Eric Millikin's Portfolio including Bio Art

Bio art, AI, sound art, video art, projection mapping, robotics, VR, and other new media art.

White Fragility is a genetically unique, seed-grown, vegetative tissue-culture cloned carnivorous Venus flytrap, that I grew in a flask of hormone-enhanced agar inside my bio-art lab that I built in my home. A lack of chlorophyll in this mutant gave it a white appearance and ensured that it would be too fragile to live outside of laboratory conditions. In other words, I had a metaphor for racial "White Fragility" contained within my laboratory, and this "White Fragility" was destined to wither away when exposed to the light of the world.

This is part of a series of mutant endangered carnivorous plants I have bred as both living conceptual art projects and as materials for other artworks. I have grown eight different genera of carnivorous plants, originating on six different continents. I specialize in mutant Venus flytraps which you can see more of towards the end of this portfolio.

Medium: Tissue culture-grown Venus flytrap from seed, agar, plant nutrients, plant hormones, glass flask
Dimensions: In a flask approximately 2.25 x 2.25 x 2.75 Inches
Year: 2019

Animated video projection on a bio art mushroom and mycelium sculpture, so that it chants incantations created from converting AI-generated images into electronic music. The form of the sculptural mask is based on robots from early 20th century mad scientist serial films. The video projections were created with AI trained on endangered species (Venus flytraps and monarch butterflies), human nerve cells, computer circuitry, forest fires, and COVID-19 contaminated blood.

Premonition/Programming I: Hyperparasitic: Animated video projection on a bio art mushroom and mycelium sculpture, so that it chants incantations created from converting AI-generated images into electronic music. The video projections were created with AI trained on endangered species (Venus flytraps and monarch butterflies), human nerve cells, computer circuitry, forest fires, and COVID-19 contaminated blood. The form of the sculptural mask is based on robots from early 20th-century mad scientist serial films.

Medium: Mycelium and mushroom sculpture, video projection, AI, sound
Dimensions: Variable
Year: 2020

Video projection of a series of performances with augmented reality masks. The masks are designed by an AI trained on the monsters from America's top grossing and most critically acclaimed horror films. The video projections were created with AI trained on endangered species (Venus flytraps and monarch butterflies), human nerve cells, computer circuitry, forest fires, and COVID-19 contaminated blood. The projection mapping alternately hides and reveals the presence of the viewers' shadows.

Premonition/Programming II: Syzygy: Video projection of a series of performances with augmented reality masks. The animated video projections were created with AI trained on endangered species (Venus flytraps and monarch butterflies), human nerve cells, computer circuitry, forest fires, and COVID-19 contaminated blood. The masks are designed by an AI trained on the monsters from America's top-grossing and most critically acclaimed horror films. The projection mapping alternately hides and reveals the presence of the viewers' shadows.

Medium: Video projection mapping, AI, sound
Dimensions: Variable
Year: 2020

“VIRONOMICON” is a new media artist book AKA "quaranzine" that includes AI-generated magic circles of summoning and protection based on spell books from Medieval and Renaissance plague times, accompanied by re-engineered viruses as predicting potential future pandemics and/or vaccines. Also included are cut-up incantation poems assisted by an AI trained to study writings about and during historical plagues and pandemics, and QR code tarot Death cards, created by an AI trained on skulls from memento mori and vanitas still-life paintings, that unlock secret sound experiences created based on their image data.

VIRONOMICON (2020) is a new media artist book AKA "quaranzine" created to be distributed through the mail during COVID-19 lockdown. It includes AI-generated images of re-designed viruses as a form of divination/predictive technology for potential future pandemics and/or vaccines, accompanied by magic circles of summoning and protection based on spell books from Medieval and Renaissance plague times. It also features QR code tarot Death cards, created by an AI trained on skulls from memento mori and vanitas still-life paintings, that unlock secret sound experiences created based on their own image data. The sound of each QR code tarot Death card harmonizes with the others, allowing multiple viewers to create a moving electronic chorus as they carry their phones. Also included are cut-up incantation poems assisted by an AI trained to study writings about and during historical plagues and pandemics.

Medium: Artist book/zine, AI, sound
Dimensions: 8.5” x 11”
Year: 2020

Installation created with AI trained on blood cells and stars, with a score from heartbeats and audio from space. Includes 3D printed bioplastic vampire VR headset and projection mapping to use human bodies as screens and include their shadows within the video. Video projection created based on the early 20th century films "The Birth of a Nation" and "Nosferatu."

For Katharina Kepler (2019) is a VR, sound, and video projection installation created with an AI trained on microscopic images of human blood cells and telescopic images of distant stars, with a score created from human heartbeats and audio from space. The VR experience is viewed through a 3D-printed bioplastic vampire VR headset, and projection mapping uses the viewers’ human bodies as screens and includes their shadows as animated spaces within the video. The video projection explores the use of fear in racial and gender politics as well as in popular media, by editing together common themes from F. W. Murnau’s 1922 vampire film “Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror” and D. W. Griffith’s 1915 film “The Birth of a Nation.”

Medium: 3D-printed bioplastic, video projection, VR, AI, sound, chain
Dimensions: Variable
Year: 2019

"Rorschach Reanimator" is an infinite, live-generated, AI video, adapted from the early 20th century post-pandemic horror fiction of writer H.P. Lovecraft. This excerpt features the wood frog Lithobates sylvaticus which survives being frozen alive every winter, the crypt keeper wasp Euderus set which is a hyperparasite (a parasite of other parasites), and H.P. Lovecraft himself.

Rorschach Reanimator (excerpt) is a short piece from an infinite, live-generated, AI video, adapted from the early 20th-century post-pandemic horror fiction of writer H.P. Lovecraft. This excerpt features the wood frog Lithobates sylvaticus which survives being frozen alive every winter, the crypt keeper wasp Euderus set which is a hyperparasite (a parasite of other parasites), and H.P. Lovecraft himself. The video is created as a sort of mirror image, as much of the pandemic-related fears expressed by Lovecraft are mirrored in our world today.

Medium: AI live-generated video
Dimensions: Variable, infinite duration
Year: 2021

The robotic rover uses machine vision to move about the space, its movements based on its readings of two types of court documents from human beings in the year 1692: Those from the Salem Witch Trials court proceedings, and those from English playwright Ben Jonson’s Third Folio of performances for the lords and ladies of English royal court. While this robot makes its way through the documents, it laser projects an animated looping video created by an AI trained on the handwriting of the texts themselves, as well as common themes — birds and clockwork — found by a poetic programmatic data analysis of these two types of court papers. The points in this video documentation where you are looking directly into the projector are the points that the robot is projecting on your body and effectively spotlighting you.

Somnambulistic Autonomous Land-roving Enlightenment Machine (2020) includes a robotic rover that uses machine vision to move about the space, its movements based on its readings of two very different types of court documents from human beings in the year 1692: Those from the Salem Witch Trials court proceedings, and those from English playwright Ben Jonson’s Third Folio of performances for the lords and ladies of English royal court. While this robot makes its way through the documents, filling the space with the sounds of robotic gears grinding, it also laser projects an animated looping video created by an AI trained on the handwriting of the texts themselves, as well as common themes — birds and clockwork — found by a poetic programmatic data analysis of these two types of court papers. The points in this video documentation where you are looking directly into the projector are the points that the robot is projecting on your body and effectively spotlighting you.

Medium: Robot, video projection, AI, inkjet on paper.
Dimensions: Variable
Year: 2020

Flower Power is a genetically unique, seed-grown, vegetative tissue-culture cloned carnivorous Venus flytrap, that I grew in a flask of hormone-enhanced agar inside my bio-art lab that I built in my home. It wasn’t interested in growing the typical Venus flytrap traps, but instead only wanted to produce flower stalks, like a pacifist that Venus flytrap that was refusing to kill, and instead only wanted to bring flowers to everyone.

Medium: Tissue culture-grown Venus flytrap from seed, agar, plant nutrients, plant hormones, glass flask
Dimensions: In a flask approximately 2.25 x 2.25 x 2.75 Inches
Year: 2018

The Hunger Strike is one of my mutant Venus flytraps from inside my artistic carnivorous plant cross-breeding and tissue culture cloning laboratory. This is a genetically unique, seed-grown, designer Venus flytrap. I consider these plants to be works of art in themselves as well as potential building blocks for other artworks. This one sort of puckers up in such a way that the traps twist and fold backward on themselves. After a certain point, the trap has folded in on itself so far that it can no longer close, turning the plant into a sort of non-carnivorous Venus flytrap, on a hunger strike as a form of protest.

Medium: Tissue culture-grown Venus flytrap from seed
Dimensions: A colony approximately 6” x 6” x 9” and growing
Year: 2018

Alien Cloning: This is a cutting of the Venus flytrap cultivar ‘Alien,’ being cloned in tissue culture. ‘Alien' is a Venus flytrap originally grown in Europe, which has long mouths and inward-facing teeth, similar to the alien from Ridley Scott's 1979 science fiction film. Here, the cutting has begun to form callus, that is, masses of unorganized plant cells.

Medium: Tissue culture-grown Venus flytrap from cutting, agar, plant nutrients and hormones, glass flask
Dimensions: In a flask approximately 2.25 x 2.25 x 2.75 Inches
Year: 2018

Additional links:

CHARYBDIS-2, (2020) a silent spiralling AI-generated video: https://vimeo.com/415732470
Self-Portrait while Possessed by the Ghosts of Sylvia Plath and Mike Kelley, (2018) documentation of interactive video projection. https://vimeo.com/491043855
Self-Portrait while Possessed by the Ghosts of Charlotte Brontë and Greer Lankton, (2018) a brief excerpt of documentation of an augmented reality project: https://vimeo.com/383886550