highlike

Kino

MIT Media Lab, Stanford University
This work explores a dynamic future where the accessories we wear are no longer static, but are instead mobile, living objects on the body. Engineered with the functionality of 18 robotics, this “living” jewelry roams on unmodified clothing, changing location and reconfiguring appearance according to social context and enabling multitude presentations of self. With the addition of sensor devices, they transition into active devices which can react to environmental conditions. They can also be paired with existing mobile devices to become personalized on-body assistants to help complete tasks. Attached to garments, they generate shape-changing clothing and kinetic pattern designs–creating a new, dynamic fashion.
It is our vision that in the future, these robots will be miniaturized to the extent that they can be seamlessly integrated into existing practices of body ornamentation. With the addition of kinetic capabilities, traditionally static jewelry and accessories will start displaying life-like qualities, learning, shifting, and reconfiguring to the needs and preferences of the wearer, also assisting in fluid presentation of self. We envision a new class of future wearables that possess hybrid qualities of the living and the crafted, creating a new on-body ecology for human-wearable symbiosis.

Kuflex Lab

Symbiosis
In the installation area, the human body is augmented with video projected virtual images. Viewer and technology enter a symbiotic relationship and as a result, bring to life wonderful biomorphic creatures. They change constantly – reacting to your every movement and turning into new and unique forms each time. The installation was inspired by the symmetry of living organisms, the structure of exotic insects, and reflections on extraterrestrial life forms.

Dragan Ilic

Re)Evolution

With the machine programed to draw, the robot becomes a medium for interaction and for “symbiosis” with the artist, creating a kind of “hybrid body” of man and machine, whose nervous system and brain waves administer “software commands” to the robot during the drawing performance. A key actor in the exhibition will be the new model of the KUKA KR 210 robot, that has a multi-functioning performative role: from drawing, experimental dance, music – through the production of industrial sound, and a six channel video projection that documents Ilić’s projects.

SAŠA SPAČAL MIRJAN ŠVAGELJ ANIL PODGORNIK

50Myconnect

Myconnect “offers the experience of a symbiosis of connection between humans, nature and technology. The spectator becomes an actor by lying in a capsule, equipped with a helmet and body sensors measuring the variations in his rhythm This data is modulated and transmitted to a closed universe of mycelium culture (white mushroom) to produce alterations using electrical resistance. These variations in turn generate signals, sent back to the person in the form of vibration, sound and light. Each cycle can be different depending on whether the experience is stimulating or calming. This type of perceptual exchange enabled by technology reveals how much the human being is an integral part of the complex network that links him to his environment.

Lukas Truniger, Itamar Bergfreund & Bruce Yoder

Ethereal Fleeting
A series of clouds is generated by a machine-like sculpture. They appear, float over the surrounding environment and then dissolve into thin air again. The delocalization of this instant of natural beauty evokes a surreal experience. The installation forms a juxtaposition of a metallic structure and synthetic imitations of clouds. This supposed contrast between human technology and nature is explored in a space of unseen possibilities for symbiosis.

Ronald van der Meijs

Odoshi Cloud Sequence
A symbiosis between nature and culture is created against the backdrop of the Japanese garden in the pond of the Amstelpark. This artwork explores new possibilities to generate sound and composition that are controlled by slow, unpredictable and unexpected elements of nature which are highly respected in Japanese culture. The diversity of natural sounds gives the work an almost meditative character, while the dependance on natural factors evoke a tension between longing and acceptance. This sound installation engages, as a natural sequencer, in a dialogue with the water, sun wind and clouds. It refers to Japanese garden culture by using the principle of the Japanese bamboo water tumbler.

Iris Van Herpen

Roots of rebirth
During such rarefied times, the designer explores a symbiosis of high technology and the artisanal craftsmanship of couture, through a collection that references the intricacy of fungi and the entanglement of life that breathes beneath our feet. Through ‘Roots of Rebirth’, Van Herpen notions towards the miraculous lacery of interconnectedness from the natural ‘wood wide web,’ weaving a dialogue between the terrestrial and the underworld. ‘Roots of Rebirth’ extends its own branch, an invitation to a sequence of 21 looks inspired by roots and spores. During the show, the models seem to magnetise a living lace of spores with each stride, the entanglement of each garment resembles roots of regeneration.

Ani Liu

Eyeris
Eyeris is a cultural prosthetic that renders the user dependent on human touch for sight. While many of today’s digital devices extend our abilities to connect with each other, disability of our current digital devices can been seen through our loss of tangible human interaction. I made this piece in trying to explore the importance of human interdependency in a society living under the myth of autonomy driven by technological symbiosis between man and computer. Eyeris is a mechanically operated electronic device powered by digital input that is deliberately over-engineered to call attention to the social behavioral conditioning imposed on us through less discreet technological devices that we assimilate on a daily basis.

Ben Cullen Williams

Remnants

Remnants is an installation, comprised of two individual sculptures, Anatomy and Lacuna, which explores this evolving symbiosis between the mechanical and the biological become. Anatomy and Lacuna are constructed of aluminium, both containing areas of uncertain space. Anatomy contains a plane of black viscous matter and Lacuna, a black void, creating a tension between the two sculptures. The work draws on diagrammatic anatomical and architectural models, distorting scale and hijacking visual languages, creating an undetermined terrain where the purpose of our made objects is undefined.

Jennifer Steinkamp

EON
“I considered the first life forms on Earth and how we came to be as a way to refer to the Natural Sciences. I looked at fossil records of the first multi cellular organisms of the Ediacaran Period, 555 million years ago for inspiration. I was struck by the theory of symbiosis in evolution; our DNA ancestors are the resultant fusion of single cellular organisms and bacteria. The millions of bacteria in our bodies are our foremothers. EON is a speculative fiction, a depiction of early life forms underwater. The Universe was formed 13.7 billion years ago. The Earth is 4.543 billion years old. Cyanobacteria or blue-green algae were the first microbes to create oxygen on Earth via photosynthesis 3.5 billion years ago. First humans 200,000-300,000 years ago.” Jennifer Steinkamp

Sanja Marusic

Moonflight
The fashion short was inspired by the symbolic abstract forms and geometric shapes of the avant- gardist Triadic ballet. Sanja Marusic simplied bodily shapes by substituting them with cylinders and circles, she made her own costumes and then abstracted the human form even further by incorporating stylised dance movements by filming herself dancing. The result is a surrealist symbiosis of the human body moving through time and space.

RYOICHI KUROKAWA

黒川良一
rheo
This world-renowned Japanese artist’s impressive audiovisual compositions bring visual and sonic material together using a completely revolutionary perspective. His language, a new international benchmark in the world of digital art, field recordings and computer-generated structures coexist in harmony, and open the gateway to an imaginary world where complexity and simplicity alternate and combine in a strange symbiosis.

vtol

last breath
I understand passive instruments to be different multimedia objects that do not require management so much as co-existence with them based on relations born of a mutual “hybrid” symbiosis. The operating principle of the object is fairly simple – the exhaled air (its pressure and flow rate) activates the generative process, which depends on the exhalation parameters and is managed by the air movement in the organ. The object does not require any special game technique, although any change in the breathing (either premeditated or caused by physiological factors) is directly dependent on game dynamics and also on all the other parameters used to generate the sonic flow.

Iris van Herpen

АЙРИС ВАН ЭРПЕН
イリス ヴァン ヘルペン
Syntopia
For Syntopia, Van Herpen collaborates with the artists Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta of Studio Drift, whose biomimic art works translate natural processes by breathing life into delicate immersive sculptures through movement[…] The vivacious glass bird flows in symbiosis with the models while they move over the runway, their delicate interaction emphasizes the fragility of new worlds living and soaring together.

SAL VANILLA

works
dance
“I connected with members of Sal Vanilla a Butoh dance group. Butoh is a contemporary dance form born in the sixties. We started a series of collaborations, Light painting at first, then video, then live performances. The collaboration between Sal Vanilla and I, was pure symbiosis.” Patrick Rochon

matthias koenig

The Sun never sets
His work is defined in sculptures, installations, drawings and music, but most of the time it‘s a symbiosis of these elements. His artistic practice is based on the creation of compositions with a specific acoustic and physical interaction, where form and sound coexist. The playful, unpredictable aspects of this interaction has his main interest. The specific qualities of music like tone, dynamics, rhythm, timbre and its swiftly immateriality create the poetic counterpart of the physical and visual.

MICHAEL BURTON AND MICHIKO NITTA

Algae Opera
singer: Louise Ashcroft
When we think of futuristic fashion, our minds often lean toward the minimalist designs of Star Trek or Tron. But maybe what we wear in the future will have more to do with what we eat than what we want to look like.
That’s the premise behind the algaculture symbiosis suit designed by Michael Burton and Michiko Nitta. The symbiosis suit is designed to make food for you as you go about your daily routine. A number of tubes, placed in front of your mouth, harness the CO2 you breathe and feed it to an ever-growing population of algae which lives in the suit. Stepping outside or sitting near a window provides the algae all the sun it requires.
Of course, the growing of algae isn’t the end-game here — it’s growing enough to eat three square meals a day of the stuff. The suit debuted at a recent event at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. There, an opera singer donned the algaculture symbiosis suit and serenaded the gathered crowd. The suit created new algae populations during her performance, which audience members were free to consume after the presentation.

RYOICHI KUROKAWA

黒川良一
Syn
2011 –
Audiovisual Concert
Diptych | 2.1ch sound
Duration: 30’00” – 45’00”
The Japanese artist Ryoichi Kurokawa has been a pioneer in audiovisual art in the past fifteen years, working with multiple media that bring together sound and image in a totally new language. Currently based in Berlin, Kurokawa continues to explore the symbiosis between technology and nature, order and chaos.Kurokawa stands as out as a new international reference in the field of digital art, a creator of trends and a pioneer in new aesthetics in artistic work.

GILBERTO ESPARZA

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.”