Fluid Matter and Turbulent Seas – Liquids and Art

Abstract

The boundary between wet and dry is blurring and similarly the expectations towards sol- id versus soft objects and machines are being redefined. These developments are impacted by many different factors ranging from developments in biotechnology and life science to innovation in new materials and their behavior, among various other areas. Also, in the hu-manities and in the arts there has recently been increasing interests towards material agen- cies and processes that are based on inorganic matter or executed by non-human organisms. This article has a focus on liquids and flows. One can say that the technological and the bio- logical realms – the biologically grown and the artificially constructed – unite in liquid matter. This can be detected when looking into methods and practices of biology, biotechnology and biochemistry, which involve technological tools and methods to investigate biological organ-isms and create chemistry-based experiments, all of which typically take place within wet environments. These practices are very similar throughout the sciences and the arts. Artistic work with liquids defy object-ness with its core focus in the liquid-based processes. Also, the author’s artistic experiments-in-progress with protocells feed into this. The author’s interests are triggered with a notion that at the same time as liquids present challenges to us, they may also provide new perspectives, concepts and ways to approach our future. In line with Jules Verne’s Nautilus, which was envisioned as a dynamic component of the sea, protocells pre- sent a dynamic relationship with their environment. Instead of the top-down approaches in-herent in many biotechnology methods, protocells provide a bottom-up approach that focus- es, not on design of novel organisms, but on engineering the evolution. The author sees that there is a correlation between our visible inability to tackle current environmental, climatic and societal challenges, and contemporary artistic approaches that are focused on fluids. These experiments can be characterized as fluid, temporal and contin- uously evolving in their exploration across science, technology, art and liquid matter.