Polyurethane, cellulose, polyoses, lignin, polylactic acid, calcium, titanium, magnesium, zinc, aluminum, titanium dioxide, magnesium silicate, zinc oxide, propane, butane, ketone, polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA), carbonates, chromates, vanadates, silicates, aluminum sulfosilicates, sodium, sulfates, sulfides, selenides, sulfoselenides, iron, carbon, chromium, nickel, manganese, silicon, molybdenum, tungsten, vanadium, boron, epoxy phenol novolac, cycloaliphatic diamine, isophorone diamine, hemicellulose, urea-formaldehyde.

Clarissa Ribeiro . Felipe Borges . Dimitri Lomonaco . Silvia Laurentiz . Luisa Paraguai . Helena Acuaviva . Sergio Venancio and Blake Carrington.

Feminist Data and Situated Exposure

The audiovisual project explores toxic entanglements in digital fabrication through a situated data-aesthetic of care. Drawing from feminist technoscience and post-anthropocentric design, it examines synthetic residues as part of an invisible ecology of exposure. Six micro-residue samples were collected at FabLab Mauá and scanned using a Vega LMU SEM. Materials included RenShape, PLA with automotive spray paint, PMMA, carbon fiber with epoxy resin, and MDF. The resulting textures were paired with sonified image data and multilingual vocal recitations of chemical components.

The title “Polyurethane, cellulose, polyoses, lignin, polylactic acid, calcium, titanium, magnesium, zinc, aluminum, titanium dioxide, magnesium silicate, zinc oxide, propane, butane, ketone, polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA), carbonates, chromates, vanadates, silicates, aluminum sulfosilicates, sodium, sulfates, sulfides, selenides, sulfoselenides, iron, carbon, chromium, nickel, manganese, silicon, molybdenum, tungsten, vanadium, boron, epoxy phenol novolac, cycloaliphatic diamine, isophorone diamine, hemicellulose, urea-formaldehyde”(2025), acts as a performed material archive—a litany of estimated substances found in the micro-residue samples collected at the FabLab. Recited rhythmically by the authors and interwoven with the sonified electron micrographs, the list becomes a chemical incantation, an audible atmosphere, and a choral mapping of invisible exposure. Its durational naming—stretching breath across syllables of synthetic and organic compounds—renders explicit what is usually abstracted in SDS sheets or buried in the footnotes of fabrication manuals.

Chemopoetics is introduced here as both a methodological stance and a speculative aesthetic for engaging with the chemical residues of contemporary fabrication. Drawing on the etymological tension between chemo- (to chemical processes, often invisible and molecular) and poiesis (from the Greek ποίησις, meaning “to make” or “to bring forth”), this term signals a way of attending to matter not through extraction or classification, but through attunement, resonance, and care. Chemopoetics names the entangled act of sonifying synthetic micro-worlds— using data-sonification and voice-over—of giving audible form to that which is usually unsensed: industrial remnants, atmospheric particulates, and latent toxicities. It resists the positivist clarity of traditional data representation. Instead, it proposes an affective, polyphonic aesthetic—one where noise, repetition, and broken intelligibility become tools to hear what remains just outside the grasp of normative perception. In this gesture, chemopoetics becomes a practice of witnessing, a minor acoustics for the Anthropocene, and a transversal bridge between environmental exposure, material agency, and poetic inscription.

Sonifying and Editing

The work takes the form of a looping video with a duration of 6 minutes and 24 seconds, composed of images generated from six samples. Each occupies approximately one minute, though this average was adjusted according to the temporal demands of the images themselves—their graphic density, the duration of internal movements, and the transitions of texture and contrast. The editing process was grounded in the observation of the visual behaviours of the samples, articulating the sequence through variations in density and rhythm. The use of average duration served as a narrative scaffold, enabling transitions between samples to be organised into relatively stable blocks with controlled variation. The zoom operations, performed during both the capture and composition phases, functioned not merely as visual approximations but as methods of formal detailing and spatial exploration. The short video sequences and still images were not presented in raw form; they were edited in alignment with the artist’s chemopoetic intentions. The editing process, conceived as an assemblage, aimed to superimpose, contrast, and reveal recurring patterns and ruptures. Each “sample-act” was composed as a sensitive unit, made up of traces and formal variations perceptible through time.

Alongside the visual analysis, the collective explored several strategies for sonification. Translating the scanned images into sound was a continuation of the same investigative gesture—an attempt to deepen into what the materials, often dismissed as residue, might express when embodied and chemically entangled with the bodies who weave the FabLab’s daily narratives of fabrication.

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