The Synthetic Ecologies Lab brings together artistic and scientific communities into experimental exchange through its latest project: Compendium.
How can fermentation and our relationship with microbial life inform different disciplinary practices?
Compendium is a creative research and development tool devised by Serpentine’s Synthetic Ecologies Lab. It is a guide in the exploration of the parallels between culture, ecology and life science through the lens of seasonal thematic motifs. Led by a Guest Curator and the Guild, – a group of contributing thought leaders from diverse fields, – Compendium is an evolving archive of sketches, notes and conversations that explore histories of human knowledge and the invisible scales of life that govern not only our kitchens, but also our contemporary science, culture and technology.
To celebrate the launch of the first Compendium focused on fermentation, please join Guest Curator Angela Dimayuga and Synthetic Ecologies Lab Principal Investigator and Compendium Project Director Yasaman Sheri, in a live online conversation via Serpentine’s Twitch (@serpentineUK) on Thursday 07 July from 20:00 BST/15:00 EDT/12:00 PDT. This will be an open virtual forum hosted on Serpentine’s Twitch, and an opportunity to interact with Angela and Yasaman directly, and to learn how Compendium could benefit your own research.
We look forward to introducing Compendium to you and warmly welcome your exploratory fermentation based queries.
Find out more about Compendium.
Important Information
You will need to create a Twitch account to join the conversation in real-time and take part. This is free and instructions can be found here.
This event will have live open captions.
About
Angela Dimayuga is a New York City based chef, cultural producer and multidisciplinary artist. She is the co-author of Filipinx: Heritage Recipes from the Diaspora, an anthropologic, memoire-manifesto and design driven cookbook. As a humanitites degree graduate Angela often works in the ephemeral and impermanent, engaging and producing experiences sometimes with food, other artists, advocating community care, and or celebrating BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, (and) People of Colour) queer and trans folks in nightlife organization.
Yasaman Sheri is the Principal Investigator and leads the Synthetic Ecologies Lab at Serpentine. She is an Artist and Designer investigating the creative and critical inquiry in life sciences. Her work explores the plurality of senses and the invisible scales at which humans frame and reframe ecology through culture, society and technology. She is an educator and design leader with more than a decade of experience building novel interfaces for immersive computing and curricula on sensory & experimental design. She writes frequently, mentors artists exploring emerging technologies and creative science and is an advocate for women identifying communities of color and folks less represented.
As part of Serpentine’s R&D Platform and led by Yasaman Sheri, the Synthetic Ecology Lab aims to support artists in the context of emerging biological technologies and ecology by strengthening the foundations for art’s critical inquiry and intervention into sciences. This is done by integrating insights derived from transdisciplinary experimentations through projects like the Compendium, existing art-science collaborations as well as exploring the tools and models for collaboration in new artistic engagements with the life sciences.
Serpentine Arts Technologies collaborate with artists to generate new understandings and knowledge specific to advanced technologies that artists are interested in researching and interrogating. The team has two operational areas of focus: commissioning and research and development. These manifest in artist-led projects and the R&D Platform.
