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Salivam is the Latin word for saliva. Salivam is also the name of my new anti-aging skin care product being developed as part of my research with Denis Groleau. The cream contains the bacterial enzymes (which we believe are collagenases since they rapidly digest collagen, but certainly proteases nonetheless) we have isolated and extracted from my saliva and…

This publication completes a series of three posts on the art-science relationship as it emerges from Paul Feyerabend’s thought through the careful reading of his book Science as Art (Albin Michel, 2003). The first post (here) compared Vasari’s vision with Rielg’s and concluded that there is no progress in art.” Not all artists are involved in…

Weeks of multiple, repeated tests are required to isolate a specific bacterium–for us, for this project, we wanted to isolate the one that produces the enzyme to digest collagen. Our initial experiments showed us that something in our samples was eating away in a somewhat targeted manner at collagen plates we prepared, but we weren’t…

This text addresses the question of research from a number of blind spots and proposes perspectives with variable, even unstable geometry. Research-creation, what it represents and what it contains, is put forward. It talks in particular about its form of hydra, its phosphorescent character and metaphors around the objectives generated by its double life. Its…

This publication continues a series of three posts on the art-science link as it emerges from Paul Feyerabend’s thought through the careful reading of his book Science as Art (Albin Michel, 2003). The first post (here) compared Vasari’s vision with Rielg’s and concluded that there is no progress in art.” Not all artists are involved…

This text addresses the question of accompaniment versus solitude in artistic creation and scientific research. We wonder who-what’s with us. The practice and ideology of the DIY (Do It Yourself) is explored and an interview with Montreal artist Samuel St-Aubin testifies to this and offers a perspective from within the artistic practice. We mention the…

This publication begins a series of three posts on the art-science link as it emerges from Paul Feyerabend’s thought. This thought has been embodied in many ways. For this first series of publications, we first select the lecture he gave at the Zurich Polytechnic School on 7 July 1981. This conference is entitled Science as…

The following text is based on the idea of art as “fake science”. It addresses the underlying issues of truth of art; authority; post-truth and other alternative facts. He speaks of Orwell’s “revival”; of Instagram’s masterpiece and of our complicated relationship with online truth. Examples of “fake science” are mentioned: a scientific hoax and works…

  The initial experiments that Denis and I have performed in the lab have shown hugely successful results, better than expected. Our good results will now be used for second stage experiments to isolate and purify the cultivated agents, for further use. This research will have applications for scientific work in the end, and we…

  The history of innovation shows us two things. First, every innovation stems from an old dream that it updates. Second, it is the starting point for an unpredictable sequence of consequences, not all of which are happy. I find all this in Laura Sydell’s article Artists And Criminals: On The Cutting Edge Of Tech,…

The following text was written in response to the article Artists And Criminals: On The Cutting Edge Of Tech, by Laura Sydell, published on February 20, 2018 on the WYPR website. He tries to imagine what the technological potential can represent in the hands of different “characters” and makes hypotheses about their convergent and/or divergent…

In the pantheon of received ideas that persist in the scientific world, we find the separation of the fundamental and the applied. On the one hand, there would be fundamental research: solely guided by a taste for intellectual adventure, and thus pure, detached from historical contingencies, far from economic, military, political influences… On the other,…