Human Moments
George Bataille and the Passage from Animal to Art Supplies
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Corey Ratch
In 1953, Georges Bataille wrote that the prehistoric cave paintings at Lascaux constituted the “birth of art” and thus the human. Focusing not only on its iconic imagery but on the animal substances that made the images possible, my paper reframes this origin as not a purely symbolic rupture from animality but a deeply material entanglement with it. Drawing from methods in critical animal studies, art history, and media archaeology, the study foregrounds the use of animal by-products—specifically fat, bone, and collagen—in the production of Paleolithic pigments and binders. These corporeal remnants, harvested from hunted species, shaped the earliest known artistic practices. I argue that an attention to the transformation of animal bodies into art materials at Lascaux and elsewhere is foundational to understanding human image culture. The paper dovetails with my primary work on the role of gelatin—a derivative of animal collagen—in the development of modern film-based photography. By tracing the persistence of animal-derived substrates from cave painting to silver gelatin photography, I reveal a lineage of artistic dependence on animal bodies that both registers and obscures animal presence. In both cases, visual culture emerges not merely as a human endeavor but as an interspecies encounter in which specific animals become materially embedded in the image. This genealogical approach reorients the discourse of art’s origins, unsettling the presumed divide between nature and culture, human and animal, and shows that animal death is often the condition of possibility for many forms of image-making.
From Analog to Digital - Exploring Organic Forms in New Media Art: Experimental Collaborative Art Studio
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Elena Posokhova, Miguel Angel Almiron
This paper explores the experience of an art studio in nature—an experiment that precedes the creation of photographic images by immersing participating artists in a milieu of biological forms and processes. The experiment, grounded in empirical experience and knowledge acquisition, also involves transdisciplinary and multimedia collaboration among artists using various techniques—both analog and digital—and biological scientists, alongside artificial intelligence. This fosters new working methods and opens fresh perspectives in image creation. The focus is on the creative process itself and the viewer's experience through participation.Using two art projects as examples—one involving VR and AI media, and the other using analog photography—the experiment examines the creation process in this new context. It raises questions about how such experiences can influence artistic practice, what innovations arise, and how audience perception is affected. Results are gathered through observation and analysis of the working process, interactions, video recordings, note-taking, and interviews with artists, as well as feedback from invited viewers who engage in interactive experiences with the images. Artworks created in contact with natural elements serve as a means of producing images and visual metaphors that symbolize the relationship between the organic and the digital, as well as between technological and natural materials. This process generates unique forms that inspire reflections on life, fragility, and the constancy of change.
Microbial Landscape Photography: Documenting In Situ Microbial Distribution Using 3-Dimensional Macrophotography
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jenifer Wightman
When exposed to light many microbes synthesize pigment. Individually these microbes are imperceptible to the human eye. However, as a microbe reproduces, the collective population amasses enough pigment allowing us to see their community action. I use this phenomenon to make “mud paintings” - a clear vessel filled with site specific mud where the evolving microbial populations create ever-transforming colorfield paintings. While most documentation of microbes has been achieved by taking the microbe out of its habitat and looking at it under a microscope, I have developed a 3-dimensional array to capture, stack, and merge images with a consumer grade camera and macro lens. Using this system I estimate 1 pixel equals 0.75 micron. With this system I document microbes in situ, providing context and relationality among and between microbes. Stills detecting this spatial distribution within the larger ecosystem create both a self-portrait and a daily life painting of these formerly invisible cultures. With time-lapse, it is also possible to witness the collective action creating landscape paintings that also have allegorical power. Mud paintings embody an ever-evolving play of life merging with, standing out from, returning to, and relentlessly altering the same finite landscape over time. These microbes change their landscape with their industry; consequently, a change in the landscape results in a change in their community composition. In this way, photographing mud paintings offer a conceptual process model of co-evolving life and landscape – an ecological reflexivity that might inform and transform our human moment of climate change.
