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A day of getting creative with yeast, working from Loaf Bakery’s kitchen we will learn about the history of yeast in bread making and get hands-on with your own starter cultures to make artisanal bread art. We will hear about the complex relationships arising out of performing with a sourdough starter culture, and introduce the work of bioartists using UV light to etch photographs into yeast colonies with the opportunity to create your own.
<aside> 🍞 Part of the fungi kingdom, yeasts can be found all across the world and also naturally occur in the human body. Yeast are a model organism for scientists studying genetics and cell biology. Some species have been cultured to produce biofuels, probiotics and nutritional supplements. From baking to brewing, yeasts have been used by humans for millennia and even pre-date written language.
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Find out all about the power of fungi and the interconnected lives they weave across the ‘wood wide web’ from artists hosting crafting workshops to become a ‘forest representative’ and then joining a debate among a council of microorganisms. Hear about the power of bio-remediation from fungi cleaning up environmental pollutants, and learn about the importance of biodiversity in nature and what you can do to help rewild your area.
<aside> 🍄 The ‘wood wide web’ describes the underground network created by fungi that connect flowers, trees and mushrooms together, to share nutrients and even ‘talk’ to one another. Mushrooms are the visible fruiting bodies of fungi, and their roots - called mycelium - play a vital role in plant health. Mycelium has been increasingly used by designers to create everything from biodegradable packaging to furniture.
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Take part in workshops by world-renowned ceramists who will be joining us virtually from Bangkok, Thailand to hand-build miniature porcelain sculptures inspired by multicellular organisms; 3D printing clay with ceramics masters from Boston, US and Wolverhampton, UK; and interrogate the role of architecture in the health and mental wellbeing by re-designing the buildings and rooms which we live.
<aside> 🧱 Although not technically a living material, clay contains multitudes of bacteria which give it plasticity. Clay also occurs in many cultural and spiritual texts as an analogy to flesh, and most likely provided conditions early in the history of our planet for complex life to arise. Viewed on a nanoscopic level, clay is comprised of flat, roughly hexagonal platelets, which slide over one another and give clay its malleable texture.
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South Loop Park (Ladywood)
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Join us to discover some of the amazing properties of flora found around South Loop Park and the Edgbaston reservoir. We will explore some of the ways neighbourhoods are creating shared garden spaces and making their own soil. You will learn how to transform flora into pigments to paint with and be invited to gather materials to create your own inks. Our guest speaker will join virtually from Melbourne and share their artistic practice of cloning plants.
<aside> 🌻 Flora refers to the plant life found in a particular region. We have used the term Flora to draw attention to the fact that we will be looking at plants specifically found in Birmingham. Across the world, plants are one of our most ancient allies. They feed us, produce medicines that heal us, textiles that keep us warm, and most important of all, help create the very air we breathe.
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BOM (Southside)
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Discover how artists are working with technology to extend their perceptions and harness biometric data to create artworks. From Cyborgs to Indofuturism, we will meet artists exploring how you can draw using GPS data; tapping into the electrical activity of the brain to control electronic devices; and using the materials of the body to create performances and rituals in collaboration with other species.
<aside> 👤 In recent years scientists have unlocked incredible secrets about human biology and at the same time discovered even more mysteries. We have learned how bacteria in our guts work in tandem with our brain to create a ‘gut-brain axis’ that supports our nervous system, and seen the possibilities of data encoding in DNA - DNA flash drives - sparking a new era of biotechnology applications in computing.
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