CYANOVISIONS

Cyanovisions is a short speculative fiction film co-directed by Tiare Ribeaux and Jody Stillwater. Set in the indeterminate future, Cyanovisions highlights the entanglements and parallels between both humans and cyanobacteria, and their capacities to both create and destroy life. Speculative mutualisms of the future are revealed showing humans living in symbiosis with cyanobacteria and other organisms in scenarios that are peaceful, provocative, and surreal. As a is a transdisciplinary project combining video, installation, and bioart, it has been shown in different iterations at Lux Aeterna, the special exhibition curated by Art Center Nabi for ISEA2019 in Gwangju, Korea, Intersections for Leonardo’s 50th Anniversary, the Imagine Science Film Festival, and more.

Stills from Cyanovisions

Cyanovisions presented at Leonardo/ISAST’s 50th Anniversary Celebration at Fort Mason Center in San Francisco, November 2-3, 2018

This project focuses on cyanobacteria, the first organisms on our planet to photosynthesize, generating oxygen and creating the atmosphere as we know it today. Humans generate the pollutants that cause aggregations of toxic cyanobacteria blooms, yet we also create new life forms through synthetic biology, genetic engineering, and artificial life. In an alternative narrative to the dominance over nature that cyborgian hybrid immortality offers, Cyanovisions posits potentials for biological hybridity and scientific spiritualities that recognize the inextricable relationship of human lifespans to those of other organisms. Cyanovisions moves beyond revealing correlations of human, natural, and sterile engineered forms. It merges the human body and the most fundamental and ancient life force, Light Energy, and the ancient organism cyanobacteria.

Cyanovisions presented at Lux Aeterna - Special Exhibition for ISEA2019 at the Asia Cultural Center in Gwangju, Korea

Exhibitions of Cyanovisions have varied, and the body of work has been shown as an immersive installation, and as a hybrid bio-art and video installation including living strains of cyanobacteria growing in photobioreactors next to the short film. Cyanovisions - Initial Studies at B4BEL4B Gallery included the incubation of 5 strains of Cyanobacteria; an immersive installation as a photobioreactor made with Dasha Ortenberg, and a series of bioplastics.

Cyanovisions - Initial Studies presented at B4BEL4B Gallery

Cyanobacteria are one of the most ancient life forms, a species that was responsible for first creating oxygen on our planet through photosynthesis. They caused the Great Oxidation Event - what Dorion Sagan terms the Cyanocene over 2.5 billion years ago - both an extinction event for organisms intolerant to oxygen, yet later spawning new heights of global biodiversity and all oxygen dependent life, including humans. Today, cyanobacteria proliferate as Harmful Algal Blooms in lakes, rivers, and estuaries around the world, creating toxic environments for humans and other species. As the element first created by this ancient life form sustains us, we in turn generate the pollutants that stimulate its unmitigated and toxic growth.

Cyanovisions hopes to reposition our relationship to cyanobacteria by showing the beauty of it's different forms and highlighting the evolutionary history of these organisms - viewing them on a geological timescale versus a human timescale. It questions what is perceived as toxic as aggregations of these ancient and intelligent organisms could very well be an attempt to bring ecosystems back into balance. How can we show reverence for the natural world, down to the very bacteria that spawned all life? Humans participate in embodied ceremonial rituals as performance and experiment, extending the need for transformation and healing. How can our disconnection with nature evolve into a meaningful reconnection that still includes our technologies of today, while remaining in harmony with one another? How can we reshape our anthropocentric views so we can move towards symbiotic futures, recognizing multi-species ontologies?

Read a full article I wrote on the project at Women’s Art Eco Dialog, Issue 10 HER<E>TECH guest edited by Praba Pilar