OktoLab – Laboratory of Octopus Aesthetics

OktoLab is a collaborative project dedicated to the animal group of octopuses from an interdisciplinary perspective. It aims to produce new understandings of octopuses and to develop new research methods and mediation approaches that understand animals as independent and reflexively acting creatures and consider them in their interconnectedness with human collectives. On the one hand, the project asks how we can understand an animal that is so alien to us; on the other, it explores the extent to which an encounter with octopuses, especially one that is aesthetically mediated, can challenge new perspectives on the historically practiced social approach to nature. It thus works towards a new culture of how humans can deal with other animals and the non-human environment.

Octopuses were chosen as model organisms because they have a long cultural history as enigmatic organisms and are currently receiving increased attention in both science and popular culture. The focus is on ideas of octopuses as intelligent, curious, inventive creatures with a consciousness and a soul that are difficult or impossible to reconcile with human understandings of these characteristics. At the same time, octopuses are highly aesthetic organisms, both in terms of their own perception and behavior as well as their physiological appearance and form. This applies in particular to their enormous changeability and malleability. Octopuses thus challenge anthropocentric understandings of nature, which makes them particularly interesting for adopting a non-anthropocentric relationship to our environment.

OktoLab was founded in 2016 by André Krebber and Yvette Watt (University of Tasmania, Australia). In 2019/20, two international, interdisciplinary exhibitions in Hobart (Australia) and Cologne (Germany) as well as a virtual international conference were realized in collaboration with a large number of actors. Since then, OktoLab has been working on a new way to make the results of the project permanently available in an online database, which also serves as an exploration space for the production of new knowledge and understandings of octopuses based on the work to date.

Other key members of OktoLab are (or were*) Toby Juliff (University of Tasmania, Australia), Anne Hölck* (Berlin), Maike Riedinger* (University of School of Art and Design, Germany) Ute Hörner and Mathias Antlfinger (Academy of Media Arts Cologne, Germany), Thomas Hawranke (Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle, Germany) and Martin Ullrich (Nuremberg University of Music, Germany).

OktoLab was funded by: DAAD/BMBF; Universities Australia; Universtität Kassel; University of Tasmania; Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln; Arts and Humanities Research Council; Kunststiftung NRW; Ministerium für Kultur und Wissenschaft des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen.