When Art Becomes Science Beatriz da Costa

Interesting review of some of the activities and interests of Beatriz da Costa

Engaging in generative art practises

The Bureau of Inverse Technology (BIT)14 was one of the early groups to explore the powers a functional tool could hold when being developed for the purpose of raising awareness around social injustice, rather than for commercial exploitation

https://youtu.be/bTJK0hilOFs?list=PLf1aigmUv-961Pbe2ZPioaf-rwpii7yHd

The BIT Suicide Box15 consisted of a motion detection video system designed to capture vertical activity. Once it had detected an object falling in front of its lens, it would trigger record- ing of the motion.

The Suicide Box was installed on the Golden Gate Bridge in 1996, one of the most prominent suicide locations in the United States.

Another example was the BIT rocket. It was designed to provide a clear video stream at six hundred feet altitude to a ground receiver. Launched from the ground, BIT rocket was used to document crowd attendance during demonstrations at a time when sanctioned news and media outlets appeared to have “accidentally” forgotten to undertake these estimates themselves.

The Institute for Applied Autonomy (IAA)16 is another group invested in developing artist/activist inspired tools. GraffitiWriter,17 the project that launched the group’s public visibility, was a first instance of exploring the notion of a “contestational robotics.” It consisted of an enhanced remote-controlled car equipped with spray cans, a microcon- troller, and a type pad. Any message up to sixty-four characters could be typed in, and would be sprayed onto the street at a desired location, without its human controllers being present at the locale.

One example is the SymbioticA research lab at the University of Western Australia. Here, a team of artists (Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr) and scientists has convinced officials and administrators within the School of Anatomy and Human Biology to house a collaboratively run research lab dedicated to the development of artistic science projects. Rather than using the facility just for their own research, Zurr and Catts have opened the doors to other interested artists, ready to invest the necessary time and training in order to conduct projects in this arena. Interested individuals can apply for extended residencies in order to achieve their goals

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PigeonBlog45 was a collaborative endeavor between homing pigeons, artist, engineers, and pigeon fanciers engaged in a grass-roots scientific data-gathering initiative designed to collect and distribute information about air quality conditions to the general public. Pigeons carried custom-built miniature air pollution sensing devices enabled to send the collected localized information to an on-line server without delay (Figure 21.1). Pollution levels were visualized and plotted in real time over Google’s mapping environment, thus allowing immediate access to the collected information to anyone with connection to the Internet.

PigeonBlog was an attempt to combine DIY electronics development with a grass-roots scientific data-gathering initiative, while simultaneously investigating the potentials of interspecies co-production in the pursuit of resistant action.46 How could animals help us in raising awareness of social injustice? Could their ability to performing tasks and activi- ties that humans simply can’t, be exploited in this manner while maintaining a respectful relationship with the animals?