Bricolage is a kinetic biological artwork first exhibited at the Perth International Arts Festival in 2020. The artists used stem cell technologies to create bioengineered living entities from donated human heart muscle cells. These living entities are suspended in an incubator from the ceiling and are made visible to gallerygoers, who watch the performance of cells generating and moving independently. This paper considers how the assemblage, animation, and performance of cells embedded in Bricolage highlight questions around the conceptualizations and perceptions of life, duration, animation, and aliveness.

This article seeks to strengthen the epistemic case for sci-art by demonstrating how partnerships across paradigms can combine methodologies rooted in multiple knowledge traditions. Drawing on Robin Nelson’s multimodal conceptualization of artistic research and Bruno Latour’s model of science as a circulatory system of heterogeneous human and nonhuman phenomena, the author characterizes sci-art as a form of posthuman praxis, which opens new epistemic positions through transversal forms of inquiry, thereby revealing shared human/nonhuman cultures. Sci-art is thus proposed as a means of drawing together humans and nonhumans into more productive, empathic associations.

In this paper the authors describe the pioneering robot designed by Arcangel Constantini, called the Nanodrizas (2006). Nanodrizas is a cluster of small robots resembling extraterrestrial flying objects. They are introduced into an ecosystem for water recycling, among other effects. The result of a seriocomic robotic device like the Nanodrizas is to make the viewer aware of the specific technology that would one day allow humans to invite machines and artificial life-systems to save an environment that is precariously balanced on the edge.

ABSTRACT The authors identify some of the theoretical premises of biocybernetic art objects, with reference to the works of Nam June Paik, Edward Ihnawitz, Ulrike Gabriel, and most notably, Gilberto Esparza, the Mexican biocybernetic artist. Systems theory anticipates stochastic convergences in nature, defying the classic certitude of the teleological notion of form. Evidence for this paradigmatic shift is found in the biocybernetic creatures conceived by these roboticists. In much biocybernetic art, beauty emerges in the form of adaptive mechanisms, such as in robotic tetrapods or self-organizing artificial plants. Such structures provide a template for survival mechanisms in an increasingly entropic environment.