Paula Pin (Lugo, 1982) is an artist and investigator. Graduated in Fine Arts from Barcelona and Sao Paolo, her work ranges from drawing to abstract video to circuit bending to investigations at the frontiers of biology, art and queer science.
Interactive kinetic sculptures, immersive environments, audiovisual installations, performance and direct action are the disciplines that she has used for the opening of new channels to communicate desires & sensations, always with the body at the centre, connecting nature and technology.
Her performance piece for shopping centres, Medusa, from 2010 mixes mythology, ecology and criticism of consumer culture while Udre from 2009, is an interactive drawing machine created from an old umbrella and an Arduino.
Energy inspired installations in wich her manipulate materials and light to reveal new perspectives on the world in which we live. Questioning the boundary between science fiction and fact, much of her artwork investigates a broad range of subject matter relating to natural phenomena such as bioelectricity, bioluminescence, geochemistry and the cosmos.
In 2011 she was awarded a grant from Vida to develop her Photosinthetik Symphony data from sensores attached to plants and her own body generating sound. The project continues development as an hybrid between gendertechnature in a sense of tactical biopolitics. This experience of investigation led her deeper into science, especially biology, and led her to rework her artistic practise both conceptually and materially. In 2012 she was invited to a residence in Nuvem, a rural art centre in Brasil, to develop this work, focussing especially on photosynthesis and sound.
Sound, or, more specifically noise, is for her an almost utopian promise of opening, containing all possibles and going beyond the social constructions that elements like tone and rythmn impose.
This has led her to experiment with building synthesisers – often worn on her body and Pure Data patches for performance. She has performed at the Piksel festival in 2011 with her group TransNoise and in Brasil in 2012 with Fernando Macedo y Tiago Rubini under the name Postformance.
As her interest in the relationship with nature grows, and influenced by thinkers such as Michael Marder or Karen Barad, she has begun to occupy laboratory spaces and hack the performativity of science. In Sept 2012 she took part, with Hackteria, in the nanosmano life project in Ljubljana where she participated in the investigation of cells, solar panels and other microscopic dispositives as well as giving workshops.
This activity of workshops, sharing her knowledge and spreading the ethic of DIY and open technology, is an integral part of her practise. Most recently she has concentrated especially on workshops for circuit bending and making synthesisers, opening up this possibility for children and adults.
Plants, micoorganisms alternative energy, the laboratory, have led her to see the body in a new sense, integrated into a complex mesh of interactions which promise a new transversal function for her work, blurring the distinctions between machine, animal and plant, and opening up new horizons for art and performance.
