Boundaries

Memo Akten & Katie Peyton Hofstadter

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

Boundaries – United States

Boundaries is a monumental work that explores the illusion of separation—between self and other, body and environment, matter and mind—and reflects on the interconnectedness of all things, from microorganisms to atoms forged in extinct stars. Created with custom code, AI, computer vision, digital painting, and dance, the work unites technology and bodily expression in an intimate and contemplative experience.

BIO

Memo Akten, a Turkish artist, musician, and researcher based in Los Angeles, creates speculative simulations about the relationship between humans and machines. With a PhD from Goldsmiths, he is a pioneer in the creative use of neural networks under human control. Katie Peyton Hofstadter is an artist, writer, and curator. Her work investigates the intersections between embodiment, technology, and consciousness, exploring how technologies shape cultural narratives and sensory experience.

Bi0film.net
Independent and distributed communication networks are at the core of self-organized communities. Based on the idea of biological peer-to-peer networks, which explore how microorganisms like bacteria communicate and collectively act, we have built a human biofilm-like connectivity enhancer.20

Fractal Microorganisms

The skeletons also has the feature of fractals, which often being mentioned when discussing the forms of nature. Both of symmetry and fractals can be generated from one simple structure. Therefore, I decided to write a script that let people draw a random structure, and using the structure to generate a symmetry fractal shape. The fractals have their diameter through the time according to a sinusoid, making them almost like breathing.

Марин Савва
مارين سوا

Algaerium
Algaerium is an in-vitro aesthetic photosynthesis system of microalgae for spatial installation of algal biotechnology in the urban environment. As a collective family, each member of Algaerium represents an urban bio-repository, floating biota, in which to preserve the microorganisms for their future biotechnological use such as bio-energy. Through displacement into the urban environment, Algaerium re-contextualises the sterile environment of the algae culture laboratory. I have incorporated and manipulated the endogenous yet ‘re-programmable’ biological processes of photosynthesis and bioluminescence.

Nomadic Plants
Vegetation and microorganisms live in symbiosis inside the body of the Nomadic Plants robot. Whenever its bacteria require nourishment, the self-sufficient robot will move towards a contaminated river and ‘drink’ water from it. Through a process of microbial fuel cell, the elements contained in the water are decomposed and turned into energy that can feed the brain circuits of the robot. The surplus is then used to create life, enabling plants to complete their own life cycle. As Gilberto wrote in our email conversation, “The nomadic plant is a portray of our own species. It also deals with the alienated transformation of this new hybrid species that fights for its survival in a deteriorated environment.”