about

short bio

clarissa ribeiro

resume

architect, media artist and researcher, Ph.D. in Arts (ECA USP Brazil, Poéticas Digitais/CAiiA hub of The Planetary Collegium, UK), Fulbright Postdoctoral Scholarship awardee (UCLA, Art|Sci Center/James Gimzewski Lab, US), M.Arch. (IA USP, Brazil, nomads.usp), B.Arch, member of the UCLA Art|Sci Collective (2013-present), is the chair of the first Leonardo/ISAST LASER talks to be hosted in Brazil/Latin America (2017-present).

The core of her explorations is the interest in cross-scale information and communication dynamics and evolutionary emergence. Her most recent works have been exhibited in China (China Vis Arts Program 2020, Xi’An), Australia (SIGGRAPH Asia 2019, Brisbane), Europe (Planetary Collegium’s Bio-Mind and Techno-Nature exhibition, 2019, Porto) (EVAC POM – Politics of the Machine exhibition, 2019, Copenhagen), South Africa (ISEA 2018, Durban), South America (ISEA 2017, Manizales/Colombia) and in the US (IEEE VIS ART 2017, Phoenix).

She is the principal of OI.SE.AU Office for Sentient Architecture and directs the CrossLab art collective and the LIP – Lab for Innovation and Prototyping.

creative research statement

March 2021

My most recent research incursions and art works connects microbiome engineering and personality transplants to quantum biology and chemoinformatics in the effort to discuss and fully define the neologism Molmedia I introduced a few years ago in a paper related to the twentieth Consciousness Reframed conference of the Planetary Collegium, Beijing, 2017 to describe cross-scale informational processes who impact life, human and non-human informational existences, as observable macro scale phenomena in the planet and the cosmos. In the series ‘Inhaling consciousness’(2019-ongoing) I explore the bioart potential to activate an ecological consciousness in the audience. The trans-object ‘Inhaling Consciousness’ (2019) was installed in Porto, Portugal, as part of the Consciousness Reframed conference’s juried exhibition “Sentient States: Bio-Mind and Techno-Nature”, in June 2019. The work explores possible integrations and information exchange between above-ground cork oaks microbiome and the human respiratory and digestive system’s one. For the version installed in June 2019 in Porto, considering Portugal is a major cork-grower, producing nearly half the cork harvested annually in the world, the species covering approximately 8 percent of the total area of the country, the intention was to offer to the audience the opportunity to reflect about the complexity of molecular level integration between Portugal humans’ population and the plant kingdom one. For ISEA 2020 in Montreal, a variation of the artwork was considered, addressing local ecological issues from a panpsychic perspective, replacing the cork oak by the Coffee-tree (Gymnocladus dioicus), a threatened species in Canada. Beyond explorations in which I include bioarte strategies, my exploration combining data-visualization strategies with morphogenesis and algorithmic modeling and digital fabrication, touches the idea embedded in the neologism Molmedia from a different perspective. For the collection of data-sculptures exhibited at SIGGRAPH ASIA 2019 Art Gallery in Brisbane, Australia - ‘Political Crystals: Numinous Hashtags’ (2018-2019) and the data-sculptures using COVID 19 WHO online data ‘If you Hold a Stone Hold it in Your hand’(2020-present) exhibited as an invited work in data-visualization at the 2020 China VisArt Program and presented online LIVE at Ars Electronica in Kepler’s Garden, to the recent participation in Victoria Vesna’s [Alien] Stardust online meditation with the data-sculpture and sensorial apparatus ‘photoacoustic meditation’ (December, 2020, and the 'data-nests'(2021) produced for the collaboration with Amy-Clair Huestis for the 109th CAA Annual Conference, my interest is in exploring information visualization and data visualization from the perspective of media arts, touching socio-political issues and helping humans, animals and plants’ underprivileged communities and populations in being more represented, empowered and conscious about their rights.