The Grafting Parlour is an outgrowth of the research by each of the collective’s members. GfP draws on Kelly Jaclynn Andres’ work developing ecological interfaces for communication with living organisms, Nurit Bar-Shai’s interactive installations which rely on remote participants’ input to drive a physical narrative, and Saoirse Higgins’ mechanical communication devices that reinterpret and sonify live data, presenting the data in a new context with a meta-narrative. Lucy Hg brings her experience working with The League of Imaginary Scientists on interactive installations that approach scientific subject matter from a sideways perspective, while Antti Tenetz – a real-life naturalist – studies and records the world around him, starting with the Arctic and extending as far as Thailand. This core group of artists works in tandem with scientists, devising creative applications for their shared interests and joint research.
Practice
The Grafting Parlour includes and builds on projects and research developed in collaboration with artists, scientists and the public. Their installation draws from the collective’s cumulative research, nodes of which become the creative and scientific residues presented as part of their ongoing process.
- Exchange
The collective’s art practice includes interdisciplinary research, workshops, and public discussions. The Grafting Parlour’s discussions on art and science with scientists in the field punctuate and redirect their research and methods of inquiry.
- Living Portals
The artists have developed portals into different live habitats, spanning from the forest to the microscope, thereby creating interfaces for interacting with these remote habitats and nonhuman species.
- Media Archive
The Grafting Parlour is building a collection of video and audio narratives, which document their different research activities.
- Scientific Residues and Live Experimentation
The Grafting Parlour has been investigating cellular communication and plant perception through experimentation with living organisms and sensors.