Biomorpha (Evolving Structures)

Biomorpha (Evolving Structures) is a mixed media installation that combines a digital interactive installation, a series of acrylic and bioplastic sculptures, holograms, photo-etchings and a performance. The project explores the idea that an organism is limited by the success of the mutations of its ancestors and how evolutionary pressure accelerates the mutation rate in an organism that is adapted to an environment that originally has stable conditions.

Special thanks to Ben Murray for his help in developing the software, to Dr Max Reuter for his contribution in genetics and evolution and to Aimee Dulake and Jessie Richardson for their involvement in the performance.

This is my final project for the Masters in Art and Science at Central Saint Martins, exhibited at the Degree Show in May 2017. 

Video of the performance on this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sj5p1Rxrkpw

Digital interactive installation with a member of the public and Ben Murray. Picture by José Ramón Caamaño.

This artwork explores the dramatic evolutionary pressure that can be caused by a sudden change in a species’ environment. An organism that is well adapted to a relatively stable environment can stay largely unchanged for millions of years. In a continuously changing environment, a species can undergo dramatic changes in a relatively short time, as there is a high potential for mutations that help it to survive in the new environment. In Biomorpha, the audience is the evolutionary pressure.

One of the evolutionary stages of Biomorpha. Picture by Neus Torres Tamarit

One of the evolutionary stages of Biomorpha. Picture by Neus Torres Tamarit

Aimee Dulake and Jessie Richardson performing at the digital interactive installation. Picture by José Ramón Caamaño

Incubator for twin life forms

Multi-media installation: acrylic, bioplastic, video 30 x 30 x 18 cm 

Sculptural impression of the digital interactive forms created for the Biomorpha interactive piece. This artwork merges two of the most important themes that I have explored during my Masters, bioplastic and life forms being constrained by the success of past mutations. Bioplastic is made from polymer chains that form whilst cooking corn starch with other ingredients; DNA, my subject matter, is another polymer molecule. The acrylic sculpture is inspired by the system of arteries and nerves that is well organised in fish but warped into a disorganised system by evolution of our fish ancestors into mammals. The bioplastic piece is an outer layer of the same sculpture. This artwork is inspired by the visit to Dr Max Reuter’s Evolutionary Biology Laboratory at UCL.

Picture by Neus Torres Tamarit

Biomorpha acrylic sculpture

Laser-cut, heat-treated acrylic shaped by hand, light

30 x 20 x 23 cm

This a physical sculptural impression of the digital interactive form created for the Biomorpha piece. This artwork is inspired by the neat system of arteries and nerves in fish that has become completely distorted by evolution of fish into mammals. Each sculpture starts as a flat, regular sheet that is heated and then subjected to an analogue of evolutionary pressure, warped by the pressure that I apply to it.

Picture by Neus Torres Tamarit

Biomorpha (Evolving Structures) I

Multi-media installation: acrylic, animation, 33 x 53 x 42 cm

This piece merges static sculpture and dynamic projection of Biomorpha life forms. The two forms are presented in a mutual aesthetic tension; one is a static capture of the form at a given moment in its evolutionary history, the other is ephemeral and dynamic, echoing the transitory nature of species over deep time.
Picture by Neus Torres Tamarit