Biography : Vanessa Lorenzo is a researcher and designer working at the crossroads of Media, Art and Biology @Hybridoa. Trained as product design engineer and media designer, she creates fictional scenarios embedding people, living organisms and matter into devices forming new media ecologies. Also, she nourishes (from) and believes (in) communities of hackers / artists / citizens working in alternative spaces to have the power to subvert the dominating role of traditional science and technospheres and therefore, guide us towards a more inclusive knowledge-production. I research about the role of design to influence social imaginaries through workshops and interfaces that focus on the radical poetry of the more-than-human. Always Calling Home Abstract : The project started as part of a South African-Swiss exchange and Artists-in-labs program at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK), supported by Pro-Helvetia. Vanessa’s research focuses on the potentials of scientific instruments to unveil the invisible traces of rocks wandering over the Earth. Asteroids, meteorites and comets are eternal matter scattered around us. Rare minerals, gas, and alien bodies that existed within and outside the original body, from which they got expelled, then coagulated together, to be extracted or expelled again. Roaming the void they are seeking home, reflecting beams of light and fluctuating within a range of frequencies in and out of the visible spectrum. Sentinels secure their positions to capture patterns, make meaning out of waffled memories and ultimately enabling droning dialogues of the yet-to-come. What kind of memories of the past-futures would they bring? The artist looks into different meaning-making processes in apparently opposite cultures. The rocks are the medium for future-(story)telling with the potential to trigger collective hysteria, neo-shamanist rituals, and post-anthropocentric social dreaming. References Always Calling Home https://vlorenzolana.myportfolio.com/always-calling-home South African Astronomical Observatory https://www.saao.ac.za/event/always-calling-home/ Transitional Thinking https://vlorenzolana.myportfolio.com/transitional-thinking