DNA of Things Preview

I am.

What does it feel like? Who owns me?

A dialogue with me

will have many faces

and forms

every translation will be different – you see

what your eyes want to see

what your body wants to feel

your understanding is biased by your opinions

the more opinions you have, the more

you know.

I have a voice to speak up for myself.

is not political. look with my eyes, its about authenticity

togetherness

truth

death

life

feeling one with the environment.

It’s

a way to survive

I will show you

the real story of the place

what is

invisible

hidden

unwanted

valuable

worth protecting.

Remaining in the forest, a dead tree becomes a unique ecosystem of birth and death. Its life cycle is prolonged by its own roots, feeding on minerals, as well as by other trees. Simultaneously, it decomposes with the help of bacteria and fungi. “Life” is in constant flux. Similarly to dead trees, our concept is based on an ever-evolving principle. It is as much about preservation as it is about decay, regrowth and evolution.

"If an artwork represents a moment in time, and nature is time compounded – is biological matter an accumulation of time and evolution?"

The DNA of Things reflects on and converges with the lifecycle of a tree in a biogeochemical cycle, a natural pathway through which essential elements of living and non-living matter are circulated.

If we were to define and encode something as fleeting, yet permament, as the phenomenon of a dead tree, what would it look like? How would we perceive the DNA of it? How to express our impermanent perceptions of ever-evolving principles? The forms and compositions of the phenomenon?

To capture and conserve the phenomenon, the essence of the dead tree cycle, we search for ways of preserving and closing the outside – within. The choices related to the materials and shapes used in the DNA of Things are as important as the information conveyed. The materiality of the object reflects and expresses the Dialogue; it provides it with a voice, and emphasizes the volume, the tone, and the sound of the message. Encoding the information within the material itself, we let it be decoded in the future, thus continuing the conversation in a cycle of encoding and decoding that perhaps goes beoynd our own lifetimes.

The data we collect and encode include historical and biological information relating to the time and place current and past. DNA of Things functions as a map of local biodiversity and environmental situation, denoting our climate footprint and actions towards sustainability in the form of critical and speculative futurescaping.

The information gathered dictates the way the DNA of Things will be transmitted and received. What is at stake is that our choices influence the weight and importance of the discourse in question.

We opt for an ephemeral material, a compostable and biobased PLA, to create a non-eternal object – a time capsule that moves our very life cycle outside of our temporal axis. Enduring and aging until it's forgotten, only to be rediscovered and purposefully broken open to reveal the hidden Dialogue.

We estimate that exposed to moisture, heat >40°C and UV light, the half-life of the DNA of Things sculpture, with standard shell thickness of 32 mm, is approximately 51.2 years.

The DNA of Things, and the information enclosed within, is not a single message, or a directive, but part of a Dialogue – meant to continue and blossom into a discourse.

When a tree dies, its lifecycle continues, literally opening up and evolving into a biodiverse microhabitat with a purpose of returning nutrients to the planet. Based on that same premise, our object decays and opens up at the end of its lifecycle, evolving with the purpose of returning the data ‘’nutrition’’ for the information cycle of the anthropocene.

''Art and land conservation are about legacy —what we decide to make important and leave behind. While an artwork is a visual of a moment in time, a wild place is the visual of all time compounded”