EP#11: 'The Plants' with Cat Jones & Monica Gagliano

This episode we’re talking with Cat Jones about her project Somatic Drifts, a one on one sensory experience exploring empathy and transgression. Somatic Drifts enables participants to experience the body of another entity through touch and illusion. What realm does the human exist within? How far can we drift? What can this drift enable us to change? During the project Jones worked with neuroscientists specializing in brain plasticity and chronic pain. The team recently published a new study that came about as a result of her findings.

Joining her to talk about the crossovers of this project with vegetal philosophy and her own research in plant intelligence, will be evolutionary biologist, Dr Monica Gagliano, who Jones spent time with towards the beginning of the project.

Somatic Drifts, by Cat Jones 2014

EP #8: 'The Smell' with Jo Burzynska & Anina Rich

This episode we do a deep dive into the senses and talk to the artist/scientist team behind Osmic Resonance, an audio-olfactory project that sought to harness sympathetic vibrations between sounds and aromas. The work tapped into a phenomenon of sensory cross-over — how does smell effect our perceptions of sound? Working closely with the cognitive neuroscientist Dr. Anina Rich and her work on synaesthesia, artist Jo Burzynska created a multi-sensory chamber in which the aesthetic, scientific and therapeutic potential of sensory interactions were explored and experienced through intensifying and shifting, entwined sound-and aroma-scapes.

Do you have Synaesthesia? For more information and to sign up to participate in Dr. Anina Rich’s research please click here

Or to get involved in Jo Burzynska’s upcoming studies you can sign up here

EP#7: 'The Bees' with Nigel Helyer & Jon Drummond

This episode, were talking with the artists behind the project: Oratorio for a Million Souls. Collaborating with thousands of bees, this large scale project created three ‘green' architectural structures, in the form of traditional bee ‘skeps’ in botanical gardens in Buitenpost (Fryslan) and Oldenburg and Emden (Germany). To generate empathy with the dire state of bees in the face of commercial farming, pesticides and global warming, these three ‘Oratorios’ contain Bumble Bee nests equipped with audio and data sensors that create a multi-channel realtime ‘opera’ audiences could participate in. In a unique inter-species situation visitors experience the uncanny sensation of being located in the heart of a massive bee city, a citizen meditating with their fellow beings, all working, all buzzing!

EP #5: 'The Cells' with Helen Pynor & Dr. Jochen Rink

This Episode, we talk with artist Helen Pynor about her project, ‘The End is a Distant Memory’. Working with cells from supermarket bought chicken breast, Pynor’s work explores the philosophically and experientially ambiguous zones, of the life-death boundary and organ transplantation. Her practice draws on her dual backgrounds in the biological sciences and the visual arts to engage directly with the materiality of human and non-human bodies using the mediums of photography, sculpture, video and installation. We are also joined by scientist and collaborator on the project, Dr. Jochen Rink, from The Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden.

For more information on Helen Pynor’s work, click here