Lively Material, 2018
Single channel video, 17:35. Excerpt.
Lively Material forms part of the doctoral research, Evolution of a Subject, exploring our relationship to living organisms as resources in the context of the laboratory. Lively Material is a short film, presented as a form of a video diary that follows a thought from the mind of the artist into the body of a genetically modified organism, the laboratory workhorse E. coli. The thought is translated by the artist from a spoken phrase into a code that becomes represented as physical material: synthetic DNA, stored within the body of a living organism. The lively material of the organism becomes both container and commodity in the context of the laboratory. Through her laboratory diary, Mackenzie explores how her relationship to the organism alters when DNA is stored in a cultural, rather than scientific context.
Filmed on location at the Institute of Genetic Medicine, Newcastle and the Centre for Speech Technology Research, Edinburgh.
Exhibited at:
Viral Experiments, Queens Hall Arts Centre, Hexham, UK
Black Box, Institute of Genetic Medicine, Newcastle, UK
Genocentric, Summerhall, Edinburgh, UK
Pithos (one possible story of our Lively Material), Summerhall, Edinburgh, UK
Museum of Art, Pomona College, California, USA
Unhallowed Arts, SymbioticA, Perth, Australia
