Info

Life on our symbiotic planet is not a future vision; it is an extended and imperceptible present. Here is a collection of seven artworks which take sym-bio-sis as their starting point.

Bioni Samp (UK) Beespace or Hive Synthesis
Bioni Sam’s apiarist performance is an attempt to usher insects into our fields of visibility and audibility. Transparent in our perspective, the time of bee-triggered vegetal growth and florescence is a process enveloped in the piercing whizzing of translucent wings. Samp employs the beehive audiosphere as a model to intercept and implement a non-human environment into the human nervous system, which cannot handle the frequency of drone-emitted sounds.

Scenocosme /Grégory Lasserre + Anaïs met den Ancxt/ (FR) Akousmaflore
The garden of earthly delights is a display of superimposing subtle, mutually symbiotic relationships of humans and plants. The fusion of nature and technology in this already classic installation engenders states which may transport consciousness into a possible world of coexistence.

Michał Brzeziński (PL) Body Language
Brzeziński’s installation takes biosemiotics as its starting point. Vital processes of a plant in the pot and changes in its electromagnetic potential provide signals which are converted into communications and affects. Incessantly produced, they appear on the screen as visual compositions and accompanying oral and written texts. However, this is syntactics without semiotics, i.e. this language is devoid of meaning. This is also the Facebook status which the plant updates several times a day.

Demelza Kooij (NL) Wolves from Above
The drone-observed pack of wolves is confused by the situation. Buzzing over their heads, the device invades their ordered world and records their responses – running over their own paths, their intrigued lupine gaze, their insecurity, curiosity, and annoyance. Wolves from Above reveals the nature of human intervention. As an observation instrument is brought into the non-human community in an attempt to obtain knowledge and register events, the natural course of things is disturbed.

Christa Sommerer (AT) + Laurent Mignonneau (FR) A-Volve
The pioneering installation A-Volve was one of the first successful attempts to combine the real and virtual worlds. The audience created virtual swimming organisms which then took on lives of their own, developed, and engaged in interactions in a real water pool. Their lifespan depended both on the virtual organisms they encountered and on the intentions of the viewers who plunged their hands in the water. Sommerer and Mignonneau constructed a world of genetic evolution by using digital process simulation tools, which belonged to the realm of science and design at the time.

Maciej Markowski (PL) Quartet for Tomatoes
If potatoes can be used to produce electrical energy, tomatoes can surely generate sounds? Markowski’s Quartet for Tomatoes is a generative sound composition unfolding over three months (the time of the tomato exposition at the WRO) and reflecting the changes in the environment, including plant growth, air humidity, soil condition and the overall wellbeing of the vegetables which, suspended from the gallery ceiling, grow downward. Their vital processes add up to samples and rhythmic structures which go into the making of new music, which is entirely dedicated to tomato worlds. At the moment, Markowski’s tomatoes are being re-introduced into the field of art in the artist’s private garden.

Jarosław Czarnecki aka Elvin Flamingo (PL) The Symbiosity of Creation
Czarnecki’s monumental project represents a years-long endeavor to construct a laboratory superorganism based on ant colonies. The artist’s inspirations include both the concepts developed by Lynn Margulis (Symbiotic Planet) and Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory (ANT). The media imaginarium was employed to capture the social nature of the formic commune, with screens and microphones helping alterative ideas of co-organization and collaboration trickle into our aesthetic and ethical perception.

 

MONDAY
Bioni Samp (UK)
Beespace or Hive Synthesis
performance and an artist talk
May 15, 2015
Polski Theatre Świebodzki Stage
16th Media Art Biennale WRO 2015 Test Exposure

TUESDAY
Scenocosme /Grégory Lasserre + Anaïs met den Ancxt / (FR)
Akousmaflore
documentation of the installation
exhibition at the Entropia Gallery
13th Media Art Biennale WRO 09 Expanded City

WEDNESDAY
Michał Brzeziński (PL)
Body Language
documentation of the installation
Cultivated Cultures exhibition
WRO Art Center
13.05-30.06.2015
16th Media Art Biennale WRO 2015 Test Exposure

THURSDAY
Demelza Kooij (NL)
Wolves From Above
documentation of the videoinstallation
National Museum’s Four Domes Pavilion
18th Media Art Biennale WRO 2019 CZYNNIK LUDZKI | HUMAN ASPECT

FRIDAY
Christa Sommerer (AT) + Laurent Mignonneau (FR)
A-Volve
documentation of the installation and an artist talk
Ars Electronica 1994 / Intelligent Environment
5th Media Art Biennale WRO 95

SATURDAY
Maciej Markowski (PL)
Quartet for Tomatoes
documentation of the installation
Cultivated Cultures exhibition
WRO Art Center
13.05-30.06.2015
16th Media Art Biennale WRO 2015 Test Exposure

SUNDAY
Jarosław Czarnecki aka Elvin Flamingo (PL)
The Symbiosity of Creation
documentation of the installation
Cultivated Cultures exhibition
WRO Art Center
13.05-30.06.2015
16th Media Art Biennale WRO 2015 Test Exposure