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.

Pre(N)atura | Fonocene

CNDSD & Iván Abreu

FILE SÃO PAULO 2025: SYNTHETIKA – Art and Technology – Shorts Films AI
Electronic Language International Festival

Pre(N)atura | Fonocene – Mexico

Speculative audiovisual project inspired by postnatural studies, designed to explore the era of the Fonocene—a period where both human and non-human sounds define sensory experiences and interspecies interactions. In this narrative, Chthulucene beings, hybrid creatures, emerge to challenge traditional forms of communication, using listening as a tool to activate our awareness of interdependence. 

BIO

Iván Abreu is a Mexican-Cuban interdisciplinary artist who uses science, design and technology to create works that question human interaction and social systems. Malitzin Cortés, (CNDSD), is a Mexican artist who explores the intersection of sound, technology and speculative architecture. Her work combines live coding, audiovisuals and critical narratives. 

Machine Hallucinations — Sphere

The artwork presents a series of AI Data Sculptures that incorporates vivid pigments, shapes, and patterns, aiming to create a collective, meditative, and multisensory experience. This immersive experience simulates the rhythms of various environments and invites the visitors to imagine alternative realities constructed by invisible data movements around them.
Machine Hallucination: The Sphere features dynamic visualizations of data that are based on vast archives containing visual imageries of space and nature while celebrating the unique architecture of The Sphere. For this project, Anadol and his team used these themed datasets as the building blocks for the three distinct chapters of the artwork and trained a unique AI model with subsets of the collected image archives. After the training, when idle and unsupervised, the “machine mind” generates new aesthetic visuals and color combinations through unique lines drawn by algorithmic connections.

micro | macro
micro | macro transforms Hall E in the MuseumsQuartier into an oversized world of moving images and sounds. In his immersive installation, multimedia artist Ryoji Ikeda creates a field of imagination between quantum physics, empirical experimentation and human perception. In collaboration with nuclear scientists at CERN, Ikeda has translated complex physical theories into a sensory experience. The Planck scale is used by scientists to denote extremely small lengths or time intervals. Concepts like space and time lose their meaning beyond this scale, and contemporary physics has to rely on speculative theories. And on art. Visitors to micro | macro enter a world of data, particles, light and sound that makes the extremes of the universe perceptible to the eye and ear. In the micro world we penetrate the smallest dimensions of the unrepresentable, while in the macro world we take off into cosmic expanses that allow us to experience the infinite space beyond the observable universe. In this maelstrom of data, an acoustic and visual firework bridges the gap between theoretical understanding and sensual perception.

Through the Membrane
We define the space around us by observing and perceiving light and shadow. That is to say, our perception shapes our basic understanding of this sensory world, and hence the “reality” we believe in. If our experiential knowledge and awareness of space are challenged, would our definition of a “real phenomenon” also be changed? Through the Membrane utilizes optical polarizers to change how light passes through space. The installation does not rely on any electromechanical devices. Simply with creative use of material and structure, it presents a super-sensory experience in space where reality and illusion are inextricably juxtaposed.

Spektrum
SPEKTRUM is an interplay of light, music and the performers. The use of projections in a theatrical context was a very pleasant experience for us, for when projections are used indoors, they can be controlled so precisely that amazing changes of perspective are possible. Once the stage is perceived as a platform, once as a white cube, once the spatial perception itself is completely challenged. As the three different elements of the performance merge into one unified language, SPEKTRUM is able to be many things at once: playful and yet fierce, touching and yet disturbing. Less a narrative than an emotional and sensory experience SPEKTRUM challenges the mind of the spectator in a quite a poetic way.

Spectra-3
The piece is the latest instalment of their ongoing Spectra series, a merging of physical and virtual sculptures that take inspiration from space, technology, and our relationships to them, to provide elegant and sensory experiences using sound, light, and reflection. Spectra-3’s design and movement is inspired by the radio telescopes of the Very Large Array (VLA) located on the Plains of San Agustin in New Mexico. The piece combines computer-aided design with real-time input from the public’s movements, to inform its physical actions as it rotates on motors, augmenting the space with the enchanting hues and patterns of reflected light and spatialized sound.

The Hive  Kew Gardens

“The proposal involves the idea of ​​’temporary’ in an interesting way. It uses the temporary aspect of the installation to carefully engage with the purpose and short and long-term needs of the land,” said the judges. Originally designed for the Expo 2015 from Milan, The Hive was transferred to Kew Gardens, in central London, for two years, where it was part of an event space. Designed to give visitors a glimpse into the life of working bees, the pavilion was built with 169,300 individual aluminum components equipped with hundreds of LED lights. As the meadow surrounding the structure grows, several species of plants begin to flourish, bringing with them the sounds of real bees that enhance the multi-sensory experience of the pavilion.The aesthetic and symbolic installation represents its namesake, with the aim of showing visitors the importance of protecting the honeybee.

MSHR is a collaborative project by New York-based artists Birch Cooper and Brenna Murphy. The duo produces sculptural synthesizers, ritualistic installations and performances that use light and audio feedback to generate sensory experiences. MSHR emerged in 2011 from the five-person art collective Oregon Painting Society.

Nature Abstraction

Nature Abstraction is an immersive sensory experience that explores the arcane forms of fractals, mathematical visual representation of natural and biological forms.
The project gives an insight of their aspects through virtual reality, where they appear as three planets: Birth, Communion and Aether; Each accompained with scores designed to facilitate meditative state and relaxation;The audience is guided to explore these planets and dive into their vast complexities as well as observing the contrast between the entirely digital created world inside the VR against the fully analogue created film projected onto the faces of the cube which have been filmed in real life, recreating using analogue visual effects and various chemical elements.

文森特·勒罗伊
北极光环
Pebble
The ‘pebble’, conceived by vincent leroy, occupies a space with an incredible aesthetic experience. This gigantic elliptical mirror floats with utmost grace, softness and voluptuousness, like this example inside the ‘grand palais’ in paris. The installation forms a sensory experience rather than a visual one. With the mirrored effect, the ground and horizon move slowly until they disappear, making you lose your mark. French artist vincent leroy slows down time and displays his magical mechanism, using the same technology as his boreal halo: inflatable with steel cables in slow rotation.

Dissonant Equilibrium
Isabelle Andriessen is a visual artist born in the Netherlands (1986). She studied at the School of the Arts Institute of Chicago and the Gerrit Rietveld Academie (NL), where she received her BFA in 2013. Currently she is an MFA candidate at Malmö Art Academy (SE). She lives and works in Amsterdam and Malmö. She is a recipient of the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds Fellowship. Her work consists sculpture, installation and performance and has been presented in places like Optical Pavilion, Moscow, Unfair, Amsterdam and Mediamatic Amsterdam. Her work has been presented in online art magazines like Metropolis M and Mister Motley. In July 2014 her work has been mentioned in VOGUE Russia. Recently she has been collaborating with the Dutch National Ballet. Her recent work concern the sensory experience examined through light installations and performances.

kaleidoscopic crystal floor
dutch artist suzan drummen’s large-scale floor installations are mesmerizing and complex circular patterns made out of mirrors and brightly colored glass. the fractal-like arrangements feature ornate and elaborate circles growing exponentially out of each other and vibrant rings of spiraling colors winding into the surface of the floor. they are composed of crystals, chromed metal, precious stones, mirrors and optical glass. a sensory experience, and visually stimulating, the glittering installations play with the architecture of the space — climbing up walls and sweeping across the surfaces — examining the idea of illusion and optical effects.

FILE 2026

Registration is now open for participation in  FILE – Electronic Language International Festival 2026 , one of the most important events dedicated to art and technology. FILE invites Brazilian and international artists , as well as researchers, educators, and creators , to submit original artistic works and educational proposals — lectures, workshops, and training activities — focused on contemporary technological poetics.

Applications are open until February 19, 2026 .

With 26 years of experience , FILE is a non-profit cultural organization dedicated to promoting creation, research, and experimentation in Art and Technology , bringing together artists, scientists, programmers, and thinkers around exhibitions, events, and publications. The selected projects will be part of the FILE 2026 program, scheduled to take place at the FIESP Cultural Center in São Paulo, between August 18 and October 11, 2026,  with the possibility of parallel activities in other Brazilian states.

The call welcomes proposals in a wide variety of languages ​​and formats, intended for indoor or outdoor environments , in which the aesthetic experience emerges from the encounter between interfaces, data, space, and body . FILE 2026 seeks projects that propose new forms of perception, interaction, and critical and poetic reflection , expanding the debate on the aesthetic, cultural, social, and sensory impacts of contemporary technologies.

Access the registration form.

FILE 2026

Electronic Music and AI Festival: brings together interconnected fields of contemporary sound art, in which sound and technology operate as structuring elements of the aesthetic experience.  These approaches explore sound as spatial, sensory, and conceptual matter, articulating active listening, bodily presence, and synesthetic relationships between audio and video, through digital systems, generative intelligence processes, algorithms, field recordings, and audiovisual performances.

Applications are open until February 19, 2026. Access  the application form.

FILE 2026 | GENERAL REGULATIONS

FILE 2026

LED SHOW Festival: a program dedicated to exhibiting digital works specifically designed for the Digital Art Gallery, an LED panel located on the facade of the FIESP building, Avenida Paulista, 1313.  The festival investigates the relationship between moving image, light, architecture, and the city, exploring the expressive potential of luminous devices as an artistic medium. The works dialogue with the three-dimensionality of the facades, the urban scale, and the flows of public space, transforming the building into a narrative and sensory support. By integrating technology, art, and urban context, the LED SHOW proposes immersive visual experiences that reconfigure the perception of collective space and expand the field of contemporary audiovisual art. Download the technical specifications of the LED Show file.

Applications are open until February 19, 2026. Access  the application form.

FILE 2026 | GENERAL REGULATIONS

Technosoma — Sensitive Circuits in the Flesh of the Machine

David Da Paz

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

Tecnosoma — Sensitive Circuits in the Flesh of the Machine – Brazil

In this workshop, participants will explore the fusion of body, technology, and artificial intelligence, creating interactive experiences with capacitive sensors and real-time generative models. Inspired by the concept of the Technosome—the machine as a sensitive, pulsating organism—the workshop explores how human touch can generate electrical signals that trigger audiovisual, auditory, and light responses. Microcontrollers (Arduino and ESP32), generative AI, and sensory interactivity will be covered.

BIO

Artist, researcher, and developer specializing in AI, machine learning, and IoT, he has worked for over 10 years with interactive art, generative systems, and sensory installations. He participated in the Artropocode residency (Spain) and the Spontaneous Combustion Residency (London), exploring cyberurban performances and locative media.

Deep Field

Tin&Ed

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

Deep Field – United States

An augmented reality experience where visitors draw fantastical plants that instantly bloom into immersive 3D structures within the space. As people contribute their creations, a collective digital landscape begins to take shape. Layers of recordings of endangered, extinct, and elusive species compose a responsive and evolving soundscape, developed by The Listening Planet.

BIO

Tin & Ed are New York-based artists whose work explores the interconnection of life across biological, geological, and cosmic systems. Through speculative world-building, they reveal connections that transcend human time, spatial boundaries, and sensory thresholds. Their practice spans sculpture, immersive and interactive installations, creating environments that invite audiences to shift perspective and inhabit the world beyond the limits of human perception. Technology is not used as spectacle, but as a perceptual tool that makes the invisible felt and the distant intimately present.

Hot Pink Turquoise
Janssens’ works range wide, but they can all be described as sculptures that use the space as a stage for sensory activity. The simple white architecture of Louisiana’s South Wing becomes a resonating surface for Janssens’ both fragile and dizzying art – fragile because the works and their components are very simple while their effect elevates them above the material. Janssens herself often uses the word ‘fluid’ to describe the effect of her works – even for example when they consist of a 6.5 metre long iron girder polished at the top so the room is reflected and it is hard to fix your gaze on the object. Janssens seeks no control of either works or viewers, for as the Dutch theorist Mieke Bal has said, Janssens’ artworks are at one and the same time object and event. Many of the works in the exhibition can evoke the sensation of standing at the threshold of something. They stress transitions and transformations between on the one hand a material level – evoked by glass, colour, liquids and not least light – and on the other hand a dynamic experience of time and space.

Kissing Data Symphony
Intimacy Data Symphony is a poetic ritual for intimate experience of Kissing and Caressing each other faces, multi-sensory and socially shared in public space of merging realities. In live experiments with Multi-Brain BCI E.E.G. head-sets, visitors are invited as Kissers (or Caressers) and Spectators. Brain activity of people kissing and caressing is measured and visualized in streaming E.E.G. data, real-time circling around them in a floor projection. Simultaneously, the Spectators brain waves are measured, their neurons mirroring activity of intimate kissing and caressing movements, resonating in their imagination. The Spectators brain activity data are interwoven in the data-visualization. Brain activity of all participants, mirroring each others emotional expressions and movements, in interpersonal and aesthetic ways, co-create an immersive visual, Reflexive Datascape.

Jonattas Poltronieri, Luis Mello, Pedro Venetucci & Rofli Sanches
Phantom Limb

Just like the original box, the installation is a rectangular unit where the user inserts his arm and is urged to move it in different ways. The similarity with the original object disappears as, instead of having a mirror to provide the image that motivates the interaction, there is a screen that mediates the user’s view and the place where his arm actually is. The displayed image of the user’s arm can be reversed, distorted and coloured, among several modifications to simulate in a rich way the strangeness of not having control over a member, and to question whether what is seen is an accurate portrayal of the real body. Although deep and subjective, the topic addressed in this experience is easy and accessible in its interaction, offering various sensory feedbacks to the user. Through it, it is proposed that we experience and reflect upon the disconnection between thought and body, intention and action, sensation and reality.

FILE SAO PAULO 2015

chromo sapiens
Icelandic artist Hrafnhildur Arnardóttir / Shoplifter has transformed a warehouse in Giudecca into a multi-sensory, cavernous environment with a cacophonous amount of her signature material, synthetic hair. Color, sound and irresistible textures guide visitors through three distinct chambers provoking an immersive experience of visual and auditory stimuli.

ユナイテッド·ビジュアルアーティスト
美国视觉艺术家
our time

Our Time (2016) is the latest large-scale installation by United Visual Artists investigating our subjective experience of the passing of time. How long is a moment? At what rate does time actually pass? The work joins a series of kinetic sculptures that began with Momentum (2013); an installation designed as a ‘spatial instrument’ that was to reveal the relationship between expectation and perception when intersected with a physical space.
Our Time defines a physical environment where pendulums swing at a pace apparently unhindered by the laws of nature and where no single time measurement applies. The installation combines movement, light and sound as a multi-sensory, multi-dimensional canvas the visitor can enter. Pendulums swing, each to their own rhythm, as time flows through the grid. With light tracing the path and sound its echo, the passing of time becomes almost palpable.

アン·ハミルトン
앤 해밀턴
the event of a thread
Ann Hamilton is a visual artist internationally recognized for the sensory surrounds of her large-scale multi-media installations. Using time as process and material, her methods of making serve as an invocation of place, of collective voice, of communities past and of labor present. Noted for a dense accumulation of materials, her ephemeral environments create immersive experiences that poetically respond to the architectural presence and social history of their sites.

The Slow Motion Band
Villanueva began his training and initiation in1984 from 1986-1995 he worked as an artist and teacher with Abraham Dubckovsky the Argentine sculptor and architect planner. His work: causes, produces and creates visual and physical impressions and sensory pleasures, space and forms that are capable of enclosing and hiding something and demarcating soluble volumes. The pieces are of respectful sizes, clean lines and defined but at the same time fragile, silky smooth but yet again clear due to the materials used. As he describes it, art linked to the intimate experiences of the body and time, in search of an interior portrait joined with beauty resulting in essential interlocutor.