Go on, read it in it’s entire glory. You know you want to.

50 plus 3 questions for BCL aka The BCL meets … Nullnummer

50 plus 3 questions for BCL is a dialogue between BCL and Verina Gfader conducted via a shared online document in June 2010. Discussing the underlying codes and strategies of the work Common Flowers / Flower Commons, 2008-, the dialogue forms the base for the essay Imaginary Agents — Flowers and the Common (in Russegger, G., Tarasiewicz, M. and Wlodkowski, M. (eds) Coded Cultures. New Creative Practices out of Diversity. Springer Wien/New York Edition Angewandte 2011). As a parallel investigation to the theoretical elaboration, this more informal exchange of thoughts pushes the artists’ ideas further into an improvised process of gathering data about their activities and everyday. Subjects of 50 plus 3 questions for BCL include issues of bio-hacking, the common, DIY flowers, tactical practices, societal plants, instructions for actions and Tokyo sites.

And that’s what Amazon has to say about the book:

International Authors from Europe and Asia explain the impact of codes and cultures on society

Through the establishment of new creative cultures, enabled by digital media and global communication networks, new practices and ability profiles of artistic delineations and explorations are gaining new grounds. Furthermore, economic models are eager to create synergies with symbolic values of cultural and artistic programs to deal with the potentials of »creativity«. At the present day it is difficult to predict which catalysts and draft programs can be put into effect for these creative innovation processes. In this book a detailed review from international artists, theorists, researchers and curators will be given on new vectors of creative and artistic coded and cultures departed from digital media related art projects and observation models on the intersection of disciplines like Art, Science, Technology and Design.

But what we really want to know: will it result in seeds?

Thanks again to Karen for taking the pictures.

There will be a session on Coded Cultures, the Japan Media Art Festival and Common Flowers on Tuesday, 24th August from 15h until 16.30. The session code is P23, the place is L102. We are having our “own” 20-minutes session, because we are not only part of Coded Cultures and the Japan Media Festival, but we also submitted a paper on the project, and that’s why we have our “own” time. Come, if you are around.

Here are some exhibition pictures taken before the opening.

Shiho Fukuhara of BCL explains, Suntory Flowers and the Moondust carnation represent the first commercially available genetically engineered consumer product that is intended purely for aesthetic consumption: ‘‘The media outcry wasn’t that huge since it was neither food nor developed from animals.’’
Fukuhara found it strange how relaxed the Japanese are about genetic engineering, the business behind it and the lack of a public dialogue about the topic.
‘‘Creating genetically manipulated plants for merely aesthetic purposes is a nice marketing strategy from somebody who wants to introduce the genetic engineering industry without being regarded as irresponsible,’’ Fukuhara says. ‘‘A product like flowers can slowly change our perception of genetically altered products. If it’s nice and beautiful with ‘Dream come true’ as a tag line, who cares how it’s made?’’
…
BCL’s process of cloning Suntory’s blue flower doesn’t sound that difficult. They buy the modified flowers and then bring them back to life using plant tissue culture techniques, a way of propagating plants in sterile conditions.
‘‘Basically, once a flower is cut, it is slowly dying. With plant tissue culture, plants are grown on a growth medium with the necessary nutrition. If the flower is reasonably fresh it will start growing again. This is what we mean by ‘reverse-engineering’ the plant,’’ says Fukuhara.

Online version of the full article, it’s also available as PDF

Here’s an excerpt of some of her questions and our answers. Can’t wait to get my hand on the book.

Sissu Tarka: Q1. What is the ‘common’?
BCL: General, free, open, public. Belonging to all, the opposite of special. Shared by all or many. There are two connotations to it, the first one is exemplified in the reversal of the project name from ‘Common Flowers’ to ‘Flower Commons’, specified that shared places and spaces where the flowers might grow. Translated to German, ‘Common’ becomes ‘gemein’, which again has two distinct meanings. One the one hand the obvious one such as ‘Gemeinde’ (Community, Village) or “ever-present, ordinary”, especially in often-occurring plants and animals. (The original latin would be ‘vulgaris’). The other nuance is that ‘gemein’ also means ‘mean’. Whether genetically-modified flowers really are mean, is not for us to decide.

ST: Q2. Why flowers? Roses?
BCL: Flowers – and especially Suntory Flowers’ ranges of genetically modified blue carnations and roses – because they represent the first genetically modified consumer products, which are neither human food or animal feed, but serve a purely aesthetic purpose. That’s why they are special, that’s why they have to become common.

ST: Q7 What does (bio-)hacking mean, imply? In particular to YOUR practice?
BCL: Hacking has to be effortlessly elegant. A small gesture with a big outcome. With Bio-hacking in particular we mean the attempt to regain the power about our shared biological destiny. We need to get involved, we need to understand, we need to learn. Not only we as artists, but we as a society.

ST: Q7.1 Can one hack everything? Any system?
BCL: In principle it should be possible to hack any system that can be sufficiently well described. The ‘hacking’ in this project is evident on two of levels. On the bio-technical, tissue-culture level: we are trying to understand the system ‘blue flower’ and change it’s appearance. On the media-communication level: we are trying our DIY flowers as a counter-model to the commercially available ones, with the explicit plan of provoking responses.

ST: Q9 How do you work as a team, dialogical processes in your practice?
BCL: Yes, exactly. Dialogical processes, polylogical textures.

ST: Q11 Did you look into colour theory?
BCL: Have to admit, not very much. We are aware that blue stands for something unobtainable, and the blue rose especially seems to have a romantic connotation of unreachable love. What other meanings from colour theory would apply to flowers which were white, then became blue, and then became white again? Schizophrenic?

ST: Q20 Do you think the ‘hacked’ flower is already embedded in the ‘former’ or ‘first’ flower?
BCL: Basically Suntory ‘hacked’ the flower, we are only showing ways of re-taking ownership of it.

ST: Q25 What is your preferred day/night time of working?
BCL: After 24.30h, but before 27.30h. Yes, one should really be in bed by 27.30h.

ST: Q47 Your preferred code/coding?
BCL: It’s fun to decipher code, may they be technological, cultural or technical. Coding is active participation.

Good news everyone. We are being invited to the Cellsbutton#04 Media Art Festival in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Even better news – thanks to the Austrian Government and the BMUKK – the flight is paid for by Austrian Tax Euros. Thank you.

Nice to see many friends amongst the participants, including the omnipresent Hans Bernhard from Ubermorgen, Marc Dusseiller, Michiko Tsuda and Andreas Schlegel. Looking very much forward to meet the other participants too.

We will be doing a Common Flowers Workshop on Friday, July 30th. It’s called cellsKIT + intelligent bacteria and will be held in the Microbiology Lab & Tissue Culture Lab at the Bulaksumur Kampus of the Gadjah Mada University [UGM] :

30 July 2010 | Friday
cellsKIT + intelligent bacteria
Venue: Gadjah Mada University [UGM] Microbiology Lab & Tissue Culture Lab
Kampus UGM Bulaksumur
Time: 10.00 – 14.00 WIB
+ “biohack – biopiracy in developing countries” discussion led by Prof. Irfan D. Pridjambada [ID], Nur Akbar Arofatullah [ID], Agus Tri Budiarto [ID]
+ “cellsKIT – hackteria” workshop by Marc Dusseiller [CH] – dusjagr labs – hackteria
“DIY webcam for digital microscope and haemacytometer bacteria counter”: – extensive collaborative works, research & development
+ intelligent bacteria: “common flowers” by Georg Tremmel – BCL [AT | JP] DIY plant tissue culture workshop & “common flowers” presentation

So, the Marmite and the flowers are packed, next stop Singapore, next update Yogyakarta.

We are very happy to be amongst other artists and friends like Hajime Narukawa, Akihiro Kubota, Takahiro Yamaguchi, Kazuhiro Jo, Tomotaro Kaneko and Natalija Robovic+Toru Fujita.

Opening times are 12h – 21h, both Saturday and Sunday from 18h onwards are live music performance. Should be good.

We should be there most of the time presenting our tissue-cultured carnations and roses. (Let’s see what the heat does to the tissue-cultures).

Full report to follow.

The complete set at Flickr.

Unlike the blue carnation, the blue rose smells – well – like a rose. And – good news for Common Flowers – axillary buds are clearly present.

The Woody Plant Medium is in the post, anyone got any experience with home made medium for tissue-culturing roses?

(the applause is deafening)

(the audience is listening)

Suntory finally presents: The blue rose.

Yes, we’ve known this for quite a while.

(Georg Tremmel, Illustration of Blue Rose, real Blue Carnation. Complete set at Flickr.)

Nice co-incident, that the flowers start to sell in Japan on Tuesday, November 3rd, this is a national holiday called ‘Culture Day’. Like any other good Culture Day, its purpose is to promote Culture and Art.
We will do our best to turn the “Culture Day” into a “Plant Tissue Culture Day”. I’ll keep you updates on my endevours getting the blue rose and I am seriously considering queueing the night before.

The rose is exactly the reason, why the Common Flowers Project ist called Common Flowers Project and not Common Carnations.
We were aware of the blue rose when we started ComFlow and wanted it to be so inclusive, that we can absorb new flower developments into the ComFlow fold. The nice things about roses are, that they are woody plants and therefore able to survive for years and decades, unlike the carnations, which last for 2 years at most.
Only thing left to do is find a protocol for propagating woody plants, and then it’s off to the queue. I really don’t want to miss this historic event.

Links:

Introducing “SUNTORY blue rose APPLAUSE” World’s First* Blue Roses Available at Last*With petals containing nearly 100% blue pigment

And of course, the “SUNTORY blue rose APPLAUSE” Webpage.

(from the Yomiuri Shinbun on 21. October 2009)

(English-speaking printed press with is usual and predictable 1 day gap: Daily Yomiuri on the 22nd October.)