Biography
Biography
Biography
PROJECTS
DIAA AHMEDIEN
Biological mirror
May 2018 - Nov 2019
Recorded frames of the integrated stem cell's real-time differentiation processes are included in the interactive system, which integrates the X (formerly Twitter) API to connect the differentiation system with digital society.
© Diaa Ahmedien.
An experimental interactive generative interface.
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Place: Technarte, Bilbao, Spain.
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Software: Custom-made program for video frames transferring.
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Programming languages: Java + Processing
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Hardware: Non-invasive Arduino-based sensors and a CMOS camera were attached to a microscope, ‘Confocal Microscopy from Olympus.'
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Bio-medium: Neuron Differentiation Kit No. MAN0015919 from ThermoFisher, along with a very effective serum-free medium for turning pluripotent stem cells
Documentation:
>> Technarte.
>> Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies.
SDGs
INFO
To view all the generated faces that were automatically sent to the project's Twitter account, click on the "Bio-Pixels" account.
Biological Mirror is a stem cell-based interactive generative cellular automaton visualization made interactive through a range of inputs. The interface explains how the borders between the digital and biological realms of genes are dissolving, and therefore, our understanding of reality as a concept faces uncertainty. One of the main contributions emphasized by this interface is that exhibition visitors and remote social media (Twitter) users cooperate in manipulating emerging visualizations, reflecting the vanishing borders between the physical and virtual worlds.
The 'Biological Mirror' represents the sophisticated second phase of the "Bio-Pixels" project. It was developed to re-render the stem cell's remodeled digital differentiation processes in the first phase within the context of interactions with digital and social platforms. The final interface acts as a biological mirror that digitally resynthesizes viewers' shapes within the real differentiation processes, serving as a digital technology that examines the concept of self-making visually.
Therefore, the project redefines the regenerative growth of human enhancement within the context of the interactions between the gene-based media (the biological world) and the bits-based media (the digital world) to raise a fundamental question regarding our understanding of the real being. The project assumes the digital regenerative biology of human enhancement as a new form of reality instead of describing it as a fake extension of human beings.
DOCUMENTARY
CONCEPT
The biological mirror, in this way, is an interactive generative interface that reflects the surrounding physical environment (the world of atoms) but after re-synthesizing it within the context of the interactions between the world of genes (differentiation processes of the biological substance) and the world of bits (differentiation processes of the digital substance) through a level of control derived from an interactive social platform (Twitter as a digital society). See the side diagram
Metaphorically, the generative biological mirror broadens the conceptual scope of the mirror itself, feigning our physical existence. Here, the system materializes this fake existence into a digital genotype derived from the biological core system and a digital phenotype derived from the interface appearance.
At the exhibition's physical location, the custom-made program is installed and run on a PC. Once the core system began, it automatically connected with the real-time, remodeled, differentiated cells stored in the online project laboratory repository and the project Twitter page using a Wi-Fi connection.
The program's interactive generative interface was displayed on a flat wall. Viewers had to use their smartphones and set up the Twitter app to post their genetic tweets to the project's Twitter page. As viewers could automatically post their faces, which emerged from the remodeled differentiated cell, on the project Twitter page, the Twitter page was shown on a separate screen or projector so that spectators would see their videos posted on the page.
Viewers outside the exhibition could also interact with the project by tweeting, but only if the core system was running. In this way, the project's full interactive and generative functions are operated on the exhibition's physical site as well as digitally on the Twitter page.