Catalogue > Un extrait vidéo au hasard

The whole Paris is covered by a GPS-based large scale virtual object “SAN Foood office Paris”, that can be seen using the augmented reality app SAN (download - san.lv). At the center of the object, 25-kilometer-high SAN towers are located near the Eiffel Tower. Foood office based on the idea: UN estimates that by 2050 the number of world’s population will reach 9 billion, therefore it will be necessary to produce by 70 per cent more food. Unlike the tendency to think how to produce more and more, the FOOOD project proposes genetically modified human metabolic bacteria that have been endowed with the ability to synthesise enzymes that break down cellulose. Cellulose, a simple sugar glucose polymer, makes up a significant part of plant biomass. In the ordinary human metabolism, cellulose is indigestible and totally without nutritional value. That is why these enzymes that break down cellulose would allow the use of everyday food products from the vegetable world with almost a third more efficiency. They would also allow the more effective use of completely new types of food resources for example, cellulose rich wood and paper. If we managed to create a complete process to break down cellulose then humans would obtain 11% more kilocalories from 100 grams of paper than from 100 grams of bread (400 kilocalories from paper and 355 from bread).

Gints Gabr?ns (b. 1970, Valmiera, Latvia) works mainly with installations and new media art. From 2016 to 2020, he developed the augmented reality mobile application SAN. Solo exhibitions include: Transreality Zirgu Street, Riga (SAN, 2018); Out of Nowhere, Société d'encouragement pour l'industrie nationale, Paris (2015); The Bright Sky, Watermans New Media Gallery, London (2010); Paramirrors, Latvian Pavilion, 52nd Venice Biennale (2007); Invisible. Special Effects of a Parallel World, Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius (2005); and STARIX, 26th Sao Paulo Biennial (2004). Group exhibitions include: 2019 "The Coming World: Ecology as the New Politics 2030–2100, Garage Museum, Moscow Obvious and Incredible, Gallery 427, Riga (2018); New Eden, Arctic Biennial, Sølvberget Galleri, Stavanger, Norvay (2016); Science Inspires Art: Food, New York Hall of Science, New York (2016); Visionary Structures. From Johansons to Johanson, Bozar Art Centre, Brussels (2015); and the 4th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2011). He lives and works in Riga.