Futile Labor ()
Created with Dr. Ionat Zurr, Chris Salter and Oron Catts
(Tissue-engineered mouse muscle (C2C12 myoblasts), glass, perspex, custom-designed electronics, wood, steel, plastic tubing)
500mm x 500mm x 1500mm
Futile Labour is an installation that calls attention to the growing phenomenon of manipulating and engineering life. The exhibition presents the apparatus of a “living machine” – a tissue engineered muscle that is housed and fed inside a custom designed vessel. Through electrical stimulation, the muscle cells contract and their resulting movement is translated into humanly perceivable sensations: vibration, light and sound. This performance and the resulting sensations is autonomously influenced and directed by the movement of the cells, all in realtime in the gallery space. In the exhibition, the tension between human and machinic bodies, the living, semi-living or non-living are correlated with the very thresholds of human perception.
