Bricolage - Video Documentation

Bricolage is a research project surrounding the creation of autonomous, animated, living, biological entities that have the ability to self-assemble and are hosted in a suspended vessel (Incubator) custom made of clay, metal and glass. These living automatons are derived from sources loaded with the engrained cultural associations of three main materials: blood, heart and silk. Bricolage develops these associations and explores their cultural meanings, whilst at the same time manifests the visceral behaviour of heart muscle cells via movement. The automatons are made from bio-engineered human heart muscle cells that grow on bodies (scaffolds) made of silk. The muscle cells beat in real time, manipulating the automatons’ movement, and at times self-assemble to create a larger structure visible to the naked eye of gallery attendees. The materiality of Bricolage is at the heart of the project as we have stripped the vital animated biological matter from the obscuring box usually given to it for practical reas