Phenotypica Art & Science Cinema
21-22 October, ELRIG Drug Discovery 2025
The Exhibiton Centre, Liverpool, King’s Dock, Port of Liverpool, Kings Dock St, Liverpool, L3 4FP
We are hosting an immersive art installation at ELRIG Drug Discovery 2025, with a curated series of video artworks that we have created for commissions, art residencies, and collaborations with scientific institutions.
Themes span from genetics, evolution, organoid development and trust in AI.
More information about the conference at the following link: ELRIG Drug Discovery 2025. Scroll down to find ELRIG's Hub and you'll see our link!
Video Artwork Details
Confined Mutations
Software. Originally presented as Pepper's ghosts.
Confined Mutations is a digital installation that explores how we are defined and constrained in our future evolutionary potential by the legacy of the sucessful, essential mutations that make us.
The original installation with three animations is presented as Pepper's ghosts creating the illusion that they are trapped within a transparent space, caught in an endless loop in which the forms wrap and warp around themselves.
More about Confined Mutations.
Agonism/Antagonism Artwork Selection
We present five video artworks that we created under the title Agonism/Antagonism: a body of work that responds to Dr. Reuter's research, during Neus' year-long art residency at Dr. Reuter's Laboratory at University College London. Dr. Reuter studies evolutionary phenomena such as sexual antagonism using the fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) as a model organism.
This project was partially funded by the Mercer's award at University of the Arts London that Neus received upon completing the Master in Art and Science at Central Saint Martins.
More about Agonism/Antagonism.
CT Scan
Video artwork from CT scan images of fruit flies at various stages of development.
Sexual antagonism is usually studied in adult fruit flies. Neus was fascinated by the metamorphosis stage of the fruit fly and wondered if there could be any identifiable genetic antagonistic traits at such an early stage. Together with Dr. Reuter and Ben, Neus decided to make CT scans of fruit flies at various developmental stages: pupae to adult, as a preliminary test for potential future research.
Agonism/Antagonism: Coupling
Virtual reality interactive software, variable dimensions.
In this artwork, an abstract species starts at a low level of fitness, perhaps because some aspect of its environment has radically changed. Early mutations quickly improve its fitness, but as it enters a state of genetic antagonism, a tug-of-war commences between the two genders, and we see a lack of further fitness improvement until a mutation breaks the coupling between the two genders. As a result, the dimorphism of the species increases.
This artwork runs with genetic algorithms and it can also be used as a scientific experiment as a preliminary tool before lab work.
Agonism/Antagonism: De-coupling
Virtual reality interactive software, variable dimensions.
There are occasions in which genetic antagonism can be decoupled by a mutation in that gene, and make it free to be of benefit to one gender while not harming the other.
All these changes are ultimately driven by the the inner workings of genetic and cellular machinery. We show this here through a modified Game of Life. There are two simultaneous games, one for females and one for males. They start synchronised, but, being decoupled, when further mutations are introduced it can result in a radically different expressions between the genders.
Compression, Tension, Transformation (Fruit Fly Metamorphosis)
Video creation of a cocoon live sample initiating its metamorphosis, variable dimensions.
Neus’ first contact with Max’s lab made her fascinated with fruit flies, and she wanted to make artworks that captured the strong visual imagery of the fruit fly at microscopic scales. Throughout the research, she found a link with a previous artwork that she had done about polymers; fruit fly cocoons are a form of chitin, which, like bioplastic, is a polymer molecule.
Bioplastic, or Fruit Fly Cocoon?
Video creation of microscopy videos of fruit fly cocoon and bioplastic, variable dimensions.
At microscopic scales, it is perhaps not surprising that materials made from polymers have similar appearances. Neus had the opportunity to use a powerful microscope with video capabilities to de-contextualised the materials and reveal their essential underlying properties. By changing the focus gradually, she preserves the three dimensional properties of the material but also helps the process of de-contextualisation.
Share Your Rare
Two-screens video artwork, variable dimensions.
Wellcome Trust funded public and patient engagement project in collaboration with Dr. Sam Chawner at Cardiff University about rare genetic conditions.
This video artwork is inspired by the variety and diversity of experiences within the rare disease community. It is also a scientific metaphor for the variability in medical symptoms seen in rare genetic conditions. For example, 22q11.2 Deletion Syndrome (22q) also known as Velo-Cardio-Facial Syndrome (VCFS) and DiGeorge Syndrome is a rare genetic condition where one of the two copies of chromosome 22 has a section of DNA deleted.
Although many people have the 22q deletion in some form, the high variability and its interaction with genes of the other chromosome 22 mean that each person’s experience of having this is different. The video artwork starts with a protein sequence belonging to the 22q region appearing on the screen that gradually disappears, giving place to a Cinquain poem. This poem is a recombination of all the poems about rare genetic conditions that we have collected from the project participants.
The poem words become a stencil of what resembles a nature scene, to reveal a landscape shortly afterwards. Moreover, different videos of nature start overlapping and creating a complex scene with layers of images and audio.
Whilst doing research for Share Your Rare and creating the artwork, and as we were working with poems and words, I read several papers about metaphors that doctors often use with patients and the positive or negative impact that these have on them. I read a more neutral metaphor about genetics and epigenetics being nature’s pen and pencil set, and somehow these reminded me of the videos I recorded during the lockdown period in 2020 and 2021 at the local woods. I would go out to take a break from the confinement, and I would look up: I’d see the layers and layers of branches and leaves and I would think about this as a visual metaphor for the complexity of so many things interacting with each other in genetics and epigenetics. So we decided to use them for the video.
See the poem, recombination, and image galleries, the Subatomic Circus event and the Wordclouds at Share Your Rare.
Share Your Rare at Subatomic Circus
Three animations done from the participant's drawings, variable dimensions.
Wellcome Trust funded public and patient engagement project in collaboration with Dr. Sam Chawner at Cardiff University about rare genetic conditions.
We also took Share Your Rare to the Subatomic Circus, a public engagement festival at Cardiff University, where we adapted the activities to engage the general public on the topic of Covid-19 and lockdowns.
See the poem, recombination, and image galleries, the Subatomic Circus event and the Wordclouds at Share Your Rare.
The Chaos of Raw Unknowing
Video artwork 6 min 26 sec.
Funded by Ali Hossaini, UKRI TAS (Trustworthy Autonomous Systems), and The National Gallery X Programme (National Gallery).
This artwork explores trust and artificial intelligence (AI), and the dangers of assuming that AI for computer vision sees as we do, and therefore understands what we understand. Detectron2, created by Facebook AI Research, can identify and locate elements within a scene. It is trained on huge numbers of photographs; mundane scenes from everyday life. We unfairly ask this network to identify elements within artworks from The National Gallery collection. The narration reflects on why this is trivial for humans but a very hard problem for AI.
Read an extended explanation The Chaos of Raw Unknowing.
Stem Cell Pachinko
Two video artworks with a 3D visualization of a stem cell and an animation of a responsive stem cell pachinko.
This project started as part of the official Art in Science Partnership between Phenotypica and WORD+ 2025 with WORC.Community.
This project explores molecular biology through the 3D illustration of a stem cell created in Blender. It involved research into the structural components of stem cells, scientific conventions in visualising them, and technical experimentation with materials, lighting, and scene composition.