Time Displacement / Chemobrionic Garden

Time Displacement / Chemobrionic Garden is an interactive generative chemical sound installation. The installation explores a relationship between hydrothermal chemistry, the passage of time, and sensory systems tracing changes outside of the human scale.

Artists created an installment comprised of several small chemical garden formations in a water glass (sodium metasilicate) solution, to provide an insight into research on the origin of life and on chemical processes. The project’s theoretical background is based on a paper titled From chemical gardens to chemobrionics,  written and issued by a group of 21 distinguished scientists on 29 May 2015,  a reiterating call for research into the principles of self-assembling structures, to produce – as they suggest – new insights into the origin of metabolism in Earth’s early geological periods.

The chemical reactions are monitored by cameras to detect changes in colour and in shape by means of a microcontrollers. The changes affect the code for live sound generation, and slowly work to alter the generative drone composition pervading the gallery space. It goes beyond the human perception of time. It calls for a perspective that considers multiple dimensions of temporal rhythms in space with slow modulation beyond the spectrum audible to the human ear.

The core proposition of this piece is to create a situation in which the growth of chemical structures takes the centre stage. The human expectations are put in the background in order to stimulate a state of altered listening in which one is exposed to the geological passage of time.

The antagonism between the human and the Earth’s processes is a direct result of anthropocentric perspective. In the age of anthropocene we need a radical shift in perspective if we are to survive as a species. Scientists are on a new quest to find in these abiotic formations the root of biotic protocells. In addition, Time Displacement poses a question of giving way to life by means of shifting ways of sensing. The question of the origin of life inevitably seeks to ask the question of finite nature of life forms themselves. The colourful biomimetic morphologies of chemical gardens are a fascinating imitation of life. In the last few centuries, chemical gardens have progressed from being a counterfeit of biotic life to being the original; from childlike imitations of life to the sheer origin of life on Earth.

More on the history of chemical gardens

The history of chemical gardens has always been closely intertwined with experiments juxtaposing the propagation of forms in chemical reactions with biological forms. In the early 19th century, scientific research attempted to prove that biological life had evolved from the inorganic worlds of physics and chemistry: from chemical gardens and osmotic forces, from diffusion and other physical and chemical mechanisms. Scientists’ endeavours in plasmogeny and synthetic biology were refuted when, in the 20th century, genetics established the complexity of hereditary cells by isolating DNA. In the 21st century, on 29 May 2015, a group of 21 distinguished scientists issued a paper entitled From chemical gardens to chemobrionics, reiterating a call for research into the principles of self-assembling structures, to produce– as they suggest – new insights into the origin of metabolism in Earth’s early geological periods.