Diego brought us back to essential questions:
What is art? Who owns it? Who owns Biomodd?
He touches on digital media and knowledge...when we create what knowledge is lost?

In the process of representing, whose story are we telling?

He drives us to think more. He jumps a bit to ask about immigration. Then leads us back again with these pressing questions:
Why preserve? Why mainstream? What's our stake at biomodd? How can we own it?
Towards the end of our session, my brain lits up with some kind of AHA moment: Art becomes ours when we come together to imagine it together, some kind of convergence of
all our imaginations and all the meanings we put into it--that will define us and what is ours.



On the way home, HQ to QC, my mind could not rest at all. A teacher just successfully pressed on the right buttons and tinkered with the hooks in my brain...



What is art to me? Why does it even matter? What's with biomodd? Should it even matter to me?


As I have shared to the group, art is a representation, it has symbols which convey meaning. For one, it is a product of one's imagination--like an artist visualizes a product,
imagines ways and means to be able to express it in a certain form (process)--to some extent it conveys the artist's meaning which she attaches to her work . That is her
ownership and her claim. However, there are viewers of art who in turn make meaning out of it and again these meanings are the viewers act of engagement with the artist,
making the work her own as well if she chooses to. Art is like meaning-making and a way to define and express our identities.


Art and Identity and my being Filipino matters to me....growing roots and taking root is what kept me bound to the Philippines...bound to my identity. How about the rest of the
Filipino people--living in different communities, growing and taking root, representing their identities through symbols and stories in their art. How different we all are but could
there be symbols and stories which bind us together? Or is it our common roots which bind us all?



Angelo's art is into perpetuating life (said Diego).... but what sustains the perpetuation of life...on to biomodd as I try to imagine (this is me brainstorming by myself):



Why leaves....and why not the roots?


What's with roots which help the leaves grow? Is it even possible to grow roots from the leaves? Are leaves totally dependent on roots to sustain it...and if so, what sustains the
roots? is there another way to sustain the roots?


Why not do it upside down...so I am imagining this art work: lots of leaves down below where children can linger and brush their faces with, then layers of soil suspended mid air
with roots coming out? roots coming out leading to where and why? How to fit in Paete and the computers?


Let's go back to how normal plants look like: growing and crawling leaves, up there...thick layers of soil mid air...roots connected to some kind of computer parts down below to
sustain the whole system up there...computer parts sustained by something else, possibly from another life form. Can this be even case modded at all?



But I'd like to see more roots? Can we carve on roots? Do Paete folks make use of roots even?



Gosh this does not even have a scientific basis!
Can leaves grow roots? Can leaves grow the other way around? What's with the soil to sustain it all? Can technology activate/facilitate this? Can technology even intervene with
the usual process? If so, why and what for?

To help us see the roots which we hardly see and sometimes forget....

roots sustaining the perpetuation of life....

our identities perpetuating our lives,
preserved and sustained through art