Bloom Nebula
Incorporating LEDs, electronics, and custom code, this sequenced light sculpture exemplifies Villareal’s latest inquiries into natural and synthetic systems.

Oracle Collection
The performance centered around ORACLE, a digital palm reading given by model and iconic muse Axelle Doué. The surrounding luminous dresses embodying the four elements— air, earth, water, and fire—come alive during the reading, with mirrors reflecting them into infinity. The pieces are crafted from diverse materials, both natural and synthetic. Well beyond typical textiles, Clara Daguin implements optical fibers, pleating, embroidered circuits, addressable LEDs, sculpted resin, home-grown alum stone crystals, Swarovski Elements, silk organza, microcontrollers and radio frequency modules.

The Garden
The Garden is a living artwork that embraces the dichotomy between the natural environment and a synthetic man-made experience. Aitken’s The Garden installation brings the viewer into the center of the artwork and asks them to physically immerse, participate and become the subject of the installation. Set inside a dark warehouse space the viewer walks inside, their eyes adjusting to become aware of thick lush jungle growing under artificial grow lights. Walking closer, the viewer enters inside the jungle and discovers a huge rectangular glass cube. Inside the glass room is a man-made environment replete with generic elements of modern life: tables and chairs, a cabinet, a sterile tableau set under bright raking lights.

Unreal

Lawrence’s accompanying soundtrack is a delicate lattice; complex, opaque and entirely synthetic. Diva’s yearning vocals, sung in English and Mandarin, cast classical melodies over billowing, intricately arranged songs. Her voice is created with a Vocaloid voice synthesiser, giving it an uncanny feeling. Her confessional lyrics draw empathy from the listener, as she reveals her fears of becoming an irrelevant influencer, obsolete in a machine-driven age.

The lead single ‘ unreal’ is launched with a harrowing video adapted from the film.

BioBombola
The Coral
Home Algae Garden
In June 2020 ecoLogicStudio has devised BioBombola, a pioneering project that invites individuals, families and communities to cultivate a domestic algae garden – a sustainable source of vegetable proteins. BioBombola absorbs carbon dioxide and oxygenates homes more effectively than common domestic plants while fostering a fulfilling daily interaction with nature. Each BioBombola is composed of a single customized photobioreactor, a one metre tall lab grade glass container, filled with 15 litres of living photosynthetic Spirulina strain and culture medium with nutrients.

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.

EXO

EXO is Tabor Robak’s new project. Synthetic meditation that mixes Samsara’s like visuals with demoscene techniques, EXO is a visual feast. A first-person experience reaching transcendental levels, literally and metaphorically. Available for both PC and MAC. Born in Portland, Oregon, Robak lives in Brooklyn, New York.

H.O.R.T.U.S. XL Astaxanthin.g menschlicher Garten
H.O.R.T.U.S. XL Astaxanthin.g ist eine hochauflösende 3D-gedruckte Bioskulptur in großem Maßstab, die sowohl für menschliches als auch für nicht menschliches Leben empfänglich ist. Das Projekt wurde von Claudia Pasquero und Marco Poletto (ecoLogicStudio) konzipiert und in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Synthetic Landscape Lab der Universität Innsbruck entwickelt.

Synthetic Seduction

Foreigner

Stine Deja and Marie Munk

The title of the exhibition was inspired by Sherry Turkle’s theory of how technology seduces us, making emotions “easy” by offering human relationships without the complexity of being together ‘face to face’. But if machines can become attentive and emotional, what is left to distinguish us as human beings? We are facing a paradigm shift in how we understand ourselves physiologically, as data and algorithms, and are being forced to question the role of our biological body. As the relationship between artificial and human intelligence becomes increasingly intermingled in our everyday lives, Synthetic Seduction provides immersive and timely insight into the limits of human empathy and intimacy. We are glad at SixtyEight Art Institute to host such a space for thought. We hope it will start conversations and maybe even encourage some intimacy among our visiting audiences in the coming weeks.

Skin Sucka

A project conceived with Clive van Heerden, Jack Mama (Philips Design Probes) and Bart Hess, Skinsucka explores a vision of our nano technology future whereby bio technology and robotics come together to question our attitudes of a synthetic future. Skinsucka reveals a future where microbal robots live in our shared spaces and autonomously they will undertake menial tasks such as cleaning our homes by eating the dirt. ‘Skinsuckas’ clean the skin, removing the vestiges of make up and providing the remedies to combat the excesses of the night before They swarm over the body extruding metabolized household dirt, dressing the body in a daily ritual of real time, customized manufacture – yesterday’s discarded clothing ready for recycling.” Clive and Jack’s work has consistently brought very diverse skills together in new innovation processes. In the late 1990’s they took designers and other creative skills into Philips Research labs in the Redhill, London and New York and created a specialist studio in London to develop the skills, materials and technologies for a host of Wearable Electronic business propositions in the areas of electronic apparel, conductive textiles, physical gaming, medical monitoring and entertainment.

Synthetic Pollenizer
The Synthetic Pollenizer project Intervenes in real-world ecological systems using robotic flowers to Integrate in the reproductive cycle of local flora, these imitations offer a manufactured nectar supplement while attaching locally harvested pollen to bees.

Immersed Garden
Immersed Garden is in its true sense a sunken world. Floating bodiless in an underwater garden, natural sounds guide you through an immersive surrounding, somewhere between calming and irritating, natural and artificial. It is a playful exploration of the individual conception of safety and confusion and a personal approach to aesthetic references to habits of introspection and retreat in digital environments. It was created by fusing different digital processes like photogrammetry of selected natural places around Karlsruhe and field recordings in a local natural reserve. Underwater videos hybridize with 3D scans of trees and plants while invisible frogs are croaking and humming birds are buzzing by synthetic flowers. The artistic aim was to explore the personal perception of calming and irritating, playing with the concept of immaterialness and attentiveness. The artwork creates aesthetic references to philosophical and scientific theories of introspection and identity.

10 Columns
His newest work, simply titled “10 Columns,” inaugurates Bridge Projects by transforming the 7,000-square-foot exhibition space in Hollywood into a synthetic sunrise/sunset[…] Smith has programmed the light-emitting diodes in each panel to cycle through an hourlong sequence of colors. The palette is space-age baroque its primaries and secondaries endowed with the artificially enhanced zing of exquisitely mixed tertiaries.

New Humans
In New Humans, emergent gatherings of synthetic humans rise from the surface of a black ferrofluid pool. Appearing to morph like a supernatural life form, these dynamic clusters of magnetic liquid produced by machine learning processes are images of communities of synthetic people–hybrid profiles modeled from actual DNA, fitness, and dating profile data sets sourced from public and leaked caches. The work questions how we can radically conceptualize the “user profile” to embody a self whose bounds are indefinable and multiple. Generative algorithm using machine learning (GAN, T-SNE) and fluid simulation (Navier Stokes), countour generation (OpenCV), user profile data caches (DNA, fitness, and dating), software production (Processing), ferrofluid, custom electromagnet matrix, custom PCB control system, computer, steel, wood, aluminum.

Self-contained II
A neural network, trained to see the world as variations of the artist’s body, enacts a process of algorithmic interpretation that contends with a body as a subject of multiplicity. After training on over 30,000 images of the artist, this neural network synthesizes surreal humanoid figures unconstrained by physics, biology and time; figures that are simultaneously one and many. The choice of costumes and the movements performed by the artist to generate the training images were specifically formulated to optimize the legibility of the artist within this computational system. self-contained explores the algorithmic shaping of our bodies, attempting to answer the question: how does one represent themselves in a data set? Building on the first iteration of the series, the synthetic figures in self-contained II proliferate to the point of literally exploding. Through the arc of self-contained II, this body that grows, multiples, and dissolves never ceases to be more than a single body.

CMD
Here are 2 artificial ecosystems sharing a light source. Access to this light source is granted through a market. Each colony of photosynthetic bacterias can claim access to light thanks to credits earned for their oxygen production. The rules driving the market are optimized through a genetic algorithm. This artificial intelligence is testing different populations of financial systems on these 2 sets of Cyanobacteria. Like so, the photosynthetic cells and the computer are experimenting with different political systems granting access to this resource. The system oscillates between collaborative and competitive states. The genetic algorithm pictures the rules of these proto-societies as genes. By breeding populations of societies, new generations of markets arise. Like so, the sum of microscopic series of events determines the status of the system at a macroscopic scale.

INDUSTRIAL CREEPER

On the site we envision a antagonistic dialogue between the seemingly biologic units and its abiotic architectural foundation. The units find a home intertwined amongst the predictable regularity of the steel configuration remeniscent of a deteriorating and outdated technological era whose remnants can be found scattered across downtown Los Angeles. These old industrial artifacts, derived from sheer function, act as an all too familiar platform by which the occupant interacts with this new synthetic ecological system. Throughout the site, we see the units stretched and twisted in an extraodinary demonstration of elasticity. In this way, the building lingers in a constant state of mediation between the past and the future; succombing to the complex configuration of the aggressive industrial creeper.

geist.xyz
A synthetic ghost shifts simulated textiles from passive matter to live organisms. They behave like apparitions in an artificial choreography, with movements that are imaginary yet familiar. Like a constant metamorphosis, the same sequence gets transformed over and over again. At each step, all aspects of the designs are modified, from algorithmic pattern to color scheme to fabric behaviour. The results are meandering layers of style changes. A linear montage shows the intricate details. Shuffled layers of metronomic sounds emphasize the transformation fluctuating in and out of sync.

The Ultimate Acceptance
THE ARTIST REIN VOLLENGA IS KNOWN FOR HIS HIGHLY VISCERAL SCULPTURES THAT SHOW A FASCINATION FOR THE HUMAN BODY MERGED WITH A SYNTHETIC AESTHETIC. THESE OPPOSITES ARE REFLECTED IN HIS TECHNIQUE OF COMBINING FOUND GENERIC OBJECTS WITH TRADITIONALLY HAND-SCULPTED MATERIAL, THE CRAFTSMANSHIP BEING IN STARK CONTRADICTION TO THE SLEEK HIGH GLOSS SURFACES OF THE FINISHED WORK. VOLLENGA’S SCULPTURES HAVE BEEN EXHIBITED IN BOTH MUSEUMS AND GALLERIES.

Syntopia

With ‘Syntopia’, Iris van Herpen explores the new worlds that arise within synthetic biology and the intertwining relationships between the organic and the inorganic. ʻSyntopiaʼ acknowledges the current scientific shift in which biology converges with technology and visualizes the fragility and power within.

photo: Morgan O’Donovan

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.

Psychoprosa

The exhibition PSYCHOPROSA focuses on mucus as a biochemical substance and sculptural material. The production of mucus takes place as a real process within the exhibition spaces, transforming the Frankfurter Kunstverein into an interconnecting ensemble of greenhouse, laboratory, walk-in refrigerator, cinema, and factory. Through tubes connected to one another, equipment and objects produce and transform their interior substances, refrigerators open and close automatically and transparent threads of mucus drip from expansive glass sculptures.

In close collaboration with biochemists, Thomas Feuerstein has developed the synthetic molecule Psilamin, derived from algae and fungi. In its production, large quantities of viscous biofilm are generated. If one were to take Psilamin, one would begin to feel psychotropic effects. Perception would liquefy, and objects in the room would appear soft and shapeless. Simultaneously, the flowing nature of the sculptural matter, which escapes solid form, externalizes an inner psychic process. At the end of the biochemical production process, which visitors can track in the different exhibition spaces, there is the expan-sive sculpture Accademia dei Secreti over whose glass containers vast amounts of mucus pour.

アリソン・ショッツ
Алисон Шоц
Fluid State
Alyson Shotz is an American artist based in Brooklyn, New York. She graduated with a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1987 and an MFA from the University of Washington in 1991. Alyson Shotz investigates issues of perception and space with sculptures made from a range of synthetic materials such as mirror, glass beads, plastic lenses, thread and steel wire.Karen Rosenberg wrote: “Ms. Shotz evokes natural phenomena with accumulations of beads, pins and other common materials…Often they respond to the challenge of visualizing concepts from theoretical physics (string theory, dark matter).”

H.O.R.T.U.S. XL Astaxanthin.g in-human garden
H.O.R.T.U.S. XL Astaxanthin.g is a large scale, high-resolution 3D printed bio-sculpture receptive to both human and non-human life. The project is conceived by Claudia Pasquero and Marco Poletto (ecoLogicStudio) and developed in collaboration with the Synthetic Landscape Lab at the University of Innsbruck.

An interpretation of the textures of Iceland’s landscape, using synthetic and artificial materials to make the unnatural appear natural in the eyes of the ignorant. Paired with a silhouette inspired by the saturnian symbolism of the cube, these clothes journey from a literal, compromising analysis of the three dimensional cube to a broken down and wearable analysis of the two dimensional cube, the hexagon.

ZERO
Tanzkompanie Heidelberg

Nanine Linning is responsible for die best niederländischen Choreographers. After the successful performance “Synthetic Twin”, the fiery “Requiem” and the apokalyptic “Voice Over” she is once again going big. ‘ZERO’ is an excitement Crossover, In which Dance, Game, Film, Music and costumes – by Iris van Herpen – ensure that you are short of eyes and ears. Was it born there when the world changed drastically? What are people different in the last hours before everything else? To the spherical music of, among others, Julia Wolf, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Arvo Pärt and Philip Glass phantasieren von Linning und Haarspangen von faszinierenden Ideen.

Echoes
Marguerite Humeau’s design is used to explore the means by which knowledge is generated in the absence of evidence, or in the impossibility of either reaching or analysing the object of investigation. Humeau weaves factual events into speculative narratives, therefore enabling the unknown to erupt in grandiose splendour. The work is presented as a series of live science fictions: semi-real, synthetic, supernatural events.

The artist Rein Vollenga is known for his highly visceral sculptures that show a fascination for the human body merged with a synthetic aesthetic. These opposites are reflected in his technique of combining found generic objects with traditionally hand-sculpted material, the craftsmanship being in stark contradiction to the sleek high gloss surfaces of the finished work. Vollenga’s sculptures have been exhibited in both museums and galleries.

zero
Nanine Linning behoort tot de beste Nederlandse choreografen. Na de succesvolle voorstelling ‘Synthetic Twin’, het zinderende ‘Requiem’ en het apocalyptische ‘Voice Over’ pakt ze opnieuw groots uit. ‘ZERO’ is een opwindende cross-over, waarbij dans, spel, film, muziek en kostuums — van Iris van Herpen — zorgen dat u ogen en oren te kort komt.

阿克塞尔利伯
Axel Lieber uses everyday items as objects of reference and alienates their materiality by coring them semantically and then filling thus evolving empty spaces with new content. In this way, new synthetic-aesthetic crossovers and oppositions arise that enliven the sculptures and guide the viewer into an intimate sphere at the same time.

La Charme
For Emiko Kasahara, female hair symbolises the ultimate love-hate relationship. To prove that point, the Japanese-born artist has picked eight Australian women, turned most into blondes and filmed them posing on five large circles of synthetic hair. “Hair is a symbol of beauty on the human body,” Kasahara said. “Hair represents vitality of life and sexualities and is precious. “But when you cut off the edge and let it fall on the floor, it’s considered disgusting dirt. It’s the same hair but it’s interesting that it shows both beauty and dirt.”

Wearable Sculpture
He designs with meticulous attention to detail and longing for newness. Leather and wool are still his favourite materials. To get the effect of surprise he juxtaposes these two traditional materials with others, perhaps not typically associated with the textile industry. An important part of his design process is treating natural and synthetic fabrics with various methods, using heat, chemicals or other techniques, thus combining innovation and tradition.

ДУГ УИЛЕР
PSAD Synthetic Desert III

Self-Replicating Spheres

Self-Replicating Spheres explores the processes of growth, encapsulation and division through macro-scale objects on an oscillating table. This project attempts to demonstrate synthetic cellular division and replication through non-biological physical objects, without the use of robotics. The individual spheres were created with a hollow shell and an arrangement of small metal spheres and magnets. This internal structure provides the force of attraction for growing connections, the flexibility and, ultimately, the capability to divide. By adding more spherical units and supplying energy in the form of the oscillating table, the system will continually grow and divide.

Synthetic Twin

Synthetic Sustainability

Graham Thompson tries to redefine urbanism by proposing urban synthetic hyper structures that sustainably manage urban density, personal space, and communal areas. A fresh graduate from the Bartlett School of Architecture the proposal features undulated surface towers, farming zones, clean energy generating systems, green transportation facilities and recreational areas. The sustainable structure would come along a water depository within barren undeveloped land ready for zoning. The undulating bionic towers of the project would act as urban farming zones that promote local flora and fauna managed by the inhabitants for sustainable growth. These agricultural zones have individual harvesting grids with water filtration and nutrient monitoring systems. The tower canopies are layered with solar recharging zones to harvest solar energy and locally meet power needs. Graham also visualizes eco train stations for green transportation along with green service stations for eco car charging.

synthetic nature currently

Vivisector

o what extent does the quality of movement of the virtual world influence real sequences of human movement? Will the real world of the 21st century assume via nanotechnology attributes of the virtual world? Are there still significant differences between a body that is made of synthetic material and warmed artificially and the deep glow of trillions of living cells? VIVISECTOR is an examination of the different speeds of people/nature and technology/information society and of their acceleration; an experiment to overcome the space-time continuum in the real world. It breaks the linearity of movement and in doing so shows the absurdity of momentum. Based on the video-technological concept of the moving body-projection that made D.A.V.E. an international hit, VIVISECTOR now goes one step further: the exclusive concentration on video light and video projection produces a new stage aesthetic in which light, body, video and acoustic space form an unprecedented unity.

synthetic immune system

Synthetic Twin