HydroPoetics explores hydroponics as an expanded system and experimental practice, with a specific focus on ecology and practices of care.
Initiated in Spring 2021, with a residency at Watershed Bristol the work considers hydroponics (the practice of growing plants in a chemical solution, without the use of soil) and our more-than-human relationships with plants - through seeding systems and collaborations.
Over the past two years I’ve established several small-to-large-scale HP systems in my studio: growing flowers, fruit and food, experimenting with varieties of plants never previously grown using hydroponic techniques. I’m currently in discussion with plant scientists at Bristol University and initiated a research project with Bristol Robotics Lab.
Throughout HydroPoetics run issues of sustainability, composting and recycling. I've experimented with biodegradable substrates (hemp etc) with varying degrees of success. As part of my research I've been documenting not only the materiality of the HP systems [often plastic and unsustainable], but also HP's reliance on distributed networks of supply - and therefore how precarious it is as a potential response to climate breakdown. I'm excited by developing HP into a more circular system - I've started to compost materials that can be made into the natural fertilisers for the plants, as well as reusing yoghurt pots and water bottles as vessels. I'm also looking into sustainable alternatives to rockwool as substrate.
Last summer HydroPoetics was installed as a techno-garden in a prototype Martian House. This project acted as a framework, for reconsidering our approaches to materials and sustainability here on Earth. The house was open to the public from July-October 2022 with HydroPoetic workshops and a Martian Tea Ceremony: combining elements of Shinrin-Yoku and Lemon Balm in a speculative setting.
My long-term aim for HydroPoetics is as a socially engaged contemporary arts project, that explores and reimagines cultures of art, biology and technology. Through doing so, audiences will be able to engage with vital practices of art, science and the agency of living materials, through innovative exhibitions and participatory workshops.
© Luke O'Donovan
HydroPoetic Plant Study, 16mm film timelapse
A Collaboration with Matt Davies
16mm film frottage and exposure to ice, snow, rock, fjord, glacier, made during a remote residency to the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard (2015)
Field recordings of hail, wind and underwater ice sheets made by sound artist Shirley Pegna.
An initial version of Skumring was first installed in a derelict department store as part of BEEF Department of Moving Images, at Centre of Gravity, Bristol, between lockdowns in October 2020
More information about the Arctic residency programme can be found at http://thearcticcircle.org
Skumring (Twilight) 2021
2 minute excerpt
Skumring (Twilight) installed at the BEEF Department of Moving Images, Centre of Gravity, Bristol 2020
Synthetic Dwelling centres around a polyHIPE scaffold: a tiny 5mm cube of polyester bone marrow used within current practices of synthetic blood production. Within these cubes, millions of stem cells are routinely cultured in rich media. By disclosing both the corporeal and the synthetic in laboratory practices of biomedicine, these artworks represent the abstracted, medical body as a negotiated borderline between the experiential, biological, material and technological.
Exhibited at:
3D Print Exhibition: Dulwich Festival, Bow House, London (2019)
We The Curious, Interactive Science Museum Bristol (2018)
Spike Island OPEN (2018)
Scanning and re-materialising this scaffold at scale, reveals the white noise at the heart of our technological and corporeal medulla. My artist research explores this vital space, in which we negotiate our relation between human and the post human.
micro-CT scan of a polyHIPE scaffold (1’ 20”)
Micro computed tomography (CT) is a means of x-ray imaging in three dimensions. A similar device to medical CT scans, used in hospitals and clinical practice, but on a much smaller scale and with a much higher resolution. Here, a single scan images the complete internal structure of the 5mm cube.
Zero Landscape explores the interplay of vast and microscopic, through a series of 2D and 3D print works that reflect on the mediation of global and interior landscapes.
The works presented here are all derived from the same digital source: a digital scan of the artist's blood made with an Atomic Force Microscope. At a scale below the threshold of human sight, her body's physical substance, her bio-matter recombines with machinic code and ripples out in waves of data visualisation.
Zero Landscape places sculptural objects in dialogue with large-scale prints that consider the body's spatial positioning by both medical and geo-locational technologies.
These objects are residual forms; translated, enlarged, fragmented, elongated. As material evidence, they are bio-matter entwined with nylon. Through processes of print, new landscapes are created: Zero Landscapes at the threshold of body and machine.
Exhibited at Gossamer Fog, London (2017)
Thicker than Blood, London, Curated by Izdihar Afyouni (2017)
Spike Island Test Space // The Control Room, Bristol (2016)
The Phoenix, Exeter (2015)
Published in
Becoming Image: Medicine and the Algorithmic Gaze (2018) edited by Liz Orton
3D Additivist Cookbook (2016) co-edited by Morehshin Allahyari & Daniel Rourke
Contact / Surface. Exeter Phoenix (2015)
Zero Landscape. The Control Room, Bristol Harbourside. (2016) Night view
Original glass slide, blood (2011)
Bournemouth University Art Gallery (2016)
traversing digital mesh (video) 1’20”
A series of works that engage with Atomic Force Microscopy [AFM], digital visualisation and scale, translating the artist's blood (bio-matter) into data.
On first glance, the terrain resembles a satellite transmission from deep space. The image flickers between representation and digital surface; media inseparable from subject, rendering it hard to decipher. Made whilst Artist in Residence at iDAT, Plymouth University.
Untitled_Force 4.17x10^-5
Laser engraved porcelain tiles
Dimensions 120 x 120 cm
Exhibited in a solo exhibition at Plymouth Arts Centre (2011)
PURE FLOW [mobile edition]
A miniature, hand held artwork for a mobile audience; PURE FLOW reinstates negative space in the cultural icon of the iPhone.
The app subverts the use-value of GPS as a surveying and navigational tool; revealing the invisible data streams and highlighting their increasing ubiquity, as sophisticated military technologies become key components in daily life.
PURE FLOW reveals the white noise generated between GPS data systems and multiple satellites, 3G networks and Wifi hotspots, as a tangible presence in the environment. Live signals, passing through cloud cover and urban architecture; absorbed by bodies, reflecting off concrete and refracting through glass.
Once activated, PURE FLOW reveals these signals as a sliver of fluctuating white noise, responding directly to the movement and immediate environment of the device and its user.
Exhibitions:
A PLACE FOR YOU TO DREAM, London (2017) Curated by ANGL
Shortlisted for the Lumen Prize (2014) New York, Hong Kong, London, Athens, Cardiff
Transmediale Berlin (2013) Curator Jacob Lillemose
Brighton Digital Festival (2011) Interview with Katy Connor, broadcast on BBC Click
Impakt Online Exhibition: The Right to Know (and Copy) (2011)
Plymouth Arts Centre (2011)
Artist text 'From Solid Light to Satellite'
presented at LUX Biennial, ICA London (2012)
Published by e-Permanent, Brighton (2012)
PURE FLOW was originally commissioned through the Exeter Phoenix Digital Media Bursary (2009)
A collaboration with Dr Duncan Rowland, Reader in the school of Computer Science at the University of Lincoln.
Collage of digital and VHS video, super 8mm film, medical ultrasound and an electro-acoustic composition. Single screen video. 12 minutes
Themes of urban surveillance and body memory combine to produce an imprint; a hypnogogic vision of the city.
Made in collaboration with sound artist Helena Gough
Developed with VIVID, Birmingham Centre for Media Arts (2005-2007)
Screenings, exhibitions and installations include:
Spike Island (2011)
OUTPOST (2011)
.HBC Berlin (2010)
Salon Video Art Prize, MRA London (2010)
Live Art Falmouth (2009)
Exeter Phoenix (2009)
Spacex, Exeter (2008)
Frankfurt (2008)
Concrete Cannot Stop Them, Liverpool (2007)
VIVID, Birmingham (2007)
Video loop. Silent.
Appropriated satellite images of Antarctica reveal large scale sea-ice displacements.
'Now we're seeing it as a living being, that's dynamic, that's producing change - change that it's broadcasting to the rest of the world, possibly in response to what the world is broadcasting down to Antarctica.'
Douglas MacYeal, Glaciologist.
Exhibited at Spike Island Test Space, Bristol (2011)
An audio visual installation
Exhibited at MA Show
Dartington College of Arts (2008)
Colour Photographs (112 x 70cm each)
The tryptich appears to be black and white images taken of the furthest galaxies. Instead they are waterfalls, captured in a millisecond; the blink of an eye. Beautifully ambiguous, the images are in colour, a dot of violet blue can be seen in the far left image - a dying star, a fleeting drop of water.
Sacha Waldron, Curator
Exhibited at Three Corners of a Triangle Squared, Spike Island Bristol (2012)
with Synthetic Dwelling, OPEN studios, Spike Island 2019
Aureole is an audio-visual installation exploring choreography, pregnancy and themes of mediation, taking the foetal Ultrasound scan as a point of reference.
In the gallery installation, monitor-based foetal scans correspond with large-scale, choreographed movements across the gallery space.
Aureole was made in collaboration with performer Andrea Barzey, choreographer Sophie Hamar and sound artist Helen Gough.
Installation exhibited at The New Art Gallery Walsall (2005)
VIVID Birmingham Centre for Media Arts (2007)
Screened as single-screen video at Dance Film Festival, Yokohama Japan (2008)
Commissioned by Capture: Dance and the Moving Image, Arts Council England
