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PluginHUMAN (Betty Sargeant)

WITHIN

In the early 1900s the Panama Canal was forged through the jungles of Panama. This shipping channel became a major factor in the expansion of globalised trade. In many ways, Panama’s Canal Zone represents the epitome of the Anthropocene. Industrial progress rupturing unique ecosystems.

In this setting I was inspired by broken nature. I collected introduced butterfly species, leaves that had been stripped to their skeleton by destructive fungus, dead insects and plant matter. I prepared these samples and photographed their finer qualities under microscope. I also collected a selection of field recordings using a hydrophone, two contact mics and a stereo atmospheric mic. Most audio recordings in Panama’s Canal Zone contain the sounds of engines. Sounds from passing ships, tug boats, dredging machines, cargo trains and light aircraft form the backdrop to birdsongs, monkey calls and frog choirs. The clash of nature and industry is palpable. Finally, I collected data relating to the temperature, light, movement and moisture of different ecosystems. This was done using an Arduino and a series of environmental sensors.

I presented the photo-microscopy images, audio and environmental data in an Open Studio showing at the Digital Naturalism Lab on 17 August 2019. The outcome of this residency was later captured in a 3-minute single channel video work. This video features photo-microscopy and audio recordings from three consecutive environmental art residences that I undertook in 2019 – Digital Naturalism (Gamboa, Panama), LabVERDE (Amazon, Brazil) and the EV Residency (Rio, Brazil).

Video available at: https://pluginhuman.com/art/within/

ABOUT PluginHUMAN

PluginHUMAN is an Australian art-technology duo featuring Dr Betty Sargeant and Justin Dwyer. They have exhibited in Asia, Europe, North America and Australia. PluginHUMAN has an acute understanding of the role that technology plays in contemporary society. Their progressive work places people in the centre of a human to digital encounter. They won a Good Design Award [2018] and a Premier’s Design Award [2017] and are creators-in-residence at the Exertion Games Lab, RMIT University, Australia.

Connect via Instagram: @PluginHUMAN

Connect on Facebook: @PluginHUMAN

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Sid Drmay

Dates: 14/08/2019-28/08/2019

Project: The Sustainable Zine: Being a zinester for many years I’ve noticed how unsustainable zines can be depending on how they are produced. At Dinacon I plan on using natural dyes and inks on natural materials to explore all the ways that Panama and it’s nature can create colour and story. The goal is to make a zine inspired by Dinacon and the experiences in Gamboa that will eventually fade and degrade until it doesn’t exist at all except in pictures, much like memories!

Sid Drmay is a nonbinary queer multidisciplinary artist based in Hamilton, ON. They use textile art to explore growing up online, nosebleeds, queerness and transness and all the weirdness that comes with that. They love weaving, embroidery, screenprinting, their two cats, and sour gummy candies.


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Leoni Voegelin

16. August – 31. August 2019

We are Janne Nora Kummer, Tomas Montes Massa, Lena Maria Eickenbusch and myself: we found each other as a group within the ¨Spiel && Objekt¨ MA program, sharing the desire to develop an ecologic & non-anthropocentric view of arts. Our research motivation drives us to explore the interaction between the biodiversity of the rainforest with the behaviour of light, using these local biosolar entanglements as inspiration to create a techno-vegetal monster. Relevant milestones for us are monstrous & cyborg thinking, kinetic sculptures and object-oriented theatrical narratives. We imagine a solar-powered, Arduino-motored, light-searching hybrid creature, a wired-photosynthetic robot that aesthetically condenses our research and friendly coexists in the jungle. Speculating on the fusion of organic material and new technologies is for us an artistic urgency, and therefore we are eager to prototype and meet this critter!

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Trevor Silverstein

(Aug 13-21)

I’m a filmmaker/comedian from the USA but based in Berlin, Germany. I’ll be shooting a short film with another Dinacon particpant, Nacho Sanguinetti.

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Kristina Dutton

Bio: I’m a composer, musician, and interdisciplinary artist whose work focuses on film and collaborative live multimedia performances with dance and visual artists. My personal projects are inspired by science and a love of the natural world. I also have experience with field recording in the tropics, and I co-founded an experimental school that offered free art classes in exchange for environmental restoration work.

PROJECT: My collaborator Lisa Schonberg and I will compose new music and sound work based on observation and field recordings as part of a larger ongoing project. We will illustrate contrasting ecological variables through our recording and composition processes. We will use hydrophones, ultrasonic mic, contact mics, and shotgun mic, and build the compositions using found instruments, a Critter and Guitarri Organelle keyboard, and Ableton Live. If there is mutual interest, we can create this work as a sonic aspect of another researcher’s work at Dinacon. We also want to interview (and with permission film) participants at Dinacon about larger questions related to artists and scientists producing work together.

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Cherise Fong

8/24 – 8/31

Project: Field sound recording along Pipeline Road in order to create a radiophonic journey into its birdsong and wildlife around the clock. Hard science will inevitably be mixed with soft fiction, so zoological correctness not guaranteed.

Writer and journalist, budding birder, interested in both science and fiction involving non-human perspectives, zoology, ecology, technology, evolving ecosystems and documenting the sixth mass extinction.

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Lisa Schonberg

DATES: Aug 24-31

BIO: I am a percussionist, composer, writer, and field recordist with a background in ecology and entomology.

PROJECT: My collaborator Kristina Dutton and I will compose new music and sound work based on observation and field recordings. I am particularly interested in the sounds of ants and the Passalid beetles, and have been researching these sounds in the Brazilian Amazon. Kristina and I will illustrate contrasting ecological variables through our recording and composition processes. We will use hydrophones, ultrasonic mic, contact mics, and shotgun mic, and build the compositions using found instruments and Ableton Live. If there is mutual interest, we can create this work as a sonic aspect of another researcher’s work at Dinacon. We also want to interview participants at Dinacon about larger questions related to artists and scientists producing work together.

www.lisaschonberg.com

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Jennifer Payne

August 4th – 11th

I’m thinking of working on a physical visualization of someone’s data*, perhaps using natural materials. (Aside from physical representations of data, I’m keen on collaboration, paper crafts, physical computing, felting, and climbing trees!)

* perhaps collected by you, at Dinacon!?

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Becky Scheel

Dates: 13-18 August

Project: Drexel University Bio-Inspired Design – with teammates Raja Schaar and Ann Gerondelis. Together we’ll be working to expand our K12 and Higher-Ed Biologically Inspired Design and Citizen Science pedagogy by studying indigenous animals and plants. We’ll analyze their structural, behavioral, and functional features and adaptations to look for ways people might use them to solve problems in the conservation and sustainability space. I don’t work at Drexel (just excited to be on their team), but I am a service designer in Atlanta.

I am a design generalist for human and nonhuman great apes. I focus on design in complex, dynamic, and unfamiliar environments with emerging technology. With more than a decade working as a designer at Zoo (in exhibit, web and graphic design) and an education in design and digital media, I hope that my work supports improving the lives of humans & animals.

My favorite animals are orangutans and red pandas, but I am really excited to see sloths, coatis, and Panamanian golden frogs!

Gratuitous red panda photo

http://www.beckyscheel.com/

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Evan Buechley

dates: 08/04/19-08/10/19

As an ornithologist and conservation biologist, I track bird migrations around the globe with miniaturized GPS-GSM tracking devices that reveal novel migration routes and habitat use of endangered bird species. When mapped in 2 or 3 dimensions, the movement patterns of birds across continents are aesthetically stunning. I plan to collaborate with my sister (Leah Buechley), an expert artist, computer programmer, and tinkerer; my wife (Mara Burstein) an acrylic painter; and my nephew (Elan Solowej), a vivacious 5-year old, to co-design and create a project that fuses science, art, programming, and nature.