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s"Proteo" , video-animation, hologram-like  installation 

Proteo belongs to the series of multimedia works titled Hidden Topology of Being

vimeo: https://vimeo.com/71412103

Presented to the public in an exhibition Not Invented by Nature at the BioQuant Center  within the framework of the international research symposium “Synthetic Biology – from understanding to application” taking place at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), University of Heilderberg, December , 2013.

BIO-FICTION  Science Art Film Festival, Vienna: http://bio-fiction.com/2014

The piece was inspired by proteins molecules, named “basic bricks of life”. Proteins are associated mostly with cellular robots. For me however, as an ‘assembly of proteins’ (using David Deamler’s term), a protein molecule became a key to explore relations between micro and macro scales of my existence. Proteins are made of elementary constituents of the cosmic matter (mainly of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen) born once in nuclei of stars. Considering that our bodies are mainly made of proteins, there is some optimism in the fact that, at least on the atomic level, inscribed in the cosmic recycling we are practically immortal. However a molecule is something more than an assembly of atoms – it is a dynamic spatial structure. I was enchanted by the geometrical beauty of proteins’ folding alpha helixes, beta sheets and turns. They reminded me of mysterious geometric formations named Calabi-Yau spaces in which, according to the superstring theory, successive dimensions of our world are “curled up” on the subatomic level. If the scientific hypothesis about multi-dimensional nature of the world is true, then Calabi-Yau spaces are everywhere, in each “point” of the space outside as well as inside us. One day, maybe, our brain will be able to perceive how we exist in the multidimensional universe or even multiverse. For the time being, we have only our imagination in command and enormous diversity of protein globules, each of them suggesting, in other scale, a blister of some world.

Proteo is an animation in which a cloud of particles creates mini-universe folded in the form of Calabi-Yau space. It gives birth to a convoluted protein molecule, the basic brick of life, and its dynamic molecular 'dance of life', in a poetic way brings to mind a question about the relations between the energy, matter and form. The animation creates an effect of a hologram inside a transparent pyramid. It is a kind of virtual incubator, in which the process continues to develop and repeat itself.