BioARTech Laboratory

Are there boundaries to bioart? What kinds of knowledge is excluded from scientific research? How can this kind of information be transformed into arts-based methods (ABM and arts-based research/ ABR)?

A new BioARTech Laboratory at the Faculty of Art and Design of the University of Finland is focusing on developing new knowledge about bioart. This laboratory seeks to develop activities that combine bioart, fashion and textile art, creative research (ABM and ABR), biotechnology and science. The technologies used will include biotechnological methods, biomaterials, smart textiles and new materialism.

Key aims of the BioARTech laboratory are the exploration of biomimicry, which means to mimic good ideas from nature and transport them into design or innovation. Another key aim of the laboratory is to explore the notion of biophilia, a term that has been established by E.O. Wilson in 1984 and refers to the humans’ positive responsiveness to nature, which is based on shared genetics between humans and nature.

Researchers

Key researchers of the BioARTech Laboratory are Heidi Pietarinen, Satu Miettinen and Melanie Sarantou. The BioARTech exhibition team includes also Tomi Knuutila (university lecturer, PhD (Arts), Audiovisual Media Culture) from the University of Lapland and Terhi Marttila (MA, Art education), who works as a postgraduate student at the University of Porto Portugal.

Heidi Pietarinen is currently working as a member of the international High-altitude Bioprospecting (HAB) working group, which includes biochemists and artists. The working group recently used a helicite kite to search for microbial life in the atmosphere of the subarctic stratosphere at the a plateau between the fells of Saana and Malla (Field Notes-The Heavens, University of Helsinki´s Kilpisjärvi biological station, 2019). The fieldwork included data collection on materials, methods and processes, which will be materialized in exhibitions in Birmingham and Helsinki in 2021.

Satu Miettinen is studying the relationships between forest, natural environment, play and performance. Her work is inspired by visits to the close-by forest that are her living laboratory. She is also inspired by a variety of natural environments when she and her colleagues are constructing embodied performances with nature utilizing improvisatory methods. In the summer of 2020 she was awarded a Citytorppari residency at Vänö island with Taina Kontio by Maaseudun sivistysliitto and John Nurmisen säätiö for performance driven photography.

Melanie Sarantou explores fashion as an artform through a variety of methods to upcycle, reuse and remake found fashion garments and objects. Her textile design is inspired by three-dimensional forms, geometrical shapes and the natural environments of the far North and South. Her work includes three-dimensional quilted and felted textiles, and natural and organic materials that are shaped by a combination of human and non-human artistic expression that can be found, for example, in the agency of plant roots and their growth. The artist-researcher also seeks to understand how her textile and fashion art is received by human and non-human audiences.

Growth, Death and Decay

Hämärä Gallery, University of Lapland, Exhibition Opening 08.11.2021

The BioARTech artist-researcher group will present the rhythm and movement that can be found in bioart in an arts exhibition at the Faculty of Art and Design in Autumn 2021. The exhibition and data collection will be transformed into new knowledge about the (inter)growth of organic and natural materials. Organic materials will enable the works to come about, be observed and experienced by the co-creators who would be the artists and audiences. The co-creators would be able to influence the completion of the works to some extent, but the final aesthetics and appearances would be up to the organic materials to determine.

Light Painting Workshop, by Tomi Knuutila