Project Update

Posted: October 7th, 2009 | Filed under: Cybernetics on the Prairie |

My project on the Biological Computer Lab is inching forward. The work is admittedly sprawling in a way it only could for a locally-based project, and one created by an artist who already has tenure secured. It’s a time-sink. At present, Skot Wiedmann is making good progress on the re-ennactment of the Adaptive Reorganizing Automaton, Miriam Moore is leading the design effort for a dense, two-wall timeline mural of events related and unrelated to the BCL. I’m talking to yet a third artist about doing some drawings for the mural, and the old BCL publications are near-ready for republication and redistribution in this project’s future home, the Institute for Genomic Biology.

Below is a working sketch for at least part of the mural timeline. It will be based on a logarithmic time scale, a way of thinking about history and memory championed by BCL founded Heinz von Foerster. From 1974 back to antiquity, the wall will tell the story of scientific study in relation to the lifespans of institutions and researchers, the impact of publications, and the simultaneous occurrence of seemingly unrelated events in politics, the arts, and even weather.

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