA)

Botanic Quartet is a generative musical composition by four plants endemic to Thailand. The results constitute a sort of ecospheric sentience as the plants don’t only respond to the sensed data, but communicate it to each other. This is a project under the umbrage of Unnatural Language, an ongoing collaboration between Scott Kildall and Michael Ang. Scott Kildall has been working with art, technology and education for over 15 years, looking at the interplay between territory and technology.

MESSE: Molecular Encoding Storage for Space Exploration
Spaceth.co (TH)

MESSE is an anti-disciplinary payload aboard the New Shepard spacecraft, launched into a sub-orbital trajectory 100 kilometers above, and explores weightlessness in the space environment. The payload contains bio-synthetically created DNA encoding “Kwam-Fhan-Kab-Chakarawan” (Aspiration and the Universe), a famous Thai song by artist Bodyslam, to demonstrate the algorithm that can encode and decode data into DNA. The science experiment will be conducted both before and after the spaceflight to study the products of DNA assembling in space and its preservation on several sample materials. This will allow the researchers to understand the possibility of DNA storage as a form of preserving knowledge or sending any data in the form of a molecular encoding message. This mission represents aspects of science and humanity and guidelines for future citizen space exploration in Thailand.

Making of Lunar Pearl
Henryandpartners (TH), SpaceZab (TH)

Pearl of Lunar explores infrastructural desire and the future of Belt-and-Road Initiatives as seen through wealth accumulation, labor infiltration, and geopolitical control; but also, more ephemerally, the affective meshwork of possessiveness and greed that functions at the individual and corporate level. Lunar Rock is a project by SpaceZab, a group of young scientists’ journey into Trad city, a rocky seaside landscape. They wade through rocks and the oceanside, excavating magmatic rock from the shore and the sea. The quest is to discover earth elements resembling moon dust for their future research and experiments.

Garlic Med.Eat.Ation
Jennifer Katanyoutanant (US/TH), Grace Cong Xin Wong – Art Farm (US/HK), Zden Brungot Svíteková (SK)

The first chapter in our continuing Remote Intimacy series, Garlic Med. Eat. Ation creates sensory solidarity by exploring how intimacy can be shared remotely/virtually through touch and taste. Please bring a clove of garlic to experience the exhibit.

Project Credits / Acknowledgements

Henry Tan
Tentacles Gallery
Freaklab Thailand
Spacezab
Spaceth.co

Jennifer Katanyoutanant
Scott Kildall – Xenoform Labs
Michael Ang
Grace Cong Xin Wong – Art Farm
Zden Brungot Svíteková

Tentacles
Freaklab Thailand
Spaceth
Spacezab