The Institute of Unnecessary Research Meets the Egyptian Bioart Club - ISEA 2014

The Institute of Unnecessary Research Meets the Egyptian Bioart Club was presented at ISEA 2014 in Dubai from 30 October to 6 November 2014 as a collaborative open lab, workshop, installation, and performance environment. Alex May contributed participatory video mapping activities within a wider programme led by The Institute of Unnecessary Research and The Egyptian Bioart Club, bringing artists together across DIY biology, digital technologies, the body, and ethics.

What mattered in this context was the way May’s work operated as part of a shared live process rather than as a self-contained object. The project emphasised collaborative making, public discussion, and cross-cultural exchange, treating exhibition as something built through participation and experimentation. Within that structure, May’s video mapping became a way of opening space for collective authorship and for thinking about how digital systems can be used critically inside interdisciplinary art-and-science settings.

The event also sits clearly within the wider practice because it links projection, interaction, and technical systems to broader questions about how technology is understood in public. Alongside microbiology, performance, and ethical debate, May’s contribution helped frame digital image-making not as spectacle but as a tool for dialogue, encounter, and temporary shared construction.