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.

Yoro Park – Site of Reversible Destiny
“The couple first fully explored Reversible Destiny in what is regarded as their seminal gallery piece, “The Mechanism of Meaning,” an ever-evolving manifesto-cum-artwork begun in 1963, comprising 80 panels that they refined and added to over decades, many of them high-concept diagrams and puzzles with instructions and text (“A Mnemonic Device for Forgetting,” “Think One, Say Two”), made primarily of acrylic and mixed media on canvas. In an accompanying précis to the work, which was exhibited at the Guggenheim in 1997, they prescribed “no more irretrievable disappearances” and declared death “old-fashioned.” Critical opinion differs on how seriously the pair, whose work is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art and Paris’s Centre Pompidou, took the grandiose quest to end death. But if it was intended as metaphor, neither of them ever let on. Indeed, though Arakawa himself died at 73, in 2010, and Gins four years later, at the age of 72, defying death became the defining work of their lives.” Marie Doezema

32 rue vandenbranden
The script of physical actions is inspired by the Japanese film A ballad de Naraiama (1983), by Shohei Imamura, the one with tearing images, like that of the son carrying his mother on his back, embraced by the wind, climbing the mountain to put her on the summit until death, as the local tradition says that every septuagenarian must have an equal destiny. In the same village in the late 19th century, parents used to sell babies to survive. These material and spiritual miseries do not bring literals to the stage. Rather, they are essentials that make the show a fabulous visual poem written in and with the body and the scenic space. The song is also celebrated at the height, with moments such as Stravinski’s The Bird of Fire suite, and the song Fline on you crazy diamond, by the band Pink Floyd.

Mirage Gstaad
«Mirage Gstaad de Doug Aitken utilise la fréquence de la lumière pour refléter le sublime paysage alpin dans le cadre d’une rencontre en constante évolution dans laquelle la terre et le ciel, le sujet et l’objet, l’intérieur et l’extérieur sont en constante évolution. Contrastant avec le chalet environnant, la structure de style ranch suggère une version architecturale moderne de Manifest Destiny, la migration vers l’ouest qui a commencé en Europe et s’est finalement installée en Californie. Avec chaque surface disponible revêtue de miroir, il absorbe et reflète à la fois le paysage environnant de telle manière que l’extérieur disparaîtra apparemment tout comme l’intérieur entraîne le spectateur dans un kaléidoscope sans fin de lumière et de réflexion.

Mirage Gstaad
“Mirage Gstaad by Doug Aitken uses the frequency of light to reflect the sublime Alpine landscape as part of a continually changing encounter in which land and sky, subject and object, inside and outside are in constant flux. Standing in contrast to the surrounding chalet’s the ranch-style structure suggests a latter-day architectural version of Manifest Destiny, the westward migration that began in Europe and finally settled in California. With every available surface clad in mirror it both absorbs and reflects the landscape around in such ways that the exterior will seemingly disappear just as the interior draws the viewer into a never-ending kaleidoscope of light and reflection.

Poetic AI
Ouchhh created an Artificial Intelligence and the t-SNE visualization of the hundreds of books and articles [approx. 20 million lines of text] written by scientists who changed the destiny of the world -and wrote history- were fed to the Recurrent Neural Network during the training. This, later on, was used to generate novel text in the exhibition. 136 projectors shining to be a veritable oneiric experience, the ‘POETIC – AI’ digital installation uses Artificial Intelligence in the visual creation process: the forms, light, and movement are generated by an algorithm that creates a unique and contemplative digital work, an AI dancing in the dark, trying to show us connections we could never see otherwise.

Manifold Destiny

manifest destiny

The Creator

Decades ago, Turing famously asked, ‘Can machines think?’ and ever since, the notion of computers exceeding human intelligence has transfixed researchers and popular culture alike. For their fantastical Turing interpretation, the directors conjoin Lynchian nightmare with the prophetic themes of J.G. Ballard. Audiences will enter the haunting dream world of the legendary scientist, who gave birth to the computer age. Turing’s binary children embark upon a mystical odyssey to explore their creator’s dream diaries in a quest to discover their origins and destiny in the universe.
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