At the Art Laboratory Berlin, between February 17th and 19th, 2017 there will be the DIYBio Now, a fair for Biology enthusiasts, organized by the Biotinkering Berlin.
In the occasion I am going start a new art project, called Plants lasting memories, in collaboration with the italian biologist Alessandro Volpato, who is developing a DIY-Spectrophotogram.
Plants lasting memories is a display filled with Anthotypes, a technique to print photographs using the photosensitive matter from plants (leaves, roots, fruits, petals).
The display is going to be filled with anthotypes in different colors along 2017. The printed images refer, however, to a regressive timeline of memories collected along 2016. Each anthotype’s backside carries information about the contents of the image, when and how it was made, that can also be accessed by the audience.
This ongoing piece is a dialogue with the materiality and the mediality of the anthotypes technique, neglected in Media History due to its disability in fixing the images, as they are relatively quickly bleached by sunlight. Does the elusiveness of the image experience brought by the disposability of digital technology and the contemporary interest towards sustainability resurrect this forgotten photographic printing technique?
The inspiration to work with them came after I attended Simone Wicca‘s workshop at Imagineiro, in São Paulo in January 2017.
For more information on the history of anthotypes, how to make them and further references a very good introductory material can be found in the page of Alternative Photography.