Oceans 4.0

Marco Barotti, Anna Dumitriu and Alex May, Robertina Šebjanič and Gjino Šutić

Our focus for 2020 is the environmental challenge facing our planet. Oceans 4.0 presents three projects that monitor, reflect and imagine the future of our threatened oceans.

In nature, clams are detectors of pollutants; they serve as tiny filtration systems. Inspired by this natural phenomenon, Marco Barotti presents his new work Clams, a kinetic sound installation triggered by water quality. Live data is streamed by a sensor placed into the ocean and converted into an audio signal. Barotti’s clam sculptures - made from recycled industrial plastic waste - are triggered by this signal, generating an evolving soundscape, creating an experience that allows us to see and hear water quality in real-time.

How do the oceans feel our impact? Robertina Šebjanič and Gjino Šutić’s aqua_forensic illuminates invisible pollutants, residues of human consumption, and ‘monsters’ in our waters. Documenting the artists’ ‘in vitro’ experiments, the project shows microorganisms dying in weak solutions of pharmaceuticals - 20,000 times weaker than the average human dose. Interrogating the negative impact we are having on water habitats and lifeforms, aqua_forensic questions our solidarity and empathy with water systems beyond our human perception.

What will ‘life’ mean in a post-climate change future? Anna Dumitriu & Alex May’s ArchaeaBot: A Post Singularity and Post Climate Change Life-form (2018-19) is an underwater robotic installation based on new research on archaea: a group of micro-organisms believed to be the oldest form of life on earth, adapted to live in extreme conditions. Combined with the latest innovations in artificial intelligence and machine learning, the artists have tried to create the ultimate species for the end of the world.

no bodies welcome | all bodies welcome

Aay Liparoto with HOT BODIES - CHOIR

no bodies welcome | all bodies welcome is a speculative choir piece housed within a ‘void pod’, by Aay Liparoto, FACT’s 2019 EMAP artist-in-residence. In their work, Liparoto acknowledges our interdependence with technology for information, work, sex, entertainment, communication, socialising, banking, healthcare and the crossovers in between. What does this web of interdependence mean for queer feminist bodies which rely heavily on more DIY information exchange? no bodies welcome | all bodies welcome invites us to question the politics and power of the spaces we participate in online, and the behaviour of ourselves and others within them via the ‘void pod’. Housing a new sound piece created through workshops with HOT BODIES – CHOIR a queer, LGBTIEA+ and feminist choir based in Brussels. In the pod, cocooned with light and sound, their voices invite us to reflect and question these spaces and behaviours.

Liparoto’s artwork has been informed by their ongoing research Not Found On, part of which they carried out during their residency, where they held workshops across Liverpool with the aim to dicuss the co-creation of an online knowledge bank with, by and for feminist queer bodies to record and exchange community knowledge.