In a modern computer-aided workshop environment, there is little space for wilderness and randomness: each machine is a hyper-precise, controlled tool, resulting in crafting objects that are near perfect representations of their digital counterparts. During their residency at CYENS, the Berlin based artist-designer duo, Gosia Lehmann and Valerian Blos, experimented with the tensions between controlled and unpredictable processes.
Yeast, commonly used as an accelerator for fermentation or as the growth agent in baking, acted as a ‘collaborator’ in their experiments. The artists developed a technique to 3d print with fungi, allowing its ‘desire’ to grow and expand creating new forms and patterns.
The yeast expansion was preserved in alginate and finally casted into eight plaster tiles. The tiles include form experiments or elements of scientific illustrations, interpreted and deformed by fermentation and the yeast’s own agency.
Gosia Lehmann & Valerian Blos are artists-designers duo based in Berlin, working together since 2016. Their research-based practice exists on the cross-section of arts, technology and science. They engage audience by creating interactions, through thoughtfully designed experiments and participatory installations. The duo’s practice combines digital and traditional crafts with explorations of unorthodox materials. Their works often function as a trigger for dialogue and critical reflection, regarding human relation to other species and boundaries between living or non-living matter. Gosia and Valerian are teaching at University of Arts in Berlin and exhibited together among others at Tama Art University Tokyo, ‘Good Design Week’ Design Lounge Tokyo, Futurium, Berlin, Natural History Museum, Berlin and Bundesgartenschau (Federal-Garden- Biennial) Weimar. In 2019 they co-founded artist collective Lagoon Parliament and in 2021 they founded project space/artist studios Solaris.