Globe of Science and Innovation
History of the universe
Did you know that the matter in your body is billions of years old?

According to most astrophysicists, all the matter found in the universe today — including the matter in people, plants, animals, the earth, stars, and galaxies — was created at the very first moment of time, thought to be about 13 billion years ago.
The universe began, scientists believe, with every speck of its energy jammed into a very tiny point. This extremely dense point exploded with unimaginable force, creating matter and propelling it outward to make the billions of galaxies of our vast universe. Astrophysicists dubbed this titanic explosion the Big Bang.
The Big Bang was like no explosion you might witness on earth today. For instance, a hydrogen bomb explosion, whose center registers approximately 100 million degrees Celsius, moves through the air at about 300 meters per second. In contrast, cosmologists believe the Big Bang flung energy in all directions at the speed of light (300,000,000 meters per second, a million times faster than the H-bomb) and estimate that the temperature of the entire universe was 1000 trillion degrees Celsius at just a tiny fraction of a second after the explosion. Even the cores of the hottest stars in today’s universe are much cooler than that.
There’s another important quality of the Big Bang that makes it unique. While an explosion of a man-made bomb expands through air, the Big Bang did not expand through anything. That’s because there was no space to expand through at the beginning of time. Rather, physicists believe the Big Bang created and stretched space itself, expanding the universe.

Hunter and Dog

Frederik De Wilde

FILE SÃO PAULO 2025: SYNTHETIKA – Art and Technology – Installations
Electronic Language International Festival

Hunter and Dog – Belgium

Genetic and evolutionary algorithms reinterpret an existing artwork. De Wilde uses digital scans and custom genetic and evolutionary algorithms as a deconstruction technique to reinterpret and update the nineteenth-century work Hunter and Dog from sculptor John Gibson R. A. (1790–1866).

Frederik De Wilde’s Hunter and Dog interrogates the intersections of human evolution, genetic engineering, and the hybridization of technology and biology. De Wilde reinterprets the historical sculpture through the lens of post-evolutionary theory, engaging with contemporary debates on CRISPR, synthetic biology, and the implications of human-directed genetic modification. CRISPR, the revolutionary gene-editing technology, has introduced an unprecedented rupture in the trajectory of evolution. No longer constrained by the slow mechanisms of natural selection, humans now possess the ability to intervene directly in their own genetic blueprint, marking a shift toward a post-Darwinian paradigm. This technological power, however, is not neutral; it emerges from a historical lineage of scientific inquiry deeply entangled with colonialism. The history of genetic manipulation is inseparable from colonial bioprospecting, eugenics, and exploitative medical experimentation on marginalized populations. Colonial regimes treated bodies—both human and non-human—as sites of intervention, control, and optimization, a logic that persists in contemporary biotechnological frameworks. Post-colonial discourse reveals how genetic engineering risks perpetuating these legacies, reinforcing power asymmetries between those who wield biotechnological control and those subjected to its consequences. CRISPR, while offering the promise of eradicating disease and expanding human potential, also raises ethical concerns about genetic stratification, bio-capitalism, and the commodification of life itself. De Wilde’s work visualizes these tensions, making visible the processes of cell division and morphogenesis—the very biological mechanisms now subject to human intervention. Hunter and Dog does not merely depict the transformation of a neoclassical form but speculates on the future of the human body as a site of engineered evolution. From a decolonial perspective, the artwork questions who has the authority to edit life and to what ends. It challenges the techno-utopian narratives that frame genetic modification as an inevitable progress while obscuring its social, ethical, and ecological implications. By hybridizing art, science, and technology, Hunter and Dog compels us to confront the uncertainties of a CRISPR-driven future: Will genetic editing reinforce existing inequalities, or can it be decolonized and democratized? How do we navigate this post-natural frontier without losing the human—and more-than-human—dimensions of our existence? De Wilde’s work invites us into this speculative space, where the hunter, the dog, and the algorithm coalesce into a vision of a world where biology is no longer destiny, but a site of contested agency.

Where are we going from here? 

BIO

Frederik De Wilde fuses art, science, and tech. Known for his Blackest-Black works that inspired Kapoor’s Vantablack, he has shown at Venice Biennale, BOZAR, MAAT, Pompidou, and ZKM, winning awards like Ars Electronica.

Micro Macro
micro | macro trasforma il padiglione E del MuseumsQuartier in un enorme mondo di immagini e suoni in movimento. Nella sua installazione immersiva, l’artista multimediale Ryoji Ikeda crea un campo di immaginazione tra fisica quantistica, sperimentazione empirica e percezione umana. In collaborazione con scienziati nucleari del CERN, Ikeda ha tradotto complesse teorie fisiche in un’esperienza sensoriale. La scala di Planck viene utilizzata dagli scienziati per indicare lunghezze o intervalli di tempo estremamente ridotti. Concetti come spazio e tempo perdono il loro significato oltre questa scala e la fisica contemporanea deve fare affidamento su teorie speculative. E sull’arte. Visitatori di micro | macro entra in un mondo di dati, particelle, luce e suono che rende gli estremi dell’universo percettibili all’occhio e all’orecchio. Nel micro mondo penetriamo nelle più piccole dimensioni dell’irrappresentabile, mentre nel macro mondo decolliamo in distese cosmiche che ci permettono di sperimentare lo spazio infinito oltre l’universo osservabile. In questo vortice di dati, un fuoco d’artificio acustico e visivo colma il divario tra la comprensione teorica e la percezione sensuale.

The Story of the Earth

The Story of the Earth concerns the development of planet Earth from its formation to the present day. Nearly all branches of natural science have contributed to understanding of the main events of Earth’s past, characterized by constant geological change and biological evolution.

Electric Chair

The distinctive work of Sam Buxton is dominated by his innovative use of advanced materials and technologies. From his immensely popular MIKRO series (miniature fold-up sculptures, laser cut into thin strips of stainless steel through an acid etching process) to his explorations concerning interactive intelligent surfaces on the familiar objects around us, his work has continually managed to blur the lines between art, science and design.Through his work, which has regularly involved relatively common objects ranging from business cards to a dining table, Buxton has demonstrated an ability to see potential in what others take for granted. His on-going efforts in developing objects that can communicate, display information and react to the actions of the user, demonstrate his commitment to investigating the delicate relationship between the human body and its environment. Buxton’s fusion of art and science has resulted in a highly innovative and unique range of personal designs, many of which, have utilized the latest, most advanced materials and technologies available.

SEMICONDUCTOR
HALO is a large scale immersive artwork which embodies Semiconductor’s ongoing fascination with how we experience the materiality of nature through the lens of science and technology. Taking the form of a large cylinder, the structure houses a 360-degree projection of scientific data while an array of 384 vertical wires are played by the same data, to produce the sound. The work draws the viewer into its centre in order to inhabit the results of particle-collisions, produced by experiments taking place at CERN, in Geneva, Switzerland.

Peter Jellitsch (born 1982) operates at the intersection of science and art. His research-based practice develops in a complex process, in virtual and analogue worlds. His main concern is the visualisation of what is in fact invisible, of virtual phenomena and structures existing in everyday life yet imperceptible to the human eye. Peter Jellitsch is an exponent of a young generation whose perception of reality has undergone a radical change, due to new technology, and who quite naturally spread out their fields of work and ideas in new dimensions.

the liquid room

Elizabeth Ogilvie is a Scottish artist who uses water as a medium and as a research focus. Water is the obsession which returns in most of her works and it becomes experience through the use of installations and videos. Her work embraces universal and timeless concerns, offering her public an innocent pleasure and at the same time underlining philosophical and ecological issues.
Through her installations, the artist isolates water inside an artificial state, creating a process which highlights its fundamental qualities in order to return to its place of origin which is the natural habitat. Among her most important works there is Liquid Room realized in 2002. Inside a derelict warehouse the artist created basins with water which were crossed by a footbridge. By linking art, architecture and science, she realized an interactive installation where the visitor, walking on the footbridge, can touch the water, whose movement is reflected on the walls of the installation. In 2006 she created Bodies of Water, whose operation took over from her previous work.
Once again, through a series of installations, the public was able to share the experience of sensorial involvement within an environment dominated by water.

Vincent Lamouroux

Fasciné par la forme des montagnes russes et par le mouvement que cette structure permet d’effectuer, les oeuvres de François Lamouroux combinent architecture et sculpture. L’artiste tente, dans sa démarche, de modifier l’espace tant au niveau visuel qu’au niveau des sensations physiques. Les installations de l’artiste cernent les espaces de divertissement, les formes de la science-fiction et du progrès. Ses oeuvres tentent “de retranscrire formellement l’aspiration au mouvement et à la projection des structures futuristes, tout en soulignant leur prédestination à l’obsolescence”. L’artiste utilise des matériaux low-tech comme du bois, de l’acier ou des néons. Vincent Lamouroux est lauréat du prix Fondation d’entreprise Ricard et expose en 2007 à la galerie Georges-Philippe & Nathalie Vallois à Paris.