The concept of this artwork's setup was presented at Technarte, Bilbao, Spain, in 2019.

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Biological Mirror is a stem cells-based interactive generative cellular automaton visualization made interactive through a range of inputs.  The interface explains how the borders between the digital and the 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 having exhibition visitors and remote social media (Twitter) users cooperate in manipulating the emerging visualizations, reflecting the vanishing borders between the physical and virtual worlds.

Biological Mirror is the second phase of the project entitled "Bio-Pixels."  It is a sophisticated phase that was developed to re-render the remodeled differentiation processes, in the first phase, within the context of the interactions with digital and social platforms. The final interface acts as a biological mirror. Viewers are re-synthesized digitally within the real differentiation processes as a digital technology of enhanced self-making. 

Therefore, the project redefines the regenerative growth of human enhancement within the context of the interactions between the genes-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.

Biological mirror, in this way, is an interactive generative interface that reflects the surrounding physical environment 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 digital substance) through a level of controlling derived from an interactive social platform (Twitter).

Metaphorically, the generative biological mirror expands the conceptual dimension of the mirror itself, reflecting our physical existence in a fake way. 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 physical site of the exhibition, 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 cell stored in the online project laboratory repository and the project Twitter page using a Wi-Fi connection.

The program produced an interactive generative interface that will be exhibited by a projector on a flat wall. Viewers must 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 may be shown by a separate screen or projector so that viewers would see their videos posted on the page.

Viewers outside the exhibition's physical site could also interact with the project by posting their tweets, but only if the core system was running while they were writing their tweets. In this way, the project's full real interactive and generative functions are operated in the physical site of the exhibition and digitally on the Twitter page.

* The Biological mirror's twitter page interface automatically posts the most recent outputs derived from the system and simultaneously sent participants comments to affect the remodelled differentiation process. 

So, besides the real system inside the physical lace of the exhibition, the project twitter page is considered a virtual communicative channel between the real system and the participants inside and outside the physical place of interface.

- participants, inside the physical place of the interface, can post their re-synthesized faces from the physical interface to the project twitter page and can also pot their comments as a tweet to see its direct effect on the processes directly.  

- Participants outside the physical place of the interface can only participate by post their tweets on the project twitter page so that they can remotely affect the process. 

Diaa Ahmedin
© 2019 | Diaa Ahmed Mohamed Ahmedien | All rights reserved

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