Network: Non-human rhythms workshop at the Embassy of Mexico

Leslie Garcia and Paloma Lopez from the Interspecifics collective return to the Netherlands. TodaysArt previously collaborated with the Mexican artists for an inspiring three-city residency in The Hague in 2013 (as part of the ECAS project) and for a ‘Non-human rhythms’ workshop and a ‘Sensory Experience and Enhanced Realities’ presentation during the TodaysArt.NL festival and Bright Collisions symposium in 2015 (as part of the SHAPE program).

On the 10th and 11th of February, the Embassy of Mexico in the Netherlands and TodaysArt present a 2-day long ‘Non-human rhythms’ workshop and lab.

Just as electricity is necessary to light up our devices, in a similar manner certain organisms use a pure form of energy to activate its cellular machinery. When deprived of oxygen, these bacteria reduce the metals from its environment growing nano antennas in the process which are used as an electron transfer respiratory tube. How could this energy represent a new gesture in sound based on a non-human logic? Rhythm is found where there’s interaction between a place, a time, and an expenditure of energy. In this sense, to understand rhythm in both the complexity of music and the very nature of sound it’s also to understand the frequencies that shape human experience in time and space and pervade everyday life and place.

For the workshop Leslie Garcia and Paloma Lopez will collect water and sediment samples from different seashores in The Hague. Every participant will build a microbial fuel cell and an Arduino based signal amplifier. Later they will use a consortium of the bacteria collected to feed the cells and control these via a Musical Instrumental Digital Interface or Voltage Control using synthesizers.

February 10th and 11th, 2016
from 17 hrs. to 20 hrs
Embassy of Mexico, Nassauplein 28, 2585 EC, The Hague
Places are limited. Please send an email to info@interspecifics.cc to register.
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