A group of artists, doctors and scientists worked on the development of a textile-based artwork that takes the form of a Regency-style dress stained with bacterial pigments and patterned by antibiotics.
The artwork is a dress that is colored by antibiotics. The color and the pattern aren’t designed by human or programs, they are designed by the nature. I like this artwork the most among the ALCHEMY exhibition. The aesthetic feeling of the dress give a natural feeling to us. It is an extraordinary dress. The antibiotics have been killed already, so it is totally harmless to human. I like the natural feeling of the dress, which makes the dress more gorgeous. As this dress is not ordinary being dyed by colored substances but antibiotics and bacteria. Anna Dumitriu describe that it is a combination between science and art. Anna’s work sort of brings her artwork to the boundary between science and art. As the antibiotics that were used in her work, were built in laboratory that requires high technology. Compare to nowadays, the public usually separate art from science. In Hong Kong’s secondary school (in the old education system), it divides our focus of study into three areas, art, business and science. We can see this case also in university, Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science. Art and science are also good examples found in many debating topic. They all indicate that in normal situation, people conceive art and science as two very different subjects. However, in Anna’s work, she tends to merge these two different subjects together.
Anna’s work reuse the concept of the cochineal that is a scale insect in suborder Sternorrhyncha, from which the crimson-coloured dye carmine is derived[1]. It is totally an analog method to do the dye in the past. The carminic acid extracted by the insects with mixing the aluminum and calcium salts to make carmine dye. In my interpretation, Anna modifies the artwork from the concept of cochineal. She was attempting to create a new dyeing and fashion concept.
Anna was trying to maintain the natural side brings from the art but at the same time insert the science elements. She maintains the balance between art and science so well that we can conclude her work as artworks but not scientific projects. Her work should be placed on an art museum and exhibition but not a laboratory.
Her infective textile is fresh and debatable. I think that it is fresh because there are seldom artists that are interested in science experiment and at the same time are willing to devote their artwork projects into science part. Most of my schoolmates in Bachelor of Arts in Creative Media are afraid of programming and any kind of science research. Anna’s Dumitriu’s attitude toward boundary blurring would definitely be a challenging task for us. Besides, I think Anna’s project is quite debatable in terms of the definition. Someone would define it as a science project but Anna herself claimed that it is a piece of artwork. Then the interesting point would be the definition of an artwork. How should people judge whether it is an artwork or not? Or it just simply depends on the decision of the project maker. For me, I will take the reference from Marcel Duchamp’s work, Urinal. He challenged the definition of artwork and concluded that pedestal in the museum would be the key for a work to become an artwork. I agree his argument in some extents. I think the public tend to judge whether a work is or isn’t an artwork simply by how graceful it present. For example, the public would definitely agree that is an artwork when it is presented in museum or exhibition. However, they would easily challenge when the case move to a street or anywhere outside the museum. Therefore, the places themselves seem to judge whether a work is an artwork more than the work itself in the public’s eyes.
MA CHUN SING
City University of Hong Kong
Reference
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochineal (Definition)
http://annadumitriuarts.tumblr.com/post/24484411607/the-communicating-bacteria-dress-was-recently (Description to Anna Dumitriu)
Microwave Alchemy Festival 2011
[1] Description from wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochineal)
