The project highlights the reciprocal dependence and influence between the perception of what we are and what we are not on a personal, social and cellular basis and whether strong parallelisms can be established between these different systems. It will be an interdisciplinary art-project with visual, theoretic and interactive parts, forming an ongoing process. he project will be carry-out using different media including video-film, performance, site-specific installations, as well as a theoretical elaboration through symposia with participants from the fields of hard science, art, psychology and philosophy. The art-project itself can be seen as an independent process, which will carry-on its evolution after the residency date. It is based on the very special collaboration with the Centre d’Immunologie de Marseille-Luminy (CIML) and will involve scientific and cultural environments of the Aix-Marseille area. Using the imaging data generated at CIML, notably using confocal, multiphoton and light sheet microscopy, the behavior of living immunocytes in action, will be brought on a digital showcase with images produced by CIML and numeric imaging of video and experimental photography treated in a creative artistic way. The resulting artworks will be integrated using innovative interactive techniques to permit "Protagonists" –as CIML researchers, but also art-lovers and spectators or AMU scholars, to influence the cell-processes and vice-versa. Those actions will be visible live and shareable on an online-platform. In this way, the concept of perception of self and nonself will become a public live-experience, able to be spread globally mixing hard scientific results and society issues integrated in the Aix-Marseille environment.
The aim is to evoke imagination through the visual form of the artwork and its process. To bring interest in the arguments of hard science-research on a larger scale. To involve persons who are not in confidence with the specific commitments of biologists and immunologist and to open young people to a future engagement with art or science through a direct contact with the artwork and its process.