Neus Torres Tamarit Art

I have had the great opportunity to collaborate with the Royal Society in their project ‘Changing Expectations’ about envisioning research culture in the year 2035. As part of this project, my colleague Julie Light, from the MA Art and Science, wanted to create a ‘Museum of Extraordinary Objects’ belonging to the year 2035. I   was already reflection about interdisciplinary research, and how people from different disciplines can collaborate with each other, as this is a crucial part of my artistic practice; collaborating with geneticists, and computer scientists. This subject came up in one of the pilot workshops organised by the Royal Society. I got inspired by this and ‘Collaboration’, subject proposed by the Royal Society team. I wanted to make an object that would choose a team randomly, and in a way that the person using such object couldn't choose the members of the team. I added professions related to science, humanities craftsmanship, and professions that are...

Metagenomics in Art is a workshop that I developed during my collaboration with the BP Art Exchange at Tate Britain and Tate Modern. Metagenomics as a subject is very human and intimate, but the word does not communicate the richness of the subject and its importance to the human condition. Each of us has a host of other life-forms that reside on and in us, some of which are vital to keep us alive, some of which are invasive and harmful. They even leave fragments of themselves in our own DNA, and Metagenomics is the field concerned with how the genomes of the bacteria and viruses that call us home can interact with our health on a fundamental level. At the start of the collaboration with the Tate, we were asked to work in response to artworks that were being displayed in the Tate Britain. Ophelia, by Sir John Everett Millais, has always been one of my favourite artworks. Ophelia lies there on the point of death, but around her is a scene full of life, and this thought inspi...