Having made a range of vessels, I aim to test ways in which I could explore their potential connectivity. For the purposes of the workshop, the simplest tests of connectivity were possible through sound. I chose to test using the phrase already encoded within my bioassemblages, "what will happen if I store this thought safe within you?" The phrase is taken from The Genophone and edited in Audacity so that it is overlayed multiple times at different pitches, suggesting multiple voices.
My initial idea was that in creating a conductive dwelling for my E. coli bioassemblages, I would be able to relate to them and perhaps they could relate to me. E. coli are found in the gut and by providing an environment that (albeit technological) somehow resembled their ancestral home, perhaps this would be beneficial to their lives in ways that I cannot comprehend. So for example, would it be possible to create vibration and/or warmth in response to my movement or the sound of my voice? How might such an interaction affect myself and the organisms?
I discussed these vessels at the recent CDT Conference at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, 25 July 2017. I keep coming back to a comment made by one of my scientific colleagues (as I described how, in order to go through the scientific protocol for transforming bacteria, I attempted to rationalise the process as a form of nurture) that we are perhaps torturing bacteria not nurturing them. The means by which we maintain life that we cannot relate to is perhaps more subjective than we realise. Thus as I continue to find ways in which to house bioassemblages I see them as vessels of nur/torture, for I cannot know whether they are any more or less suitable for a biotechnological organism than one which exists within my gut.