Syncretism and Hybridization in Contemporary Mexican Art: Nanodrizas and Plantas Nmadas

Claudia Costa Pederson

While a long contested concept in anthropology, syncretism as a term entered the lexicon of new media
arts via the cybernatically-inspired theory of British artist Roy Ascott.1 Syncretism is central to the
theorization of a myriad of non-Western hybrid cultural and spiritual systems, and in particular those
emerging historically via rapid cultural integration, often through either colonization or expansion;
however, it is seldom applied to the analysis of contemporary discourses and practices around digital
culture and technology. Ascott's essay Syncretic Reality: art, process, potentiality is an exception, in
that it extends the syncretic impulse, which he historically characterizes as a process of reconciling and
analogizing disparate religious and cultural practices so that the power of each element enriches
the power of the others within the array of their differences, to the understanding of the
transformative potential arising at the convergence of digital and 'post-biological' technologies such as
robotics, bio- and gene engineering and nanotechnologies. Ascott emphasizes the emergence of
nanotechnology, the manipulation of matter on a molecular or atomic scale.2 Of the vast implications of
this technology, it is the possibility to engage reality from a syncretic view-- a process in-between
different elements, or the condition of 'being both' (versus binary opposition)--that is the most exciting
to the artist, as he locates its potential in an ultimate affirmation of a non-dualist view of self and the
world; a vision of being and life based on a reciprocal ontology, or a process of social exchange that
Ascott characterizes as a model of co-operation and collaboration, from the molecular to the
macroscopic level of life, which can also be though as symbiosis.3 Concomitantly, the artist and

1
Roy Ascott, Syncretic Reality: art, process, potentiality (2005):
http://www.drainmag.com/contentNOVEMBER/FEATURE_ESSAY/Syncretic_Reality.htm l.
2
Ibid. The term nano-technology (the prefix is derived from the Greek , meaning dwarf) was coined by Japanese
scientist Norio Taniguchi in 1974. Taniguchi defined nano-technology as mainly consisting of the processing of
separation, consolidation, and deformation of materials by one atom or one molecule. Norio Taniguchi, On the Basic
Concept of 'Nano-Technology', in Proceedings Intl. Conf. Prod. Eng. Tokyo, Part II, Japan Society of Precision
Engineering, 1974. In 1959, the physicist Richard Feynman delivered a lecture at the American Physical Society meeting at
Caltech, entitled, There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom, which is considered the foundational event of the emergence of
the field decades later, as it outlined the possibility of manipulating individual atoms outside and inside of the body (this
idea was already anticipated in the science-fiction genre, in Robert A. Heinlein's 1942 story Waldo). Post-biological
technologies refer to technologies that enable the recombination of biological and machinic materials, resulting in the
creation of new forms of life associated with post-biological evolution or the transition from a biological paradigm of gene
propagation to a non-biological paradigm (e.g., cultural or technological). In the view of researchers and proponents of
post-biological evolution this transition is marked by the development and convergence of post-biological technologies such
as genetics, robotics, and nanotechnologies, which may potentially result in the obsolescence, extinction, or trophic
reconfiguration of biological life. See footnote 6.
3
Ascott, Syncretic Reality: art, process, potentiality. The notion of symbiosis is also central to Ascott's understanding of
networking or decentralization (by which he means computer networks), which he sees as providing a field of interaction
between human and artificial intelligence, involving symbiosis and integration of modes of thinking, imagining and
theorist Edmont Couchot suggested a related term synonymous with Ascott's notion of syncretism,
hybridization, as a concept that best characterizes interactivity as a central feature of the digital,
which allows various, almost genetic operations on the media that are unrealisable with traditional
technologies. 4 In the words of Kerstin Mey and Yvonne Spielmann, this hybrid or syncretic quality to
which Couchot points manifests in complex new modes of interrelationships and interfaces that
reflect the digital medium's omni-directional, multi-dimensional and open-ended features.5 These
visions stand in contrast to the competitive ethos and linear worldview underlying current scientific
discourses around nanotechnology, an example of which is K. Eric Drexlers popularization of the term
as an engine of creation.6 As Ascott explains, Drexler's quasi-science fiction scenarios promise the
possibility of artificial life in the forms of self-replicating robots, self-renewing structures and
environments operating within the body, its environment and in outer space are ultimately framed by
the idea that evolution and change depend on the competitive drive of self-interest (survival). Ascott
challenges this view as a mechanistic and materialist understanding of the potential of technology,
following on an aggressive interpretation of 19th century ideology of Darwinism, and calls instead
for the development of strategies that will strengthen the syncretic view of reality. Within this vision,
nanotechnology would contribute to greater access to the field of consciousness, where survival is
measured on a spiritual level: the fittest being those most able to adapt their individual self-awareness
to the larger whole.7 Envisioned as a process of constructing transdisciplinary discourses and
technological practices, the fulcrum of syncretic art is then aimed at the development of strategies that
stress reciprocity as a fundamental dynamic of biological and technological systems as a whole.8
Expanding on Ascott's concept of syncretism, this essay discusses the emergence of
creating. An exponent of 1960s utopian visions of the internet, Ascott's ideas echo the vision of Man-Computer
Symbiosis (put forward by J. C. R. Licklider in 1960s), while at the same time in a McLuahnesque vein stressing the
transformative potentialities of such a global network as a kind of 'democratized,' because distributed (out-of-body)
human sensorium. See, Roy Ascott, Gesamtdatenwerk: Connectivity, Transformation and Transcendence, in Telematic
Embrace, Visionary Theories of Art, Technology and Consciousness, ed. by Edward A. Shanken (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2007), 223.
4
Cited in Kerstin Mey and Yvonne Spielmann, Editorial, in Convergence: The International Journal of Research into
New Media Technologies 11 (November 1, 2005), 7.
5
Ibid.
6
K. Eric Drexler, Engines of Creation (Garden City, NY.: Anchor Press, 1986.) Drexler is a former student of Marvin
Minsky at the M.I.T. Artificial Intelligence Lab. Alongside Drexler, the futurologist Raymond Kurzweil should also be
noted for his framing of nanotechnology within a radical form of transcendentalism. Through his writings and recent film,
Transcendent Man, directed by Barry Ptomely, 2011, Kurzweil promotes the notion of the singularity, an impending trans-
humanist evolution resulting from a combination of three technologiesgenetics, nanotechnology, and robotics. This
evolution, he predicts, will result into the merging of the human and the machine, which will bring about a new human
being, transcendent man, and the creation of a new social order, the [technological] singularity. Kurzweil's books
include, The Age of Intelligent Machines (Massachusetts, MA: MIT Press, 1990), and his latest, The Singularity is Near:
When Humans Transcend Biology (New York: Viking Penguin, 2005).
7
Ascott, Syncretic Reality: art, process, potentiality.
8
Ibid.
ecologically-minded art in Mexico through an analysis of two recent artistic projects in the area of
robotics: Nanodrizas by Arcangel Constantini (2006-ongoing) and Plantas Nmadas by Gilberto
Esparza (2008-ongoing). While contradicting assumptions that the media arts sit on a north/south
divide, these works also reflect a reality of deep ecological imbalance (water contamination) and the
myriad of dynamics connected to this condition provide the impetus for their development. As
interventions into dominant discourses around nanotechnology (as cited above by Ascott), they
resonate with the latter's challenge of competition and transcendentalism, and in turn, attempt to
develop the discursive field and material processes of syncretic art by creating situations in which the
robotic system, the ecological environment and the human stand to mutually benefit.9 Because the
circumstances of digital arts in Latin America are virtually unexplored in art theory and academic
discourse, this essay will also discuss the emergence of these projects within the broader cultural and
economic role of ICTs (Information and Communications Technologies) in the region. Of particular
salience is the work of the Fundacin Telefnica, the cultural arm of the Spain-based multinational,
Telefnica.10 However, inasmuch as the digital arts depend on the same technologies that support global
capitalism (and in these cases on the financial support of a global corporation), they also stand in stark
contrast to the competitive drive of profit making that increasingly transforms the fabric of social life
and cultural identity into a reflection of base economic principles. Countering the homogenization in

9
In a similar vein, the Mexican artist and theorist Manuel de Landa discussed the militarization of robotics as a vision that
circumscribes the potentials of these technologies. He writes: The machinic phylum, seen as technology's own internal
dynamics and cutting edge, could still be seen shining through the brilliant civilian discoveries of the transistor and the
integrated chip, which had liberated electronic circuit designs from the constraints on their possible complexity. But the
military had already begun to tighten its grip on the evolution of the phylum, on the events happening at its cutting edge,
channeling its forces but limiting its potential mutations. As if in response to Kurzweil's vision in his first book, The Age of
Intelligent Machines (1990), de Landa rejects the view of technological determinism, which frames history as a linear
succession of technological progression. However, he also warns against intelligent technology and war as ends in and of
themselves, suggesting that disconnected from social needs and energies, these processes are 'meaningless,' and thus
doomed to permanent nomadism. He advocates for a 'singularity' (a next threshold point) in which humans and machines
cease to oppose each other. See, Manuel de Landa, War in the Age of Intelligent Machines (New York: Zone Books, 1991),
153.
10
An exception of note is the work of the Brazilian artist and Ascott's former student, Eduardo Kac around bioart,
telepresence, and robotics, which is well known in the United States and Europe. For an overview of the history of the
digital arts in Brasil curated by Kac see, A Radical Intervention: Brazilian Electronic Art, in Leonardo Special Project
(April 31, 2010): http://www.leonardo.info/isast/spec.projects/brazil.html. Ecological themes were also a central focus of
Brazilian art with the Tropicalista movement in the 1960s and 1970s. However, Mexico's engagement with technological
could be traced to the 1968 exhibition on systems art commissioned on the occasion of the Olympic Games. This
exhibition, held at the University Museum of Arts and Science, Mexico City, was curated by the U.S. artist Willoughby
Sharp and included the artists Yaacov Agam, Hans Breder, Lucio Fontana, Hans Haacke, Julio Le Parc, Les Levine, Len
Lye, Heinz Mack, Preston McClanahan, David Medalla, Robert Morris, Otto Piene, Jesus Rafael Soto, Takis, Jean
Tinguelyy, Gunther Uecker, John Van Saun, and Robert Whitman. See, Willoughby Sharp, Cinetismo: esculturas
electronicas en situaciones ambientales/Kineticism: systems sculpture in environmental situations (Mexico: Impre. Madero,
1968). Efforts underway to document historical and contemporary practices in the electronic arts in Mexico include the
project directed by the art historian Karla Jasso and the artist Tania Aedo, at the Laboratorio Arte Alameda in Mexico city,
entitled, (Ready) Media: Towards an Archeology of Media and Invention in Mexico. See,
http://www.artealameda.bellasartes.gob.mx/index.php=com_content&view=article&id=233.
this process, this essay analyzes the ecological thematics of these projects as heirs to local historic and
cultural traditions of syncretism as a strategy of change and adaptation, and as practices that resonate
with recent interventions in the north that similarly seek to explore the potential of digital and
biotechnologies to transform material conditions and cognitive modes around ecology. While taking
diverse forms, these practices share a common formal and conceptual point of reference in reciprocity;
that is, the processes of exchange central to the operation of these works embody an alternative
formulation of political understood to broadly include visions of being and relating that are deeply
antithetical to the dominant hierarchical thought, values, and structures. In echo of this
conceptualization and in reflection of the hybrid nature of the digital, that is its non-linear or syncretic
culture and structure, these projects are themselves recombinant or hybrid formations that reflect in
their forms and operations the equivocality inherent to zones in-between artistic, activist, and market
cultures.

Syncretizing Robotics

The robots created by Mexican artists Arcngel Constantini and Gilberto Esparza are autonomous

machines that can interact bi-directionally with their environments. As autonomous systems these

projects draw on Rodney Brooks' work in artificial intelligence at M.I.T., now synonymous with the so

called bottom-up approach to robotic design. In contrast with top-down models, this approach

dispenses with a 'central representation' (a program or programs) that controls the entire robot; instead,

many simple mechanisms and programs are integrated into the robot. Brooks calls this a distributed

framework, the subsumption architecture, which mimics processes found in nature, such as the

symbiotic behavior of insect colonies or swarms (e.g., ants, bees, etc.).11 Likewise, as these simple

devices begin to work together, they can generate behavior that is remarkably complex, even creating

the semblance of 'intelligent' or 'autonomous' machines (the same principles apply to a group of robots

acting in coordination, so-called swarm-robotics). While drawing on biological metaphors as a formal

conceit for the design of autonomous robots, these projects also develop these metaphors as a notion of

11
See, Rodney Brooks, Elephants don't Play Chess, in Robotics and Autonomous Systems 6 (1990), 3-15; available at,
http://rair.cogsci.rpi.edu/pai/restricted/logic/elephants.pdf.
ecology that reflects anti-hierarchical, non-functionalist sensibilities that are illustrated by way of the

syncretic process as a mutually beneficial energy exchange between artificial and natural systems. As

public interventions, these projects aim at sensitizing the public about alternatives to the existing social

imaginaries around energy issues. In practice, both are collaborative, long-term projects around the

deterioration of fresh water in Mexico, and involve artists working in various fields of art and

technology, technologists, scientists, cultural and educational institutions, and business in Mexico and

Europe.

Constantini's Nanodrizas consist of thirteen UFO-shaped, waterworthy devices. Esparza's

Plantas Nmadas is a small mobile robot encasing a microbial engine and living plants. The robots can

sometimes be spotted in 'the wild' by contaminated bodies of water in Mexico, such on the surface of

Chapultepec lake located in Mexico City, one of the test sites for nanodrizas (fig. 1), and at the banks

of the Santiago river at El Salto and Juanacatln, in the state of Jalisco, the site where Plantas

Nmadas is currently in development (fig. 2).12 While these projects explore distinct forms of

autonomous robots, they converge in the view that instrumentalist concepts of technology and

environmental imbalances are related conditions, and in turn show that reciprocity, a relationship or

behavior commonly found in natural ecosystems, can be a model by which to counteract these

conditions.

Trained in graphic design and animation, Constantini (b. Mexico D.F., 1970) began working

with new media in the mid-1990s as part of the then flourishing net art scene. He has since developed

works in the areas of photography, video, hardware hacking, obsolete technologies, and sound art, as

well as actively participates in the development of new media in Mexico both as a curator and adviser.13

12
See the documentary online at, http://www.plantasnomadas.com/documentales.html.
13
Constantini cites his artistic beginnings as a net artist in Hell.com, a net.art project started in 1995 by the artists Kenneth
Aronson (the site became urban legend among internet and new media aficionados). He has curated exhibitions at
institutions such as the Museo Tamayo; is a member of FONCA (Sistema Nacional de Creadores); and a juror and
participant at festivals like the Transitio MX electronic art festival and informal networks like Dorkbot, a group of affiliated
organizations worldwide that sponsor grassroots gatherings of artists, engineers, designers, scientists, inventors, and others
working under the very broad umbrella of electronic art. Information from materials provided by the artist.
Nanodrizas follows from the variety of areas previously explored by Constantini, thus combining his

interests in networks, hacking, obsolete technologies, video feeds and experimental sound, with an

added new focus on nanotechnologies.

The term Nanodrizas, which combines nodriza, the Spanish word for both a supply vessel such

as a ship or a plane and a wet nurse, and nanotechnology, clues into the function of these devices as

vectors for remedial bio-solutions designed to counter-act water pollution.14 Conforming to the

distributed approach of swarm robotics, the nanodrizas are configured as a social network of

autonomous robots such that the overall pattern is open-ended and evolving (emergent) as it takes

shape from the interactions of the various components that make up the system, including the robots,

the environment within which they operate, and the humans in this environment. Initial prototypes

consisted of recycled materials (wheels from children's toys), though the current thirteen devices are

molded from fiber glass and propelled by solar energy (besides a nod to the relationship to the

spaceship as artificial intelligence in science-fiction, the UFO shape is also a practical solution to

energy collection as it provides ample surface for solar cells).15 Individually, each vessel is fitted with

an array of low-energy interfaces that monitor the conditions of the physical environment (including

sonic, visual and various other sensor systems collecting data, including temperature, ph levels,

oxygen, and humidity readings). Compartments located in the belly of the vessels can be filled with

prepared bio-compounds (bacterial, enzyme, and fungal nano-solutions) to be dispersed in situ upon

detection of pollutants in the water. The devices connect via a wireless network interface (a mote), and

emit sound or 'noise' in attempts at communicating with the aquatic environment and with humans

within proximity or those connected with the network, whom are thus alerted to the condition of the

14
The project's website is: http://nanodrizas.org/. My thanks to Mara Fernndez for pointing out the double meaning of
nanodriza to me.
15
Fredric Jameson notes that the relationship of the spaceship as artificial intelligence (as most famously in 2001) or to
other kinds of bio-technology, is an offshoot of SF genres emerging around the theme of symbiosis between humans and
machines that traces to the, thematics of robots (Asimov), androids (Philip K. Dick), and later cyborgs (Donna Haraway).
Fredric Jameson, Archaeologies of the Future, The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions (New York: Verso,
2005), 64.
ecosystem.

In their current form, the Nanodrizas are not functional devices, as they lack the bio-compounds

which are key to their function as a remedial vehicle. Instead, the project can be taken to represent a

performative intervention and a playful comment on the contemporary interplay between energy,

political power, and economic dynamics in Mexico as historically tied to the impact of colonization and

expansion. In this regard, of significance for the affective power of the project is the specificity of the

sites in which the Nanodrizas are deployed, which speak of complex social histories around the current

degraded condition of waterways in Mexico. The devices were first floated on the waterways adjacent

to La Constancia, the first textile factory in Latin America built in 1835 on the Santo Domingo

Hacienda around an old water mill built by Spanish Jesuits. Whereas the factory was converted into an

arts center in 2001, a corridor of factories located upstream from Puebla continue to discharge

untreated waste into the Atoyac river, in large part because officials are weary of holding owners to

NAFTA environmental standards lest the region become unattractive to capital.16 As previously

mentioned, another site of deployment is the Chapultepec lake located in Mexico City's embattled

green heart, the Chapultepec forest, which beyond its current status as a site of great historical,

political, and cultural significance for the nation, was for over 400 years a site of fresh water springs

feeding a large lake that provided a significant part of the city's water supply. Today, the endangered

Xochimilco canal system, an important tourist site, is the only remnant of an extensive lake and canal

system that connected most of the settlements of the valley of Mexico. The dams and sluices were

destroyed by the Spaniards in the 1520s because of the system's strategic importance to the Aztec

empire for transportation and as an essential agricultural adaptation to the native aquatic environment,

most notably the highly effective chinampa farming, which consisted of a system of small floating

gardens made of reeds and composted with the biological debris settling on the bottom of the canals.17
16
See, http://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/1961/. In fact, Puebla was the heart of the textile industry in Mexico, and the
first site of full-blown industrialization in the country.
17
The chinampa, or floating gardens, sustained a high-yielding agricultural method, which consisted of staking out the
shallow lake bed and fencing in the rectangle with wattle. The fenced-off area was layered with mud, lake sediment
This form of agricultural adaptation echoes a view of ecology that functions on principles of syncretism

as a worldview or an ontology that positions humans within a web of relations with others in the

environment. This vision of cooperative management of the environment is based on extending agency

(being, or personhood) to not only humans but also to other forms of living and non-living forms of

life; a mode of thinking that Constantini similarly engages, for the nanodrizas are literally in-

between forms.18 Modeled on the ambiguous definition of the Spanish term, they are built both in the

images of a wet nurse and a supply vessel; they are literally wetting machines that exhibit autonomous

behaviors, such as speech (noise) and adaptive coordination (between themselves and their

environment). As public, site-specific interventions, the Nanodrizas alert observers to the impact of

unchecked industrialization on the aquatic environments of Mexico in the aftermath of the economic

conditions of colonialist ethos, and at the same time suggest that native technologies can provide

important models for rethinking and reconstituting the distinction between the organic and the

technological (akin to the dualism of body/mind, spirit/matter) that constitutes materialist strategies of

repair. Rather, the project takes as its point of departure syncretic techniques, while placing emphasis

on ism mutualreciprocal relationships as an important venue of inquiry into the engineering of

alternative technologies that can play a role in the restoration of balance in these ecosystems. In this

sense, the Nanodrizas indicates that the transformative potential of technology is not inherent to itself,

(including human waste), and decaying vegetation, eventually bringing it above the level of the lake. Trees (willows) were
planted to secure the floating agricultural beds. This system, based on recycling, was of great importance for the Aztecs,
who absorbed and expanded the chinampa farming system. The chinampas were abandoned after the Spaniards destruction
of the dams and sluice gates, although remnants are still in use today on the shores of lake Xochimilco (the floating
gardens of Xochimilco, which do not float, are today a popular tourist attraction). However, this system is currently being
revived through developmental aid projects in Bangladesh. See for instance, Dirk R. Van Tuerenhout, The Aztecs: New
Perspectives (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2005), 105-106.
18
In contrast, while Western law regards companies as having the status of personhood (they are identified as legal persons
or artificial entities), it does not extend this definition to other forms of non-human life. Ecuador pioneered the lawful
recognition of its ecosystems environment in 2008, giving its forests, lakes, and waterways rights on par with humans in
order to ensure their protection from harmful practices. This legislation framed nature from a paradigm of property to being
a right-bearing entity, and can be seen as a response to conflicts with multinational companies operating in this resource-rich
country, with disregard for their operations' ecological and social impact. See, Clare Kendall, A New Law of Nature, in
Guardian (September 23, 2008), http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/24/equador.conservation. More recently
New Zealand granted the Whanganui, the nation's third-longest river, with legal personhood 'in the same way a company
is, which will give it rights and interests,' in the aftermath of a court case brought by the iwi, an indigenous people with
strong ties to the river. See, Stephen Messenger, New Zealand Grants a River the Rights of Personhood, in Treehugger
(September 6, 2012), http://www.treehugger.com/environmental-policy/river-new-zealand-granted-legal-rights-person.html.
but beholden to the transformation of dominant ontological assumptions that presently frame our

theoretical outlook and practices in relation to ecology.

The focus on reciprocity as a form of symbiotic adaptation is similarly at the background of

Plantas Nmadas, though this project is, in contrast to Nanodrizas, a functional robot.19 Esparza (b.

Aguascalientes, Mexico, 1975) began exploring ecological themes through interventions in urban

environments as an art student at the University of Guanajato. His 2003 M.F.A. thesis project,

Escultura de Descenso (Descending Sculpture) (2003), set the tone for much of his later work in

robotics as site-specific, often surreptitious public performances. This sculpture consisted of a large

ball filled with eight liters of water that followed the hilly topography of Guanajato, descending down

the narrow stairs and winding streets to the center of the city.20 This 'experiment' emerged around

Guanajato's water quality and scarcity tracing to the city's mining industry (silver and gold) established

by the Spanish colonial power (the city would later become an epicenter of the Mexican War of

Independence), and revived during the late19th century due to foreign investments encouraged by the

government of Porfirio Diaz.21 After training at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain, Esparza

focused on developing collaborative urban interventions with a focus on robotics. Entitled Parsitos

Urbanos (urban parasites), these interventions were inspired on marginal economies of ambulant

vendors illicitly plugging into Mexico City's power grid, and scavenging, rehabilitating, and selling the

city's discarded industrial products.22 Parsitos Urbanos consists of small robots made of recycled

techno-waste (motors from cellphone and toys, controllers, computer parts, sensors, and pvc tubes) that

roam urban environments in search of sources of energy they can feed on. Over two years, from 2005

to 2007, the project developed into a taxonomy of robotic parasites that could be met in the urbanscape
19
See, http://www.plantasnomadas.com/
20
See, http://gilbertoesparza.blogspot.com/2007/05/escultura-de-descenso_5177.html.
21
In contrast to the exploitation of petroleum which is nationalized, the mining industry in Mexico is privatized with
Canadian companies and Mexican business men at the helm, including Carlos Slim Hel, who is according to Forbes the
richest man in the world (Slim also holds the monopoly on telecommunications in Mexico with Amrica Mvil, an internet
and phone company operating in various Latin American countries). Slim is a funder of the electronic arts in Mexico
through various foundations, including Telmex.
22
See, http://www.parasitosurbanos.com/parasitos/proyecto.html.
through chance encounters. Parsitos Urbanos includes Mosca (eliptero embobinado) (fig. 3), a

robotic fly with aggressive territorial behavior, deployed in the city's subway, and Ppndr-s or

pepenadores (alambrpodo iocus-obsoleto), robotic creatures named after the trash collectors of

Mexico, that remove and spread waste piles accumulating in parts of the city. Most robots in this

project are configured to attempt to become part of the environmental soundscape through noise,

similar to the Nanodrizas. These robots include, among others, auttrofos inorgnicos (fig. 4), which

are 'organisms' mounted in city parks configured to translate sunlight into random electrical noise; and

dblt (mecatrpodo engranado) (fig. 5), a robot that inhabits the city power lines from which it draws

energy, while storing surrounding sounds and playing them intermittently according to its 'mood,'

which was also deployed on the streets of Lima, Peru.

While Plantas Nmadas follows from Parsitos Urbanos, it also marks a shift in Esparza's

focus, from an interest in urbanity and illegality, to peripheral (rural) areas and relations of reciprocity.

Similar to Contantini's conception of nanodrizas as vectors, Esparza sees Plantas nmadas as an anti-

body whereby distinct forms of intelligence constitutes a stronger species and can potentially

contravene environmental damage on a small scale.23 The robot feeds on the bacterial colonies

forming in contaminated waters, which are decomposed through processes catalyzed within its

microbial fuel cell and transformed into electricity that propels the robot. Through this feedback

dynamic, the water is filtered and the plants are sustained, in turn returning energy to the environment

through the release of oxygen (the plants used are native to the environment). Surplus energy is also,

similar to nanodrizas, converted into 'noise' used to integrate the robot into the local soundscape.

Because the bacterial components generate little energy, the robot moves very slowlyjust enough to

continue to function thus preventing rapid mechanical wear. The emphasis on slowing down

movement and expanding the life cycle of the robot stands in contrast to the normative framing of

robotics within the requisites of speed and efficiency, or capital-driven technology. In whole, Plantas

23
Quoted from the artist's statement. See, http://www.plantasnomadas.com/.
Nmadas evokes symbiotic processes, such as those guiding chinampa farming. In fact, it can be seen

as modern re-adaptation of this form, as a miniaturized, mechanized chinampa; as an antidote to human

alienation from the environment, and as a model for developing technology in tune with the syncretic

(non-linear) process of life's propagation. In line with this, the artist is in the process of releasing the

research undertaken around the project on the internet, so that it can be replicated and developed by the

broader community.

Reciprocity, in short, aligns Constantini's and Esparza's works as artistic projects that combine

biological and artificial entities to construct a hybrid space of potentiality.24 This fusion of art and

technology is influenced by second order cybernetics and notions of cybernetic art, in which the role of

the observer/participant is stressed; that is, it engages systems with the awareness that the observer is

linked with the system being observed, and thus is both affected and affects its dynamics.25 The

socially-engaged inflection of these cybernetic systems/art practices is suggested by Karla Jasso's

framing of Plantas Nmadas on Felix Guattari's notion of ecology, or eco-art as an

activist/transformational practice that spans mental, social, and environmental ecologies.26 Jasso also

references the work of Bruno Latour as a related strand of thought in its emphasis on challenging

subject/object distinctions; a point that Jasso sees materialized in Plantas Nomadas as it exemplifies

the creation of organisms that link the generation of energy through organic and mechanical processes,

and the need to fuse these (id)entities with the environment through symbiotic phenomena, leaving

24
Ascott, Syncretic Reality: art, process, potentiality.
25
The word cybernetics was coined in 1948 by the U.S, mathematician Norbert Wiener (1894-1964) at M.I.T., and is
derived from the Greek kubernetes "steersman." Kybernetics is the science of control systems, and a theory of self-
regulating organisms. Feedback is a central concept. U.S. artist and theorist Jack Burnham used the term cybernetic art
in his book Beyond Modern Sculpture (1968), to describe living artwork (the idea is to position the artist to create, rather
than imitate life). Cybernetic art deals with art as a system, and explores issues such as self-regulating artworks, hybrid
organic and mechanical systems and art as a system that incorporates the spectator/participant. The Chilean biologist
Francisco Varela (working with Humberto Maturana) is recognized as a key figure in the emergence of second-order
cybernetics which emphasizes the role of the participatory of the observer in a cybernetic system. Varela was a proponent
of embodied philosophy that understands human cognition and consciousness as arising from the body (seen both as a
biological systems and as phenomenologically experienced) and the physical world with which the body interacts. For a
recent account of the history of cybernetics in Chile with references to Varela and Maturana see for instance, Eden Medina,
Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende's Chile (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011), 200-201.
26
See, Karla Jasso, Autosustentabilidad energtica y vida simbitica: plantas-en-nomadismo (2010),
http://www.plantasnomadas.com/investigacion.html.
aside the conflict between the machine, the simulation of life and productivity as basis of intentionality

in processes of invention.27 Similarly, Constantini's describes Plantas Nmadas as a bio-cybernetic

entity that protects life and Nanodrizas, as an environmentally engaged media art practice, [or]

'tactical eco-tech,' [that]... goes beyond other environmental tactical media interventions by making an

attempt to be actively therapeutic, citing the environmentally-activist, site-specific artwork of Newton

Harrison and Helen Mayer Harrison in the 1960s as an influence for the latter.28

Tactical eco-tech has affinities with tactical media practices emerging in the 1990s as

exemplified by the U.S. based group Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) (and collaborators), whose work

responds to the emergence of biotechnology and its impact on the environment and bodies (for

instance, the group's reverse engineering of Monsanto Roundup Ready plants).29 The late media

artist and CAE collaborator, Beatriz da Costa and the science studies scholar Kavita Phillip called such

practices tactical biopolitics, dedicated to the investigation, critique, and creation of resistant forms

of collective production, distribution, and deployment of knowledge that engages with history and

culture, academia and the public, technoscience and everyday life.30 A common thread of these

practices is a shared critique of Cartesian thought, and research into alternatives that embody non-

27
Ibid. My translation. La creacin de organismos que vinculen la generacin de energa a travs de procesos tanto
mecnicos como orgnicos, y la necesidad de fundir dicha (id)entidad con el entorno dado a manera de fenmeno
simbitico, dejando fuera incluso, el conflicto entre la mquina, la simulacin de la vida y la productividad como bases de
intencionalidad en los procesos de invencin. Here Emily Martin's analysis of Bruno Latour and Michel Callons
reflections ontreatment of nonhuman agents should be noted. Martin argues that rather than granting them true agency, these
theorists engage in what she calls the fetishism of the non-human. That is, they grant nonhumans agency only insofar as
they, like scientists and other human actors in their actor networks, act as resource accumulating entrepreneurs. Martin
likens this fetishism of the non-human to Marxs commodity fetishism. Martin argues that this anthropomorphism conceals
and naturalizes the social relations of capitalism by postulating that everything, animate and inanimate nature included,
functions according to a capitalist rationality. See, Emily Martin, Working across the HumanOther Divide, in
Reinventing Biology: Respect for Life and the Creation of Knowledge, Lynda Birke and Ruth Hubbard, eds., (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1995), 266-267.
28
See, La sopa cientfica de la ficcin primordial. Planta Nmada / simbiosis energtica (2010),
http://www.plantasnomadas.com/investigacion.html. See artist statement, http://nanodrizas.org/index.php?/english-
version/presentation/.
29
See, http://www.critical-art.net/MolecularInvasion.html. See also, Critical Art Ensemble, Molecular Invasion (New York:
Autonomedia, 2002); and, Disturbances (London: Four Corner Books, 2012).
30
Beatriz da Costa and Kavita Phillip, Tactical Biopolitics: Art, Activism, and Technoscience (Cambridge MA: MIT Press,
2008), xviii. Other groups and artists working in similar vein include Natalie Jeremijenko, Jamie Schulte, Brooke Singer,
CAE collaborators and cyberfeminist group, Subrosa, and the YesMen (the Yeslab), among others. Prior, and crossing
conceptual art and land art, the politically-engaged work of Mel Chin in ecology, Revival Field (1990-93), should also be
mentioned as sharing a therapeutic goal as mentioned by Constantini.
linear, non-dualist principles, and are connected with aims at identifying and investigating new areas of

activism, and to developing organizational structures based on processes of shared knowledge,

collaboration, cooperation, and the valuing of difference.31 The syncretic strategies engaged by

Constantini and Esparza are not an imitation of cybernetic thought, cybernetically-inspired art, or

tactical media practices, however, but can be understood as projects aimed at expanding and

developing all of these practices, by relating their common point of reference in syncretic processes to

indigenous knowledge and practices in ecology. The resulting works reconcile and analogize these

seemingly disparate areas of thought and cultural outlooks, with the goal, as Constantini puts it, to

build a symbiotic network of mutual benefit.32

Contraproduction

In contrast with the history of cybernetics as a science, which carries the imprint of Mexican (and Latin

American) scientists, cybernetically-inspired art and ecological themes in Mexican art are of a more

recent date.33 Their recent emergence can be understood as ensuing from the convergence of cultural

and market forces to which these projects respond and in which they are embedded. Paralleling

dominant technological discourses around the environment (promising development and efficiency),

the intensification of ecological pressures is increasingly materialized in the growth of mega-cities and

the social and cultural uprooting of rural populations, in service to macroeconomic policies. In

Mexico, rural populations are displaced by projects that require evacuation set in motion to remedy

energy deficiencies of urban character such as the construction of dams, highways, or the use of soil for

monocultivation. The Zapatista uprisings in 1994 on the heels of NAFTA are emblematic both as

signaling opposition to corporate exploitation of communally-held resources in the Chiapas region

31
See, Mara Fernndez, Faith Wilding, and Michelle M. Wright, eds., Domain Errors!: Cyberfeminist Practices (New
York: Autonomedia, 2003), 12-13.
32
See, artist statement, http://nanodrizas.org/index.php?/english-version/presentation/.
33
The Mexican physiologist Arturo Rosenblueth Stearns collaborated with the founder of cybernetics Norbert Wiener. and
Julian Bigelow and was a core figure in the Macy conferences on cybernetics (1946-1953). See also footnote 25. For a
precedent in the arts in Mexico, see footnote 9.
(resulting in the enclosure of ejidos, lands belonging to indigenous communities), and as the first rural

movement successfully using the Internet to galvanize the global civic community. Similarly, the

market-driven growth of digital technologies and networks globally and in the region contributes to the

diffusion of knowledge and collaboration around environmental issues today, as alongside polarized

discourses about the environment, information about alternative forms of energy and technology is

freely accessible and exchanged. This flow of information, combined with the abundance of industrial

hubris, and the availability of cheap and relatively easy to use interfaces, such as Arduinos (an

adaptable, single-board microcontroller and a software suite for programming it) and open-source

software such as Processing (a programming environment), and PureData (a sound environment), are

the principal materials of a new generation of Mexican artists conversant with the interlocking spheres

of art and technology.

The rise of media arts in Mexico reflect not only artistic interest, but also positive responses by

the art community and governmental art agencies in Mexico. This support is exemplified by the

founding of Laboratorio Arte Alameda in 2000, a space solely dedicated to the exhibition,

documentation, archiving, production and investigation of practices in dialogue with art and

technology, and the financial support for new media arts provided through FONCA (Fondo Nacional

para la Cultura y las Artes / National Fund for Culture and the Arts), CONACULTA (Consejo National

para la Cultura y las Artes / National Council for Culture and Art) and INBA (Instituto Nacional de

Bellas Artes / National Institute for Fine Artes).34 Support also comes from private organizations, most

significantly from Fundacin Telefnica, the cultural arm of the Spain-based telecommunication

multinational Telefnica (in Mexico, Telefnica is the competitor of Amrica Mvil, which has the

monopoly of telecommunication services in the country and is owned by Carlos Slim Hel). The

34
The late curator at the Laboratorio Arte Alameda is seen as one of the principal supporters and force behind the interest in
the electronic arts within art institutions in Mexico. See, Donna Conwell, Curatorial Practices Interview with curator
Priamo Lozada, in LatinArt.com: An Online Journal of Art and Culture (March 1, 2003),
http://www.latinart.com/aiview.cfm?start=1&id=156. Presently, the art historian Karla Jasso is the chief curator at the
Laboratorio Arte Alameda.
Telefnica foundation sponsors cultural institutions such as the above-mentioned Laboratorio Arte

Alameda; fosters interchanges between Latin American artists through Telefnica centers which

function as exhibition, discussion and work spaces for electronic arts throughout Spain, Latin America,

and various countries in Western and Eastern Europe; as well as sponsors exhibitions, an example of

which is Emergentes, a traveling exhibition curated by Jos-Carlos Maritegui in 2008, which included

twelve Latin American artists working in various areas of the digital arts, such as robotics, augmented

reality, artificial life and operational semantics.35 Additionally, the foundation supports various

competitions, of which VIDA (Concurso International Arte and Vida Artificial/Art and Artificial Life

International Awards) is the most significant for artists working on the intersections of art, science, and

technology. Both Constantini and Esparza are recipients of VIDA awards; Nanodrizas was awarded a

production incentive in VIDA 11.0, and Plantas Nmadas was awarded second place in VIDA 13.0.

The latter was exhibited in Spain, Eastern Europe and various Latin American countries within

institutions supported by Telefnica, including the Laboral center in Gijon, Spain.

The current interest in media arts in Mexico, shared by artists, governmental institutions, and

global business alike, demonstrates a common attraction to art and creativity. In this regard, the notion

of digital technologies as hybrid cultural zones in which as Couchot suggests, hybridization is

synonymous with syncretism, is useful to understand this convergence of interests as operating

beyond a cultural clash, as Mey and Spielmann suggest.36 Mey and Spielman write that Hybrid

encounters of cultural forms create zones that are regarded as dynamic 'in-between spaces,' where

cultures meet or collide, interact and exchange.37 Moreover, hybridization is a twofold concept that

either includes and stresses the notion of differentiation or excludes and effaces difference. At present

the influx of digital technologies and financial support of market and cultural forces (business and

institutional), provide the conditions vital for the emergence and development of ecologically and

35
See, http://www.laboralcentrodearte.org/en/exposiciones/emergentes.
36
Kerstin Mey and Yvonne Spielmann, Editorial, in Convergence, 6.
37
Ibid.
activist-minded media practices in Mexico. Building on Mey's and Spielmans reflexions, I believe that

these projects are best understood in relation to ongoing processes of cultural negotiation in a way akin

to the syncretist impulse. While embedded within the context of rapid cultural and economic

transformation as phenomena associated with globalization processes, they also respond to these

dynamics by taking a position that refutes the purist (exclusionary) logic of homogenization by

embodying inclusion and difference (in concept and form). Along the equivocal axes of inclusion and

exclusion--the twofold features of hybridization (to paraphrase Mey and Spielmann), these projects

revolve around questions of access and the power of knowledge from within a process of open-ended

cultural negotiation.38

Conclusion

The syncretic strategies of Nanodrizas and Plantas Nmadas reflect the conflicted, ambivalent spaces

in which these projects operate, within the interstices of art, activism, and commerce. At the same time,

they articulate responses to the polarization of current discourses in face of deep and urgent ecological

issues confronted locally and globally. These projects stand in contrast to survivalist currents which

shape our present ecological imaginary; on the one hand, ecoprimitivists' technophobic longing for a

return to an imagined natural state; and on the other, the futurists' instrumentalist dreams of utopia

through techno-acceleration. Beyond the conventional dualism of these visions (art/science,

nature/civilization, inanimate/animate, material/immaterial, body/mind) and the confines of

instrumentalism, these projects draw on the attributes of syncretism and hybridizationthe breaking of

boundaries and the privileging of differences as a model of social cohesionto suggest that the

'evolution' of digital and bio technologies, social creativity, and biological environments are inherently

connected processes. They do so by mobilizing diverse strands of thought and practice, which ranging

from indigenous visions of ecology to artistic and activist reconfigurations of digital media and

38
Ibid.
scientific concepts, coincide in their shared emphasis on the role of co-operative and collaborative

relationships, including humans as active participants in the ecosystem as a whole.

Fig. 1. Nanodrizas at the Xochimilco canals.
Fig. 2. Plantas Nomadas, Santiago river at El Salto and Juanacatlan, state of Jalisco.
Fig. 3. Gilberto Esparza, Mosca.
Fig. 4. Gilberto Exparza, Autotrofos Inorganicos.
Fig. 5. Gilberto Esparza, dblt in Lima, Peru.