Althea Rao

Living Ware Intelligence examines the materiality and dis/embodiment of human data within a more-than-human environment through synthetic biology. The project explores how human information, encoded as DNA, can be inserted into living hosts such as bacteria and plants, becoming immortal within these organisms. Through controlled experiments and living artifacts, the artist aims to dramatize the dynamic between human molecular information and its non-human hosts, focusing on metabolization and construction processes where microorganisms mis/interpret human data as nutrients or use it in biofilm formation. By exploring interspecies perspectives on human knowledge and data production, the project challenges common perceptions of value, ethics, and the limitations of human viewpoints in a world of over-datafication and synthetic biology.

Mengxi "Althea" Rao designs activities and hypotheses that require voluntary efforts to overcome unnecessary obstacles. These activities and hypotheses offer rehearsals for the now we live in and/or the future(s) we are headed towards. Her works exist as codes of conduct, performative interventions, multimedia installations as well as formal and informal gatherings, composting and dinner parties, repetitive manual labor. These works perform absurd interpretations of ethical values and negotiate idealism within a fully diverse society, while knowingly exhibit a willingness to count on human agency to see change for the better. Currently her thematic interests are the materiality of data, counter/data and anti/history archival practices through new and old craft. Rao has lived and worked in China, Japan and the US. She is currently pursuing a doctoral degree at DXARTS in University of Washington.