Anna Dumitriu’s work blurs the boundaries between art and science with a strong interest in the ethical issues raised by emerging technologies. Her installations, interventions and performances use a range of digital, biological and traditional media including live bacteria, robotics, interactive media, and textiles. Her work has a strong international exhibition profile and is held in several major public collections, including the Science Museum in London. Dumitriu is known for her work as founder and director of “The Institute of Unnecessary Research”, a group of artists and scientists whose work crosses disciplinary boundaries and critiques contemporary research practice. She is currently working on a Wellcome Trust commission entitled “The Hypersymbiont Salon”, collaborating as a Visiting Research Fellow: Artist in Residence with the Adaptive Systems Research Group at The University of Hertfordshire (focussing on social robotics) and ( Leverhulme Trust 2011) Artist in Residence on the UK Clinical Research Consortium Project “Modernising Medical Microbiology”. Her major international project “Trust me I’m an artist, towards an ethics of art/science collaboration” (in collaboration with the Waag Society in Amsterdam and The University of Leiden) investigates the novel ethical problems that arise when artists create artwork in laboratory settings. She is also a contributing editor to Leonardo Electronic Almanac.
The Communicating Bacteria Dress is a textile-based artwork that takes the form of a Regency style dress stained with bacterial pigments and patterned by antibiotics. It was created by Anna Dumitriu in collaboration with Dr Simon Park and Alex May, involves medical microbiology techniques applied to textiles. Anna also leads Infective textiles Workshops open for public.