Angelo Vermeulen


Angelo Vermeulen is a Belgian space systems researcher, biologist and artist. In 2009 he co-founded SEAD, an international transdisciplinary collective of artists, scientists, engineers, and activists Its goal is to reshape the future through critical inquiry and hands-on experimentation. Biomodd is one of their most well-known art projects and consists of a worldwide series of co-created interactive art installations in which computers coexist with internal living ecosystems. For the last ten years, he has been collaborating with the European Space Agency’s MELiSSA program on biological life support for space and in 2013 he was a crew a commander for the NASA-funded HI-SEAS Mars mission simulation in Hawai'i. Currently, he works at Delft University of Technology on advanced concepts for interstellar exploration. His work proposes a bio-inspired design approach to deal with the unpredictability inherent to interstellar travel. He is a Senior TED Fellow and was selected in 2017 as one of the Top 5 Tech Pioneers from Belgium by the newspaper De Tijd .

Academic career

In 1998 Vermeulen completed his PhD on mouthpart deformities in non-biting midge larvae at the biology department of the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium . He also graduated from the Municipal Academy of Fine Arts in Leuven, where he studied photography. Vermeulen left Belgium to work in London as a photographer together with Nick Waplington. After his return to Belgium in 2001, he attended a two-year post-academic course at the Higher Institute for Fine Arts in Belgium . This became the starting point of an exploration to try and find out how biology and ecological processes can interact in art and how to materialize them as art installations. From 2011 to 2012 he was a member of the European Space Agency Topical Team Arts & Science
In 2012 he was a Michael Kalil Endowment for Smart Design Fellow at Parsons in New York. He also held positions at LUCA School of Visual Arts in Ghent and Die Angewandte in Vienna and has been faculty at universities across Europe, the US, and Southeast Asia.
2011-present: PhD in Systems Engineering and Simulation, Delft University of Technology
2009-2011: Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Information and Communication Studies, University of the Philippines, Open University, Los Banos, Philippines
2005-2007: Film and Video Art studies at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts DKO, Antwerp, Belgium
2004-2011: Lecturer, Sint-Lucas Visual Arts, Ghent, Belgium
2001-2003: Postgraduate studies at the Higher Institute for Fine Arts, Leuven, Belgium
1994-1998: Photography studies at the Municipal Academy of Fine Arts, Leuven, Belgium
1993-1998: PhD in Biology, Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium.

Selected Art Projects

Seeker (2012 - Ongoing)

Seeker is a DIY spaceship model which experiments with the integration of the technological, ecological and social systems that enable long-term survival in a spaceship. Vermeulen started the first edition of Seeker in response to the Art+Technology award he won in 2012. The designing and making of Seeker was a collaboration between Witteveen+Bos engineers, local artists, independent volunteers and the artist as inspirer/connector. The spaceship was exhibited in autumn 2012 in the Bergkerk church in Deventer, the Netherlands.
By the end of the exhibition, Seeker became partly demolished and re-used for a second edition during the Space Odyssey 2.0-exhibition in Z33 in Hasselt. Several months before the opening of the exhibition, Vermeulen launched an open call for ideas and participation on Seeker. The outward construction was unaltered, but the interior changed depending on the needs and priorities of the new crew. Although Vermeulen and Matilda Krzykowski share their leadership over the crew, there is no hierarchy in the process of realizing the work.
Seeker is primarily a community project in which a tiny, isolating room is created to provide the best possible conditions for a particular group of inhabitants. Seeker developed itself as a traveling project with always new groups of participants.

Biomodd (2007-Ongoing)

Started in Athens Ohio during a four-month residency at the ‘Aesthetic Technologies Lab’ in 2007.
Biomodd is a socially engaged art installation that finds meaningful relationships between biology, computers and people. On its most basic level, Biomodd creates symbiotic relationships between plants and computers, and ignites conversations among the community around it. For example, algae are used to cool computer processors so they can run faster, while the heat that is generated by the computer electronics is used to create ideal growing conditions for a plant-based ecosystem. This dynamic is the catalyst for a collaboration between the team members - which include artists, biologists, computer scientists, game designers, gardeners, community organizers - and members of the local community in which the project takes place.
This open source project was conceived by Belgian biologist turned artist Angelo Vermeulen. Fellow collaborators and himself have brought Biomodd to different countries throughout the world. The first version started in Athens in 2007 and has since traveled to the Philippines, Slovenia, New Zealand, Belgium, New York, Chile, the Netherlands and London. Biomodds all over the world are still ongoing and every single project has new groups of participants. This leading to very different results for every culture.
Biomodd became a self-generating eco-system that gets stimulated by playing a computer game. By playing the computer game, the computer's components heat up and nurse the plants that surround them. Microscopic algae are used to simultaneously cool some of the hot components. Filmmaker Morgan Riles directed a documentary on the Biomodd which has been screened at the 27th International Festival of Films on Art, and the Houston Cinema Arts Festival in 2009.
Biomodd was conceived in Los Baños in the Philippines. The installation contained local recycled materials, however, certain parts of previous versions were integrated into the new structure as well. Vermeulen and Diego Maranan co-lead a team of 22 members with different backgrounds. The travelling, social and evolving nature of the project is essential to it even though all versions are conceptually and physically connected.
Biomodd : In October 2011 Vermeulen was invited by Professor Frances Brazier of the Systems Engineering section at TU Delft for the Biomodd project at the university.
Biomodd was developed as part of the art exhibition “ReGeneration” at the New York Hall of Science in New York. ReGeneration included seventeen artists. In collaboration with the Immigrant Movement International, the Biomodd was part of Springmavera. In April 2012 Katherine Moriwaki and Vermeulen worked with the students of Parsons The New School for Design on the building of your own Bioreactor.

Works: an overview

Vermeulen's artistic engagement consists of actively bringing art's radical freedom and focus on sensory, aesthetic and emotional directness to other domains, such as science, cultural communities, game culture and science fiction.

TED Fellowship

Angelo Vermeulen became a TED Fellow in 2010 for on Biomodd in Long Beach. In 2013, Vermeulen became a TED Senior Fellow.

HI-SEAS

HI-SEAS is an analog habitat for human spaceflight to Mars. HI-SEAS is located in an isolated position on the slopes of the Mauna Loavolcano on the island of Hawaii. The area has Mars-like features and an elevation of approximately 8,200 feet above sea level. HI-SEAS is funded by the NASA Human Research Program for four research missions. The missions are of extended duration from four months to a year.
The purpose of the detailed research studies is to determine what is required to keep a space flight crew happy and healthy during an extended mission to Mars and while living on Mars.Research into food, crew dynamics, behaviors, roles and performance, and other aspects of space flight and a mission on Mars itself is the primary focus. The HI-SEAS researchers also carry out studies on a variety of other topics as part of their daily activities.
Vermeulen was crew commander of a four-month Mars simulation mission. HI-SEAS takes place on the flanks of the Mauna Loa Volcano which is the closest approximation of the actual surface of Mars. The mission intends to study improving the taste and nutritional quality of the meals consumed during a spaceflight. Previous spaceflight simulations such as MARS-500 proved the importance of the quality of the food during long periods of isolation of this nature. During the mission, Vermeulen is in charge of a six-man crew consisting of researchers from different backgrounds. Among the other researchers OlegAbramov, Simon Engler, Kate Greene, Sian Proctor, and Yajaira Sierra Sastre, Vermeulen is the only European member of the crew. Due to his experience in community building in complex conditions, such as Biomodd and other projects, he is commissioned as the leader of the crew. Aside from the food study, Vermeulen investigates the possibilities of remote-operated robotic agriculture in order to create semi-autonomous farms for Mars settlement. The mission is initiated by NASA in collaboration with Cornell University of New York and the University of Manoa in Hawaii.
In September - October 2015, Vermeulen exhibited a selection of art photos he made when he was commander on a HI-SEAS mission at the Dome of Visions in Stockholm.

MELiSSA

The Micro-Ecological Life Support System Alternative is a European Space Agency initiative with the aim to develop the technology for a future regenerative life support system for long term human space missions. Initiated in 1989, the design is inspired by a terrestrial ecosystem. Today MELiSSA is a consortium made up of 30 organisations across Europe.

SEAD

Vermeulen founded Space Ecologies Art and Design, an artistic research platform on the architectures and biopolitics of space colonization in 2009. Two years after the platform was launched, Vermeulen started a doctoral research in Space habitat design and participatory systems engineering at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. Vermeulen is a member of the Arts & Science Topical Team of the European Space Agency.

Awards and process