Congratulations Victor Armando Mancilla Rios

Victor Armando Mancilla Rios - Artemiidae, Soltar la gota y verla caer

Victor Armando Mancilla Rios -21 Hormigas

“Artemiidae, Soltar la gota y verla caer” by Victor Armando Mancilla, 2012.

Since the origin of these Artemia, its end and was determined, converted into food for aquarium animals, produced in bulk for distribution and even modified to magnetically separate the eggs of newly hatched brine shrimp using a magnet. The brine shrimp from their origin are bioartifact, a tool that feeds the pets that entertain us every day. What is alive has always to be fed. Generally, all animals eat their subordinates in a huge food chain that ends, at its peak, with the prevailing omnivorous this earth. Humans.

However, in our society we have invented, in the same way that we invent for ourselves, rights to humans: the famous animal rights. However, defining what beings are those who take shelter in this respect is something that intrigues me.

These small artemia are traded as live food for pets, turtles and fish. Since its birth, its purpose is to be processed, packaged and distributed in different pet stores and aquariums. The bags come to be between 15 and 60 individuals who may be devoured in seconds by a good-sized turtle.

Can we compare the pain of a complex organism as a vertebrate against the suffering of a small crustacean like shrimp?

Many psychologists and neurologists are hesitant to say that animals without central nervous system can not process the pain and simply responses to stimuli are only negative reactions.

But when we see the shrimp die, we can see all the painful way of this organism from life to death. We can only say that is experiencing spasms and reactions. Read more at the following links:

http://www.nefemov.com/artemiidae/artemia.html

http://www.nefemov.com/artemiidae/textos.html

http://www.nefemov.com/artemiidae/explicacion.html

Otros textos referentes a este trabajo:

http://www.nefemov.com/artemiidae/textomarian.html

video http://www.nefemov.com/artemiidae/cementerio/art-7.mp4

“21-Hormigas” by Victor Armando Mancilla, 2012.

Video and algorithm generated by sequence of photographs taken every 30 seconds for about 24 hours of a screen printing of honey on a piece of white styrene. The printed pattern is made of small squares of one square millimeter. All small items are a great bait for ants and a rectangular surface to deconstruct by the anthill. A drawing is a sequence of points in a plane that is recognized by a percipient. My proposal captures a sequence of drawings generated by a controlled situation; a golden rectangle made of small dots of honey of a millimeter in diameter and separated by a millimeter and a hungry anthill with small black ants, almost as small as the point of honey.

When ants erase the honey by eating it, leave a chemical trail they use to communicate with each other. The chemical trail is so strong that it still attracts ants that continue generating patterns and drawings on the surface. Unlike the initial pattern produced by the eaten honey box, now there is a new pattern on the surface, which is produced by the chemical substances of ants. At this point, ants follow an autonomous pattern, not predetermined, generated by its own free walk on the surface.

The pattern of ants becomes a drawing, which was operated to create a programmed algorithm that generates a group of twenty one digital ants, which are incorporated into video of real ants when clicking anywhere on the screen. The drawing made by the algorithmic ants is virtually identical and therefore indistinguishable visually drawing of real ants. However, algorithmic ants easily recognizable pausing the video or leaving the pointer on the screen, when an ant algorithm pointer touches it stops.

The work of art works on the crossroads artificial-life /natural life and the paradoxes that are generated from the establishment of definitions in one and other way. Can we talk about a "living technology"? Living technology depends on generating systems which emulate the vital processes and behavior of living organisms, which has been achieved through the development of biotechnology and informatics, to the point where today we talk about bioinformatics, that means, the real possibility of transforming the biological processes into data and in turn be reconfigured as biological processes.

The autonomous movement is one of the characteristics of living. This piece plays in the first instance with two elements, firstly, intervenes and manipulates autonomous movement of the living and predetermining it, as it follows a geometrically conformed pattern. On the other hand, is driven by the random movements of ants, which inevitably go beyond from the pattern falling the indeterminacy and unpredictability. The movements can’t be anticipated, in any case, the most that can be done is to follow the traces of them.

The trace of ants traceable from the chemical substances they segregate is a single map on a surface. What do the maps of the living mean, the traces of their movements, breaking the pattern, the indeterminacy of chance? Suppose then that the living and their movement is indeterminable, and that over all geometric figure that can serve as a pattern, will rise above it a new surface normal map created by the strokes. Let's bring back the map to the determinable and measurable, to figures and data, just as the bioinformatics movement which goes from the living to data and back.

Convert the map of living in an algorithm, making the living a sum of mathematical equations, logical, rational, predictable. Mix rhe living and its indetermination with the algorithm and its determination, the biological with the artificial, the natural and the synthetic, and present to the spectator merging worlds: indeterminate and determinate movement. 

The merging makes the elements to be indistinguishable. Just like those "visually indistinguishable" that plastic has created during the last decades (the famous Warhol Brillo Box as interpreted by Arthur Danto), this piece is presented as a visual indiscernible between the living and the artificial, it talks about alive technology. Where are the boundaries between the living and the artificial? The border has to be porous, because artificial isn´t other thing than the living expression of the living. Entire project:

http://www.nefemov.com/hormigas/21_hormigas.html