An ear on a glacier to listen to the planet

In the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, the northernmost point on the planet, surrounded by arctic glaciers, the sun has never set for a few days.

The temperature is mild considering the place, only -16º.

The Spanish artist Solimán López (Burgos, 42 years old), equipped with thermal equipment that only reveals his eyes behind the glasses, walks on a glacier located 200 kilometers east of the city of Longyearbyen, which with 2,075 inhabitants is the largest settlement of the islands and their capital.

Equipped with a snow drill, something like a giant corkscrew, he is looking for a suitable place to insert the bioprinted ear that contains an artistic manifesto converted into DNA code.

This is the winning project of the first artistic residency in the Arctic at the Da Vinci Innovation Center in Paris,

“Why do we have to negatively affect all the ecosystems that allow life on the planet to continue evolving as a species?

How can we preserve our digital memory without polluting or spending more resources?

To answer these questions, Solimán López has created the

, a project that is developed on two levels: the conceptual, through the text that vindicates and demands the active commitment of art for the future of humanity and the planet;

and the matter that houses it, represented by a bioprinted female human ear, formed by the manifest turned into DNA molecules.

The project, which was developed in various phases and with the collaboration of international experts, began in December.

The ear that Solimán López has bioprinted buried in the snow. Lena von Goedeke

“First of all, the

was converted into a DNA code by Javier Forment, a bioinformatician at the Polytechnic University of Valencia.

A specialized laboratory then produced the DNA molecules with amino acids.

These molecules, 17 in total, were sent to the Da Vinci Innovation Center in Paris to be encapsulated in a collagen hydrogel, thanks to the composition identified by the bioprinting expert from the University of

Washington

Gwendolin Roote”, explains López, who traveled to Svalbard on April 15 with the ear finally printed and preserved in a gelatin solution in the suitcase.

Once there, he carried out two performative actions: one consisted of inserting his ear into the glacier and the other of revealing the content of the

.

“I looked for an underground cave of the kind that opens extemporaneously in the ice of the glacier and read the text aloud for the first time, a symbolic act to demonstrate my willingness to commit to the survival of the planet and to the survival of our legacy. as humans”, López continues, noting that the project raises the possibility of eternally preserving our digital memory in a biological object that as such does not pollute, does not require electricity or other energy costs and, above all, does not interact with the environment at a molecular level and, therefore, does not generate changes or harm to the planet.

The ear does not carry instructions, but like all objects out of context that have been found throughout the history of humanity, if it were found in the future,

The bioprinted ear in the lab.Lena von Goedeke

López will premiere the work at the beginning of June within the framework of the Istanbul Digital Art Festival and from June 15 to the end of July he will exhibit it in an individual exhibition, curated by Humberto Valdivieso, at the UCAB cultural center in Caracas with the collaboration of Fundación Telefónica and the Embassy of Spain in Venezuela.

She will also present it at a conference of new technology experts at the Dubai Museum of the Future in September.

“The ear is conceived as a serial work of art and as such it will be exhibited at fairs and galleries.

At the exhibition level we present the replica of the ear, the

, images and a documentary about the work as soon as I get the financing to finish it”, explains the artist.

Since Van Gogh cut himself (or was cut off by Gauguin during an argument, according to other versions) there have been many ears in the history of art.

Stelarc grafted one into his arm for a bionic listening device, Diemut Strebe created one with cartilage cells from a great-great-grandson of Theo van Gogh, brother of the famous Dutch painter, and Joe Davis inserted DNA from a mouse ear. the image of the Milky Way.

For his part, Solimán López, an artist with a long career in new technological media, has already created other works with DNA such as

, which premiered at Arco or the Harddiskmuseum, demonstrating that it is a valid alternative for the future to store digital information.

“In the age of fakes and empowered artificial intelligence, any personal story is possible.

The hard part is creating collective stories that change us and influence everyone.

My work does not speak of me in the first person, but of us”, concludes the artist, who does not want to reveal who the original model of the ear belongs to.

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