S+T+ARTS4Water II Challenge and STARTS Residency
Sounding the Invisible: An Elegant Symbiosis – S+T+ARTS4Water II
Host / Region
TBA21–Academy/ Madrid, Spain/ Venice, Italy – Venice Lagoon
Abstract
This residency invites artists to explore the Venice Lagoon’s food production and distribution networks, using the interplay of cooking, eating, and waste management to inspire imaginative scenarios that highlight interspecies alliances, crucial trade routes, and conviviality.
Keywords
metabolism, reciprocity, conviviality, energy matter, bio hacking, open-source synthetic alternatives, AI enhanced food
Description of the regional challenge
The activity of ports has an essential influence on our everyday meals. For centuries, its intense activities indicated trade routes and portrayed economic positions. Nowadays, the sustainability of port activities reveals the interdependencies between human bodies and the planetary body at large. The crucial role of food for life provides a unique scope to interrogate the metabolic cycles on which the food supply depends.
Observing ports as metabolic bodies able to process the arrival of new species and ingredients can enhance interspecies alliances. Salt built a golden economy for the Venetian Republic as the primary traded good, enhancing the process of circularity that continues today. For example, the arrival of the Atlantic blue crab through ballast water has influenced the ecosystem, raising ecological concerns as well as troubling conversations about “invasive species.” What if conviviality occurs prior to human interactions at a table? What if the engrained aspects of sharing a meal, the joy, the enhancing sense of taste and smell, may reintroduce modes of encounters centreing cooperation all along the way: in the waters, in the ports, and at the table?
How is the mission S+T+ARTS driven?
We welcome proposals with a situated understanding of Venice and its ecosystem from an interspecies perspective, approaching aquatic ecosystems through artistic and practice-based research with nurturing visions of fair and sustainable futures. We encourage proposals that deploy technologies with ecocritical approaches towards technodiversity.
The result of the residency will be shown during Ocean Space 2025.
Artist-in-residency – Nandita Kumar
Nandita Kumar (India and New Zealand) “creates” at the intersection of art, sound, environmental science, technology and community engagement. As a system designer, she explores the elemental process through which human beings construct meaning from their experiences, by creating sensory narratives through the usage of data, sound, video/animation and performance, smartphone apps, customized motherboards, solar/microwave sensors. Kumar’s process envisions a desirable future state for human societies in which living conditions and resource-use continue to meet human needs without undermining the “integrity, stability and beauty” of natural biotic systems. Through interactive sound installations and her data-driven artistic experiments, she engages audiences in understanding complex environmental issues. Kumar is a DAAD fellow and has exhibited in Listening Biennale, Mardin Biennale, Ars Electronica, Pompidou, ZKM, Kiasma, KNMA, LACMA, REDCAT, ISEA, Jeu de Paume, Film Archive NY, NTAA, RedCat, Rewire+iii.
About The Project – Sounding the Invisible: An Elegant Symbiosis
Sounding the Invisible: An Elegant Symbiosis is an interactive graphical notation score/sound installation based on an experimental archive that collates information on Phytoremediation plants and the varied pollutants broken-down by these plants specifically in water bodies. This technique uses plants and the associated microorganisms, along with proper water amendments, to either contain, remove or render toxic contaminants harmless. These plants will be chosen in the hope that future ecologies can use this assimilated research to adopt these plants in their local spaces and discharge clean water before it re-enters the water system. It is a cost-effective plant-based approach of remediation, in which the chosen plants will be in response to the varied pollutants found in the ports of Venice.
This project leverages technology to translate complex scientific information into accessible auditory/visual/content cues, enhancing the audience’s understanding and engagement. By sonifying data on pollutants absorbed by Phytoremediation plants, the project invites participants to engage with the complexities of environmental issues. Embracing uncertainty/chance and richness of human experience, the project embodies creating live encounters where unexpected moments of learning unfold. By providing information about phytoremediation plants and pollutants, her installation fosters dialogue and encourages individuals to take action in their communities.
Jury Statement
“The artist has an interesting understanding of conviviality, intended beyond the human. The artist is fostering a holistic view of interspecies entanglements and aims at focusing on the pollution produced by the port. Exciting project and very well articulated methodology and considered impact through community engagement, advocacy and public debate. The pre-existing research is a valuable asset for the continuation of the project. A really excellent interpretation of sound as a multidimensional tool to promote inter-species, inter-societal, chemical, etc. communication. Well embedded in Venice – glass, science, pollution. Setting more concrete and feasible goals given the specificities of the locality of Venice’s wetlands for the next steps would be necessary, but overall, an inspiring potential. Also, excellent video presentation, we appreciated the care and time offered for the preparation of the interview.”
