Event 3 - Paul Rosero Contreras' Audiopoesis and 3D Printed Living Forest

After getting to meet Robert Gero, I attended one of the periodic Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous’(LASER) . This was a very interesting event considering I got to meet a number of experts who bridge art and science through their work. It was an extremely interesting atmosphere and I really felt the reality of the “third culture” as all of these different artists and scientists presented, and shared ideas with one another.

Me at LASER (The great Victoria Vesna in the background!)

One of the most interesting speakers was Paul Rosero, who I had the pleasure of speaking to when I bumped into him at Kathy High’s exhibit. Paul Rosero Contreras was born in Ecuador and received his masters in Interactive Media and Cognitive Systems. He is a photographer, sound scientist, coder, bio-philosopher, DJ and more broadly, an artist.

According to Contreras, objects have a natural frequency that is produced when the object is struck or vibrates. Often, these frequencies are not within the range of human hearing and thus go unnoticed. These frequencies can change with time and sometimes only exist until the object the come from changes. Contreras, however, allows us to “hear” or experience these frequencies by moving them into the human hearing range.

http://roserocontreras.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/mg_95771.jpg?w=650&h=433

http://roserocontreras.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/pag91-977.jpg?w=667&h=454

For his project Audiopoesis, Contreras traveled to Antarctica in February of 2013 to record these hidden frequencies from numerous natural objects including glaciers, frozen ground, thin sheets of ice, and stones. Contreras chose Antarctica because he considers it a “great junction of ecosystems” that have to potential to create and harbor symbiotic life.

It is important to remember, however, that the sounds resulting from Contreras’ work are not actually what exist naturally. In this, Contreras has acted as a medium of translation through which the “speech” of inanimate objects may travel into the realm of human perception.

Link to sound of ice: https://soundcloud.com/psrc/paul_rosero_antarctic-ice_12

In addition to an auditory portal, Contreras has also assumed the role of bridging the apparent divide between the artificial and the natural. In the project Anticipation to an Absence, a forest has been printed using a biological 3D printer that uses a mixture of biomaterial and plastic. This forest has its own agency and changes over time, maintaining its own “autopoesis”. This project reminded me of Marta Meneze’s butterfly wing altercations. Similarly, Contreras using a “living” medium to realize his work, but on the other hand, he does not take something that is already living and alter that, he takes something manmade and gives it life.

Bio 3D Printer
https://roserocontreras.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/rosero_bio-printer.jpg?w=700&h=467

https://roserocontreras.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/rosero_forest.jpg?w=700&h=467