Wonderlab UCL Bartlett
XenoCells
XenoCells extends the research from the Alien Within Familiar project in order to materialise an artefact from that world. Still fabricated at lower resolution than desired, it uses multi-material robotic extrusion to 3D print a 2.4-metre tall column in two colours.
“I am struck by the way you manage to connect the organic order of life and the repetitive order of crystal. Architecture seems, with you, to occupy a territory impossible to life and to mineral but in the same time affiliated to the both - as a mythological creature born of an impossible union- but the surgeon, this time, is not a chimeric creature - it is a “chimeric reign”, an autonomous genre of existence rather than an existant, with a paradoxical effect of reality more real than the real. Maybe because it is a return to the secret intermediary between life and inorganic matter - I mean mathematics…” Quentin Meillassoux 2011: email exchange with AA
In its aesthetics XenoCells carry the imprint coming from the nonhuman agency found in automation layers of its design and fabrication. Differentiating powers of the Cell Division algorithm, simulating biological processes such as morphogenesis or cancer cells growth, create intricate, heterogeneous and alien design vocabulary. When run in low resolution, polygonal, sharp-edged cells quickly generate complex structures reminiscent of the crystals, and when applied in the higher cellular population, they start resonating the organic folds found in the internal organs, corals and plants.
