ABOUT THE PROJECT
Driven by concerns over ecological health and food security, Badani’s projects of the last decade explore the relationship between art and science through works that incorporate food as subject and as object. “BichEden”, the current work in collaboration with Mariel Martinez, probes natural food chains (the method by which organisms gather their food) and the uncertain edges that 'unfold' from encounters of organic and synthetic matter. These digital visualizations do not represent what already exists. Rather, they speculate on the layered contexts within which new qualifications of life are being determined and manipulated. Driven by a set of questions related to food-web energy flows, BichEden visualizes folds and edges in unexpected convergences where fusion and remixing are the result of symbiotic, ecological thinking in times when food availability jeopardized by climate emergencies has become a serious question. What are the new edges and convergences? How to differentiate between the various forms of edge? How to extend these nuances of edge into the future? The work’s dark and light angles, folds, and slashes represent layered transitions marked by conformities, nonconformities, paraconformities, and disconformities.