RIXC’s Bacteria battery exhibited in KIBLIX festival, Slovenia

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.

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Biotricity at FIELDS exhibition in Arsenals Exhibition Hall of the Latvian National Museum of Art, Riga, May 15 – August 3, 2014. Photo: Raitis Smits

More:
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.