Other tiny forms of life

Other [tiny] forms of life is an expedition to discover the micro-biodiversity that inhabits and shapes three parks and a wetland in Bogotá. The communitarian creation groups were in charge of investigating which bacteria and fungi are present in these public spaces, with microbiology, molecular biology, and metagenomics techniques, and with artistic processes such as drawing, photography, and generative modeling of sculptures using the genetic code. It has been co-created with the microbiology and biotechnology laboratory CorpoGen as an articulation of methodologies for collectively exploring, thinking, and creating.

It is a space for the co-creation of new knowledge that brings together various creative communities and their diverse knowledge. A space to think in other ways about our relationship with nature and with ourselves as part of it. Other relationships with the microorganisms with whom we co-inhabit/co-create this territory.

It explores the diversification of knowledge / ways of knowing; the in-disciplinarity of knowledge, methodologies, and techniques; and the co-creation of situated emerging understandings, meanings, and the communitarian network itself. The mobile lab built into a cargobike visited the Nacional, Simón Bolivar, and Entre Nubes parks, and the Juan Amarillo wetland, during May and June 2022.

This project is a collaboration between the arts and emerging media laboratory Mutante and the microbiology and biotechnology laboratory CorpoGen. With the support of the "Experimentar Grant. Art, science, technology for Civic Culture" of the Secretaría de Cultura, Recreación y Deporte de Bogotá.

Created by: Juan Diego Rivera, Margarita González, Manuel Orellana, Carlos Acosta, Natalia Rivera, Juan Manuel Anzola, Dayana Calderón, Christian Romero, Valeria Gómez. Mutante y Corpogen.

In collaboration with: María Gómez, Tomás Díaz, Oscar Molina, Pablo Quiroga, Alejandra Peñalosa, Daniel Osorio, Daniel Gómez, David Ramos, Estefanía Valencia, Juan Felipe Fernández, Paula Londoño. La Redada. La Vox Populi. Rojinegro.

We want to thank La Redada and La Vox Populi for all their support and for hosting our project in their space. We also thank Oscar Molina for his support.

OTHER TINY FORMS OF LIFE
Other ways of understanding and coexisting

The encounter, research, and creation with the communities around some green public areas of the city was in turn the encounter of new/other ideas about the ecosystem we are and the biosphere we are part of. We encountered to explore the parks and wetlands, collect samples of soil, air, water, plants, among others, and grow the bacteria found in them. We took the soil samples to the lab to read the genetic codes present there and discover all those bacteria that do not grow in the Petri dishes. With this amazing information, that of bacteria's DNA, we experimented with creative artistic processes. Through a board game we turned the genetic code into poems, while exploring programming with code that would later become a game to create sculptures which in their structure present the genetic code of bacteria.

Other [tiny] forms of life is a robust proposal that articulates creative methodologies from the arts and the sciences, together with experimental pedagogical processes. The mobile microbiology laboratory travels around the city entering the everyday spaces of the inhabitants of Bogotá, inviting them to participate in a collaborative process of citizen science and artistic creation with the most surprising media. Discovering and creating together with others is for us the best way to rethink and reinvent our relationships with the environment we inhabit. Environment that through the four encounters of each of the groups, we comprehend as absolutely full of life. So alive, that it would not exist without the living that conforms it.

To open the space for experimental methodologies in the creation of other forms of understanding, of other forms of coexistence, is of the utmost relevance. For us at Mutante, the generation of spaces for dialogue and creation with diverse communities has been, for nearly 10 years now, the way to promote the local or situated co-creation of those other possible worlds that we want to inhabit. On the web page of the social memory of this project you can find all the experiences, resources, and the documentation of the creation groups that we developed and the ideas that emerged there.

The space of this project also reveals a huge network of collaborations that converge to develop a project of this level of complexity in terms of experimental practices and methodologies, the encounters with communities, and with the advanced contents and processes of both disciplines, both arts and sciences (with the permanent idea of eliminating this distinction). It is about the strong collaboration we have woven since 2017 with the CorpoGen laboratory, who, with a long history of research and development in microbiology and biotechnology, have always sought to bring these topics closer to the general public. It is also about the emerging collaboration with La Vox Populi, La Redada, and Oscar Molina, who co-created this project with us, while bringing us closer to their work with the communities they are part of. The development takes place, in turn, in an uncommon space in the grants organized by the district, in which with the first version of the "Grant Experimenting. Art, science, technology for civic culture" (Beca Experimentar. Arte, ciencia, tecnología para la cultura ciudadana) supports, as its name suggests, truly experimental processes of creation. Finally, we want also to celebrate the collaborative network that resulted in the formation of the group that from Mutante gathered to create and carry out this proposal, which origin is strongly connected to the context of what we are thinking and creating in the Suratómica Network, in the current cycle "At the Edge of Chaos" (En el Filo del Caos).

Thanks to all those who have been part of this project!

As alive as the earth

PODCAST about the experience in the creation groups

(IN Spanish)

CREATION GROUPS

Entre Nubes Park

National Park

“Entre Nubes is a Mountain District Ecological Park, located in the southeast extreme of Bogotá and is part of the group of hills and mountains that, like foothills of the eastern Andes, gives the city's landscape its own characteristic. It is formed by the hills of Guacamayas, Juan Rey and Cuchilla del Gavilán, from the Rafael Uribe, San Cristóbal and Usme localities; It has an extension of 626 hectares and a perimeter of 30 km. Its main use, according to the provisions of the P.O.T. Preservation and restoration of native flora and fauna, environmental education.”

Taken from: https://ambientebogota.gov.co/parque-entrenubes

“The National Park, with 78 years of experience serving the public, is one of the most emblematic of the capital, it has 65 hectares that cover from Avenida Circunvalar to the 7th avenue between streets 39 and 36 South, its easy access makes this park within the reach of all users of the surrounding community of the La Merced, Perseverancia, and El Paraíso neighborhoods, it is also surrounded by students from the Javeriana, Distrital, La Piloto universities, and various technological institutes, of which a large number of people access all spaces.”

Taken from: https://www.idrd.gov.co/parques/parques-metropolitanos/parque-nacional-enrique-olaya

Simon Bolivar Park

Juan Amarillo Wetland

“The Simón Bolívar Metropolitan Park is the most important in the city due to its large size and its strategic location in the heart of Bogotá. It has wide green spaces with a vast variety of tree species. It has a series of scenarios that shape it up and that are available for the enjoyment of citizens.”

Taken from: https://www.idrd.gov.co/parques/parques-metropolitanos/parque-metropolitano-simon-bolivar

“The Juan Amarillo District Wetland Reserve has the maximum worldwide RAMSAR environmental certification, as a result of the work that has been carried out for the conservation of biodiversity in these spaces considered Protected Areas of the District, which are part of the Main Ecological Structure of Bogotá. The Juan Amarillo or Tibabuyes wetland, receives its chibcha name, which means farm or farmers land, thanks to the richness of the land that served as a meeting point for the Muisca people, where agriculture and fishing activities were carried out.”

Taken from: https://ambientebogota.gov.co/humedal-juan-amarillo

Where are the bacteria?

Encounter i

TERRITORY EXPLORATION

We met for the first time in the space we were going to explore. People of all ages, with very diverse profiles: children, artists, students, teachers, researchers, cultural promoters, among many others.

There we wondered where we could find those other tiny forms of life that we aimed to discover, and began our expedition.

We documented, drew, and wrote everything we found in our exploration notebooks. We created fantastic maps, used the dry leaves of the trees as stamps, collected small parts of the plants to study them, created the color palettes of the environment, and finally we asked ourselves: What differentiates the living from the non-living?

CULTURE OF MICROORGANISMS IN PETRI DISHES

Now, if those tiny forms of life are so tiny that we can't see them, how can we find them?

A few centuries ago, when microorganisms were first discovered, scientists realized that some bacteria grow in certain small environments that we can create in the laboratory, or the park, with food for them.

Some of the participants took samples of the soil, others of air, their hands, the plants, or water. These samples then became beautiful ecosystems growing in our Petri dishes, previously prepared with the nutrients for the bacteria to grow.

We learned how we can grow few bacteria, to better see their characteristics, or how we can grow many, to see how various types of microorganisms grow. These explorations resulted in a wonderful collection of Petri-art!

PETRI-ART

DNA can be seen!

Encounter II

Observe the microorganisms we grew

A week later, when the microorganisms had already grown in our Petri dishes, we met to study them. This second encounter was, for several of the groups, in the space of La Redada, a cultural house in the center of the city that became a laboratory of the living to host us.

With digital microscopes, magnifying glasses, cell phones, and cameras, we observed and documented what developed in our Petri dishes. Microorganisms of all colors, shapes and sizes. Not only bacteria, but also fungi that found the food we offered the bacteria very nutritious.

Thus, with many colors and with the support of two microbiologists, Valeria and Dayana, we learned about the bacteria that we discovered in the parks and the wetland. The types of bacteria, the types of colonies, the shapes and sizes of the colonies, the ways in which they relate to other bacteria, among many other knowledge that this field of science has developed.

Extract the DNA of a fruit to observe it

Although we have already managed to see the bacteria in our petri dishes, the scientists told us that there are actually very few bacteria that grow in those environments with food that we create for them and that there are many, many more, that are in the territory that we explored. So, how can we get to know them?

To begin, we first learned about what conforms the information of living organisms, a very, very tiny molecule known as DNA. DNA is inside the cells of multicellular organisms like us humans, and in the case of bacteria, which are a single cell without a nucleus, it is also inside their membrane.

Luckily, it is possible to see the DNA of some living organisms with bare eyes! So that was our next experiment. With very simple elements such as a blender, alcohol, and soap, we extracted the DNA from strawberries and held it in our hands to observe it and learn how this molecule can give us all the information we need to discover the rest of the bacteria present in our territory.

How to turn the genetic code into a sculpture?

Encounter III

DNA SEQUENCING

The process to extract and study the DNA of all the bacteria present in the soil samples, took us back to the CorpoGen laboratory, where with their biotechnology equipment and the support of Christian and Juan Manuel, we were able to process it.

In the lab, soil samples go through various processes to break the bacteria cell membranes and release the DNA, and then separate it to have a clearer sample that can be processed.

This sample, or in our case, the soil samples from the three parks and the wetland, went through a small device called a sequencer that converts biological information, that is, the DNA bases that it reads, into digital information, that is, into ones and zeros, which is the language that computers understand.

Thus, we read the information of a gene, the 16S gene, which gives us precise information about each type of bacteria present, and we compared it with a database to find out their names.

BOARD GAME: THE CODE OF LIFE

How come that biological information becomes digital information?!

We now learned about how to translate from one language to another. How to translate from DNA to bits, how to translate from DNA to poetry, and also how we can use those languages to create something new through programming.

Our board game, "The code of life", is a beautiful experimental pedagogical creation, same as the rest of the process, through which participants create a gene that becomes a poem, which is then translated into the 16S gene of a bacteria that we searched among the bacteria we discovered through the DNA sequencing.

This introduction to programming, which is in turn an introduction to one of the most advanced fields of life sciences, bioinformatics, became the basis for what we built later, the sculptures with the genetic code of the bacteria.

POETRY WITH DNA

The earth is alive!

Encounter IV

THE TWISTER OF LIFE

The twister of life was our introductory game to explain artificial life or more specifically, an artificial life form called cellular automata. It is a mathematical model that generates a visual representation of a system with life-like behavior. Here, our idea was to create a three-dimensional one and we started by becoming cells ourselves. Thus, depending on the rules of the game, some cells live and others die, that is, they remain in the square or must leave it doing pirouettes.

A game like this allowed us to deepen our knowledge of artificial living systems and again, in programming. The participants were able to understand how those translations that we previously explored allow us to create, act on the world, from scientific processes, and of course, now with our expedition, from artistic processes as well.

Later, the cells of this artificial living system became cubes that gave shape to a sculpture whose structure hid a part of the genetic code of a bacteria discovered in the explored territory.