Where is my soul? In exploring answers to this question, Wacom and Ars Electronica are now entering the second year of collaboration.

The theme in 2021 is Bio Ink. Using this technology of making traces visible by “living” ink, their quest for the soul is going to be stepped up to the next level.

The collaboration team focuses on “noises” in their efforts of defining soul (kotodama) from the viewpoint of Bio Ink.

Noises are generally considered to be something “superfluous” that must be cut off when extracting signals. But is it only signals that can convey our soul (kotodama)? Bio Ink works as a mechanism to give shapes to the process of generating noises.  Are the growing traces made visible by Bio Ink noises or signals? Animated discussions have been made between partners in this collaboration.

This session gives an insight into their joint research on Bio Ink and ongoing discussions on the topic.