2019

Mothering Bacteria: The Body as an Interface


An artistic collaboration with an AI that interacts with bacteria as it grows in real-time.


AI is an entity and species that lives and multiplies purely in digital spaces, however, artificial agents are now inserted into every aspect of human life and culture. Exploring the material-politics of algorithmic spaces to reveal the complex borderlands of the self in relationship to technology, we also draw attention to mothering: a conscious, continual, mediated act of cultivation that takes every part of our bodies – from hosting, birthing and then minding.

Bodies are interfaces, thresholds, vestibules and gateways capable of hosting, carrying and birthing other life forms.




Mothering Bacteria cultivates an interactive space between bacteria and AI, and situates the female body as host in an environment constantly entangled in the production of self and other. It provides a speculative forecast of the time in which algorithms demarcate the boundaries between the biological and the digital, illuminating the porous borders between the human and nonhuman in the creation of something new.




created by Gabriela Aceves-Sepulveda, prOphecy sun and Freya Zinovieff