Growing Noise

Jasmin Ka (Jasmin Märker) is a recent graduate and artist in residence at Belfast School of Art. Her practice negotiates ways to reconcile art and science for a prospect of sustainability. The work attempts to affirm that art should not provide bare, temporary fixes to human caused problems but search for the true essence of nature. A lack of confidence in our ability to connect to our inner selves initially debarred humankind from being an appropriate source of study. Instead she turned her attraction to mycelium (the vegetative part of the fungus) in anticipation of uncovering something about the structure and interdynamics of human self and the totality of nature. Being able to predict what the fungus does, but never having full control over the final form of mycelial existence, she finds, is transferrable to the absence of control over anything in our lives.

Growing Noise transforms PS² Gallery into an observable laboratory testing the adequacy of modern science reductionist testing in dealing with fundamental questions of wholeness and its ability in going beyond the furthering of technocentric applications. Jasmin uses DIY technology to imitate natural processes firstly necessary for the cultivation of mushrooms and secondly to test her hypotheses on how nature reacts to human engineered developments. The former raises questions as to whether laboratory grown mushrooms are still a valid representation of nature. The experimental set-up: an exploration of the interdependencies of anthropocentric, geophonic & biophonic sounds on mushroom growth in the given contexts does not expect measurable outcomes but asks to be read in artistic language. Can the aesthetic appearance of the composition reveal something truer about nature than a planned experiment with a preconceived idea? Or would this in fact imply that human artistic expression is indeed suitable for the exploration of nature, when human can never be separate from nature anyway.