Katy Connor

Nylon sculpture of bone marrow scaffold, CT-scan (video)

Synthetic Dwelling is based upon a tiny scaffold of polyester bone marrow used in synthetic blood production, to represent the abstract, clinical body.

Funded by University of Bristol Brigstow & BioDesign Research Institutes

Xerographic print on graph paper (laboratory bone marrow scaffold)
Exhibitions
IMPACT 11 Evolution of Print Technology, Hong Kong 2021
Dulwich Festival, London 2019
Bristol Science Museum 2018

micro-CT scan of laboratory bone marrow scaffold (1’ 20”)
Micro computed tomography (CT) is a means of x-ray imaging in three dimensions at the micro-scale. Here the complete internal structure of the scaffold is revealed, illuminating the spaces where stem cells proliferate.

Installation detail: works on tabletop
TV sculptures of cellular movements, laboratory flasks of culture media, petri-dish works on paper, biochemistry text book, micrographia of erythrocytes, hand-developed photograph, ephemera.

Konteksty Festival of Ephemeral Art
Międzynarodowe Laboratorium Kultury, Sokołowsko Poland

From Blood Culture: Reimag(in)ing Life at a Cellular Scale Artist Residency at BrisSynBio Bristol (2017-19)

Fractured petri dish containing blood culture medium, slowly being absorbed by an unfinished pencil drawing of the moon, on graph paper.

Międzynarodowe Laboratorium Kultury, Sokołowsko Poland

From Blood Culture: Reimag(in)ing Life at a Cellular Scale Artist Residency at BrisSynBio Bristol (2017-19)
Funded by University of Bristol Brigstow Research Institute

Installation: sculptural objects in dialogue with large-scale prints, all from the same digital source: a scan of the artist’s blood, made with an Atomic Force Microscope

3D printed sculptures, large-scale risographs, giclee print, video works
Installation over two sites (night/day):
IMPACT 11 Crossing Boundaries, Hong Kong (2021)
Spike Island & Harbourside, Bristol (2016)

Manufactured red blood cells suspended in video culture (2018) Photographic series and video works

Published in Becoming Image: Medicine and the Algorithmic Gaze (2018) edited by Liz Orton. London. 'Between Body and Image: Synthetic Interference' pp. 44-53

Language of Liquidity: Aesthetics get Synthetic, Max Planck Institute, Potsdam (2017)

3D printed sculpture, data from an AFM scan of the artist’s blood, with large black glass:

Zero Landscapes at the threshold of body and machine
Detail from installation at Spike Island, Bristol (2016)

Bristol Harbourside (2016) Night time view
Projections, video monitors, nylon sculptures on light box

At a scale below the threshold of human sight, her body's physical substance, her bio-matter combines with machinic code and ripples out in waves of data visualisation.

3D printed sculpture, data from an AFM scan of the artist’s blood, with large risograph print (billboard 12 x 3 metres)

Zero Landscape places sculptural objects in dialogue with large-scale prints consider the body's spatial positioning by both medical and geo-locational technologies.

IMPACT Hong Kong (2021), Gossamer Fog, London (2017) Thicker than Blood, London (2017) Exeter Phoenix (2015) Spike Island, Bristol (2016)

Published in the 3D Additivist Cookbook (2017) (Allahyari & Rourke)

Pure Flow software reveals the white noise generated between GPS data, satellites, 3G networks and Wifi hotspots, across different scales [iPhone, installation and print] as a tangible presence in the environment.

A Place for you to Dream, London (2017)
Lumen Prize international tour: Hong Kong, New York, Athens (2013-14)
Transmediale, Berlin (2013)
Brighton Digital Festival (2011) Interview: BBC Digital Planet

A collaboration with Dr Duncan Rowland
Funded through Arts Council England Grants for the Arts and Exeter Phoenix Media Arts Commission

Scan of the artist’s blood, made with an Atomic Force Microscope.
Made during PhD research Translating the Intimate: Experimental Media Research at Bournemouth University (2011-2016)

From a residency at iDAT and Wolfson Nanomagnetics Laboratory, University of Plymouth (2011)

Detail: 3D printed sculpture on glass, large-scale risographic print (billboard 12 x 3 metres)

Exhibitions
IMPACT 11 Evolution of Print Technology, Hong Kong 2021
INNER OTHER: Gossamer Fog, Deptford, London 2017
Zero Landscape: Spike Island & Harbourside, Bristol 2016

Nylon 3D print, with architectural model, 1:50

From the micro vantage-point of the cells living inside the scaffold, the spectre of the full-size human figure is enormous, architectural in size. Synthetic Dwelling draws upon comments made by scientists working in the lab, to suggest a subtle empathy established with the cells and their micro-dwelling places.

Placing a human figure inside, the piece becomes a dwelling and the sculpture reveals the intricate spaces where the cells nestle. In shifting scales, the small becomes large, enveloping the body and de-stabilising the human figure as a measure of scale.