High Altitude Bioprospecting (HAB) is a long term project involving scientists and artists in a quest to explore extreme environments, particularly the stratosphere and detect and capture microorganisms that may live or survive there. The Atmospheric Encounters exhibition features new works by Melissa Grant, Oliver de Peyer, Hannah Imlach, Anna Dumitriu, Alex May, Paul Shepherd, Heidi Pietarinen, Till Bovermann, Anne Yoncha and Noora Sandgren.

Making invisible microbes visible and trying to identify them has been a pastime of the curious for many centuries. Some of the scientific methods used have seemed out of reach for the at home biologist, however, advances in DIY biology equipment and sharing of knowledge now mean that almost anyone can grow and potentially identify microbes with a few pieces of equipment...

Trans*Plant is a transdisciplinary project that utilizes living systems and is based on self-experimentation: it is a process that involves a human to plant transition in various formats. 

Welcome to join us for a dialogue that brings together Ariane Koek, a leading expert in the intersection of art, science and technology, and Erich Berger, director of Bioart Society. During the evening, they will be discussing Koek’s pioneering work and the many ways in which art, science and society can come together within artistic and curatorial practices.  Pre-registration required!

During a two-week field trip in September 2021, nine artists and scientists invited by the Bioart Society will travel to Kilpisjärvi to follow the geological outcrops in search of trace fossils. They will practice trace and landscape reading, orientation, trace-making, documentation and decision-making on sites of bifurcation. They may call this a (paleo)ethology of tracing.

New commissioned works by Walsh and Hannula will be featured in the m/other becomings exhibition organised in Helsinki in spring 2022

The project by Emilia Tikka, Oula A. Valkeapää and Leena Valkeapää speculates on biomedical applications of genome-editing beyond genetic determinism and human exceptionalism indicating the human condition as deeply entangled with more-than-human worlds.

Bioart Society staff is on holiday, and SOLU Space is closed in July. We wish you a sunny summer!

Writing these notes at the summer solstice in Helsinki, a week after returning from a two-week residency at the biological station in Kilpisjärvi, involves a double nostalgia, for the continuous increase of light, which is now turning to the reverse, and for the magic light in the North...

"There is an ancient conversation going on between mosses and rocks, poetry to be sure. About light and shadow and the drift of continents. This is what has been called the dialectic of moss on stone, an interface of immensity and minuteness, of past and present, softness and hardness, stillness and vibrancy, yin and yang. “

Imaginative prototypes from the five-day BioFutures workshop and ongoing work: deep-sea gardening, bee Tinder, spiritual reformations... Welcome!



Since 2019, Bioart Society has been one of the four partners of Biofriction, a European collaboration project committed to supporting bioart and biohacking practices. An exhibition of the same name opens in the Ectopia space in Lisbon, Portugal, on June 16.