Rayna Li, Sublime Dreams of Living Machines
2021
Petri dish, antibiotic-infused agar base, and genetically-engineered Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria
Petri dish: 12.5 x 12.5 x 1.5cm (each); Digital animation: dimensions variable
This project is a continuation of my multidisciplinary study on humans’ unceasing fascination with automata — self-moving machines designed to imitate living creatures. As artificial creations built to look and act like ourselves, humanoid automata have historically facilitated philosophical debates on the essence and ethics of life and life-giving. Uniquely positioned between precision mechanics and the plastic arts, automata connect the best of science with the best of aesthetics.
All of the above characteristics of the automaton resonate with the most prominent conceptual concerns in the emerging field of Bio Art with refreshing clarity. Similar to how historical mechanical artists regarded the craft of automaton-making, Suzanne Anker defined Bio Art as a practice that requires simultaneous dedication to two mistresses: the arts and the sciences. Thus, I am interested in bridging the automaton, an age-old subject matter, with contemporary practices in Bio Art.
Sublime Dreams of Living Machines features an eighteenth-century Calligrapher automaton in the Palace Museum, Beijing, which likely arrived in China as a British diplomatic gift. It is perhaps the last extant automaton capable of writing Chinese characters and a material witness to an important episode of transcultural exchange. Unfortunately, this automaton is currently not in working order; its genius designers passed in history without revealing the secrets of their trade. In light of the sense of loss felt through my personal encounter with this broken machine and its historical and philosophical significance, I decided to bring it to ‘life’ again in a different form.
I created an animation composed of seven still frames played in rapid succession; each is a bacterial painting over the same base drawing of this automaton. Harnessing the metaphors embedded in my mediums — bacterial painting and animation — my work comments on the relationship between life and the automaton subject on multiple levels. Not only was each frame sketched with microbial life, but the animation was also an artificially composed illusion of movement, which was organically enabled by the unpredictable growth of the bacteria and slight variations in my painting execution. Through my work, I aim to refresh the timeless debate surrounding humanity’s perception of life and animatedness by transplanting historical iconography into a novel medium enabled by science.
Acknowledgments:
Sublime Dreams of Living Machines is a homage to Minsoo Kang’s monograph of the same name, in which he detailed the transformation of the automaton in the European creative imagination. This book has been a central inspiration for my work on automata, and it is for this reason that I named this animation after Kang’s scholarly contribution.
The line drawing of the Palace Museum automaton was based on a collotype image of the artifact published in 1933.
