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INVISIBLE FLOWS: MINERALS, PLANTS AND THE INTERSECTION OF ART AND SCIENCE
Abstract
This paper explores the duality between matter and energy, understood simultaneously as physical and imaterial, visible and invisible. These dimensions are examined conceptually and artistically through the intersection of art with chemistry, plant neurobiology and anthropology. Natural elements, such as minerals and plants are mobilized to stimulate a (re)awakening to the forces that have shaped, and continue to shape, our planet. Through them, natural and artificial phenomena including temperature, humidity, visible and ultraviolet light are investigated as responsive agents to environmental conditions and temporalities. In the first part the concept of matter and energy is reflected through the philosopher Tim Ingold’s ideas on the fluidity of matter. Here, these concepts unfold through the luminescent vitreous enamel, a material simultaneously dead and living, solid and fluid, fixed and mobile. Developed in collaboration with researchers at the VICARTE laboratories, this enamel emerges from the integration of rigorous chemical methods with artistic experimentation. The temporal rhythms of plants are also used here to expose the same concepts. Although often perceived by humans as passive and immobile, the plant kingdom has been interpreted by several authors as sentient and intelligent, revealing an expanded dimension of vegetal life. These perspectives resonate in the author’s artistic practice through the use of Erchium Vulgare wildflowers, whose chromatic transition under natural and ultraviolet light is explored as a way to evoke the sensitivity and intelligence that sustain vegetal beings. Ultimately, this research seeks to understand how the living world can be recognized as more- than- human, and how such recognition might transform the ways we inhabit and move within it.
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References14
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