From October 8 until October 24, networked sound art installation, Bacteria battery is exhibited in festival KIBLIX 2014, which already 13th time takes place in Maribor, Slovenia. Festival is focusing on inter-discipliner industries, which comes together to look at worlds current issues from different perspective.
Presented works re-question the foundations of the modern world – what is the post-digital era and what are strategies of surviving in a world with only illusory privacy, as well as – can the combined efforts of artists and scientists hack up a free future.
“Bacteria Battery” is a networked bio-energy & sound installation, developed by researchers and artists Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits (RIXC), sound artist and composer Voldemars Johansons and media artist Martins Ratniks. The installation is a part of “Biotricity” – an ongoing art-science research project by RIXC artists and biologists from University of Latvia (since 2012).
The installation explores the emerging green energy technology called micro-bial fuel cell (MFC), and sonifies the process of generating electricity from the bacteria living in soil and dirty water. The installation consists of several bacteria-fuel cells, which together form a mini bio-power plant. The bacteria-fuel process is interpreted in sound structures, providing an aesthetic perspective on the mutual relations between nature and technology, biologic systems and electronic networks.
Biotricity at FIELDS exhibition in Arsenals Exhibition Hall of the Latvian National Museum of Art, Riga, May 15 – August 3, 2014. Photo: Raitis Smits
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Biotricity video, artists Rasa Smite, Raitis Smits, Voldemars Johansons and Martins Ratniks tells about the project, 2012.
Bitoricity video, installation in “Art+Communication 2012” exhibition, RIXC Media Space, Riga, October 4 – November 4, 2012.