Convergence: Artistic Explorations from Nature to Society

Deep Sensing is a multi-channel immersive installation that explores how weather and climate data interact with events in our solar system. Virtual point cloud antennas track the flow of cosmic particles from the Sun to the Earth, generating global wind patterns that are interpreted into immersive visualisations and soundscapes using data and recordings from Irbene radiotelescope.

Deep Sensing traces its origins back to the legendary sound art and radioastronomy symposium “RT-32. Acoustic Space Laboratory” organized by RIXC artists 20 years ago at the Irbene radio telescope in Latvia, after its abandonment by the Soviet armed forces. Re-engaging with the site 20 years later, the artists first tried to understand the captivation of this massive antenna today, when, after the grandiose space conquest plans of the 20th century, we have finally “landed on Earth” – or, if not, as French philosopher Bruno Latour remarks, “at least we have been pointed in… another direction” – as climate change and environmental issues keeps becoming more and more pressing here. Yet, we ask, why is the Earth not enough?

Moreover these giant radio telescopes not only look upwards, they are the unique points of convergence for cosmic rays reaching Earth’s surface. In the new visualisation, the radio telescopes are no longer represented as massive objects, but as an immaterial point clouds that rotate, leaving and crossing traces, following the flow of cosmic particles that fly from the Sun to Earth, impact ionospheric clouds, interact with the Earth’s atmosphere and create terrestrial wind patterns.

The artists use radio astronomy data from our Solar System combined with environmental recordings from the Irbene radio telescope site to create an immersive soundscape and the ‘sensorialized’ data experience. Immersive multi-sensory experience they create is an endeavor to make the complex science, impacts and scale of climate-induced environmental change more accessible to the public. Hence, Deep Sensing strives to push the boundaries of climate science by investigating its correlations with space research while contextualizing these interactions in a socio-ecological and geopolitical perspective.

Rasa Smite & Raitis Smits

Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits are Riga (Latvia) and Karlsruhe (Germany) based artists and co-founders of RIXC Center for New Media Culture in Riga, Latvia, co-curators of RIXC Art and Science Festival, and chief-editors of Acoustic Space, peer-reviewed journal and book series. Together they create visionary and networked artworks – from pioneering internet radio experiments in the 1990s, to artistic investigations in electromagnetic spectrum and collaborations with radio astronomers, and more recent “techno-ecological” explorations together with climate researchers creating immersive experiences using scientific data, sonification and visualization, AI and XR technologies. Their projects have been nominated (Purvitis Prize 2019, 2021, International Public Arts Award – Eurasian region 2021), awarded (Ars Electronica 1998, Falling Walls – Science Breakthrough 2021) and shown widely including at the Venice Architecture Biennale, Latvian National Museum of Arts, House of Electronic Arts in Basel, Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, and other venues, exhibitions and festivals in Europe, the United States, Canada and Asia.

Journeying through the depths of ancient lava flows, volcanic structures, and meandering valleys, one feels the resonance of distant celestial bodies. Against the dramatic backdrop of the Canary Islands’ volcanic landscape and the Arctic desert of Svalbard, where windstorms sculpt the terrain, art and science intersect. Analog sites on Earth, resembling extraterrestrial landscapes, unveil the unexpected richness of life thriving in seemingly barren environments.

What defines a desert, once thought devoid of life, now teems with vitality, challenging preconceptions and expanding horizons. From Earth to Sky offers a sensory exploration where seven sensing devices from the MIT Media Lab and MIT Space Exploration Initiative bring new possibilities into the realm of scientific inquiry and artistic expression.

3000 Years Among Microbes speculates on an alternative space future through rapidly evolving technologies from the microbial to the planetary scale, with the logic of “symbiosis” and “kinship.” Drawing on science fiction literature, emerging technologies, and post-human perspectives, the project opens up a series of discussions on framing space exploration outside the metaphor of colonization through prototyping, experimental videos, space simulations, online platforms, and stakeholder interviews. In the process of project development, Zone Sound Creative studio and artists visited Taiwan National Space Organization and a NASA lunar mock-up base in the Western Desert during the 1960s space race, filmed on locations, and collected microbial samples. Juxtaposing extreme landscapes with microscopic images blurs the distinction between humans and microbes and further replaces the definition of the human “individual” with the concept of “holobiont.” 3000 Years Among Microbes is a test of imagination that considers how humans should approach space exploration (colonization), remembering the lessons of the Anthropocene and embedding the concept of symbiosis in the vision of interstellar ecosystems. Because space exploration is highly relevant to the arms race, geopolitics, and economic interests, we hope to propose a new language when “space age” is no longer a fantasy, a language distinguished from the metaphor of colonization, as commercialization turns the universe into a “new frontier” waiting for exploration. From climate change to the wealth gap, we have seen how difficult it is to solve these human-generated problems. In space, we have the opportunity to make better choices right from the start.

Lythologies

Lythologies is a network of artists and researchers. The group was initially brought together at MIT to work on the interdisciplinary project called 3000 Years Among Microbes, which focused on space exploration. Its members include Rae Hsu and Nancy Valladares. Inspired by their initial collaboration, they formed Lythologies to continue their explorations in extreme environments. The group engages in diverse topics, from temporal slippage in the Arctic to experimental baking, botanical travelers in space, and various other narratives inspired by the cosmos.

Artists ｜Rae Hsu, Po-Hao Chi, and Nancy Valladares
Supporting Artist ｜Chucho Ocampo

Copper is a mineral that lives with(in) us and on which our households, cities, digital desires, and selves depend. And while our bodies rely on copper to function properly, the rapacious extraction of copper disproportionately labored by women and children in the global South takes a deleterious toll on their health. Specifically, overexposure to copper often results in Wilson’s disease — liver failure, cognitive and neurological complications — and whose tell-tale sign is copper-colored eyes. Jahn positions the copper-colored eyes as witnesses to the “body burdens” absorbed by mining communities and the loss of bodily sovereignty to meet the needs of Others’ mineralogical dependencies in these digital prints. The video showcases Jahn embodying Aphrodite, exploring the complex mineral economics, and highlighting the impact of mining on bodily and terrestrial sovereignty through a dramatic reading of the Mining Law of 1872.

Marisa Morán Jahn

An artist/designer of Ecuadorian and Chinese descent, Marisa Morán Jahn’s works redistribute power, “exemplifying the possibilities of art as social practice” (ArtForum). Jahn, who explores “civic spaces and the radical art of play” (Chicago Tribune), codesigns small to urban-scale projects with immigrant families, domestic workers, and public housing residents. Jahn’s work has engaged millions via the United Nations, Tribeca Film Festival, Obama’s White House, Venice Biennale of Architecture, the Guggenheim Museum, and through media coverage in the BBC, CNN, PBS Newshour, The New York Times, Univision Global, and more.

She is a Sundance and Creative Capital grantee, a Senior Researcher at MIT (her alma mater), artist in residence at The National Public Housing Museum, and the Director of Integrated Design at Parsons/The New School. With Rafi Segal, Jahn co-authored a book, Design & Solidarity (Columbia University Press, 2023) and co-founded Carehaus, the U.S.’s first care-based co-housing project (carehaus.net). She is represented by Sapar Contemporary.

Leche Holográfica (Holographic Milk) is a meditative rogativa to resonate and harmonize with different elements, so we can imagine the future as places that exist between spiral times. A non-extractivist communion among kingdoms that originates from the sweetness of the Leche Holográfica and the Gran Madre’s nurturing songs. We received her chorro of information and vibrational sonic wisdom from her as we navigate these troubled times.

Leche Holográfica nurtures the porvenir with the information of the future. We drink it, we swim in it, we live in it and we access our cosmic past through it. We have forgotten this, but we carry all the information we need to move forward within us. We now have to learn how to activate it. Spirituality and the quantum realm don’t know about distances. As an effort to remember, we invite you to dive with us into a shapeshifting quantum trip of connection from the quartzs and silicon that conform our bones, the center of the Earth, the chips of our electronic devices, in order to call for what is common to us. We become many as we listen and travel through different registers and learn through multiple temporalities of planetary fractals in alliance with the digital kingdom. This work is a collaboration between Nicole L’Huillier and Patricia Domínguez and was commissioned by the Inter-American Development Bank.

Nicole L’Huillier & Patricia Domínguez

Nicole L’Huillier is a transdisciplinary artist and researcher from Santiago, Chile. Her artistic practice focuses on the use of sounds and vibrations as fundamental elements to explore concepts of agency, identity, collectivity, and the activation of a vibrational imagination. L’Huillier’s work manifests through various mediums, including installations, sonic and vibrational sculptures, custom-made apparatuses for listening or sounding, performances, experimental compositions, membranal poems, and written works. She earned her Ph.D. in Media Arts & Sciences from MIT in 2022. Her recent exhibitions include notable venues such as Transmediale, Sonic Acts, Kunsthalle Baden Baden, Ural Industrial Biennial, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo MAC, Bienal de Artes Mediales, Venice Architecture Biennale, and Ars Electronica.

Patricia Domínguez is an artist based in Puchuncaví, Chile. Her practice is a diverse blend of myths, symbols, rituals, and healing practices integrated with ethnobotanical research. She employs a variety of mediums, including watercolors, ceramics, sculptural assemblages, and video installations, to delve into themes such as plant life, corporate wellness culture, and the digital realm. Domínguez holds an MFA from Hunter College, New York, and has participated in research residencies at prestigious institutions, including CERN. She is the founder of Studio Vegetalista, an experimental platform dedicated to ethnobotanical studies. Her work has been showcased internationally at venues like the New Museum in New York, the Wellcome Collection in London, and the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Spain. Domínguez is a recipient of the Simetría Residency Award from CERN and the Beca Botín fellowship.

Nodal Narratives of the Deep Sea charts the source and pathways of our internet, the ecosystem within which it operates, and the life forms that live around it. It focuses specifically on submarine cables as hidden critical infrastructure that carries the world’s data, materiality, connection – the project of modernity, the premise of capitalist expansion, and abstraction – as lines running through the earth almost existing in a separate temporality. While the word cable accurately describes the conduit itself, mining colonies, satellite connections, myths, and wars are contained within it. How does data travel? Who and what does it meet on the way? Where are these conduits? A map attempts to reconsider the dominant layers within this ecosystem, annotated by a series of drawings, objects and videos telling stories of unstable relationships and those yet to be discovered. Here, humans, plants, and animals interact with and help redefine what it means to live with critical infrastructure.

Aarti Sunder

Aarti Sunder is an artist who lives and works in India. She largely works with video, writing, and drawing. Her interest lies within techno-politics, focusing on the study of infrastructure – from contemporary labor practices, fictional edges of protest, myth, and digital-terrestrial play to expanded platform politics. Aarti has exhibited her work at the Akademie der Kunst, Hayy Jameel, Singapore Biennale 22, 1ShanthiRoad Studio Gallery, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, MIT, Warehouse421, Goethe- Institute, Kunstverein Leipzig, Bauhaus imaginista, Alserkal Avenue, ISCP and the Museum of Yugoslav History amongst othes spaces. She has been the recipient of grants and fellowships from MIT, Sommerakademie Paul Klee, Ashkal Alwan, Harvard FSC Film Center, Sarai, and Khoj.

“How to buy/own/mint one millilitre of the South China Sea (Nan Hai)?” — Forkonomy() is an art and activist project to explore the idea of sovereignty and ownership through such a speculative question. Despite the fact that Nan Hai is one of the world’s most heavily trafficked waterways for international trade, it is also one of the most disputable sea areas in the world over the territorial claims. From China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia …etc, multiple Asian governments assert sovereignty over its rocks, reefs, as well as other geographic features and undersea natural resources, made the oceanic object highly tangible and material, and yet significantly economical, military and political.

In Forkonomy(), Taiwan artist Tzu-Tung Lee and Hong Kong artist Winnie Soon set the project as a commoning ship,  inviting people of the pacific to queer and care the matters of hierarchies, ownership, gendered labour division, as well as to fight against the constant autonomical threats regarding the land and the sea. This exhibition shows the videos of the artist pirating the Nan Hai water, the Forkonomy() workshop that have discussed the ownership and priced of the sea, as well as the documents of  the workshop, including the physical contract, code of conduct, and the digital contract that has deployed on the blockchain.

Tzu-Tung Lee & Winnie Soon

Tzu-Tung Lee is a conceptual artist whose art combines academic research with political activism. Their work often incorporates participatory process, open source ethos, and decentralized technologies. Growing up amid Taiwan’s multifaceted generational identity struggle, they create art to ask the broad question: “How marginalized communities queer up the current hegemonies after the generational colonial trauma?” Tzu-Tung has graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MS) Art, Culture and Technology Program and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (MFA) Film, Video, Animation and New Media Program. Their art has been exhibited globally in renowned institutions, including the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, MOCA Taipei (TW), MIT Museum (US), Lisbon University (PT), ArtScape(CA), Transemediale(DE), ADL(KR), Hyundai Studio(CN), etc. Beyond artistic achievements. Politically, Tzu-Tung has organized monthly conferences at Café Philo Chicago (2016-2018), participated in NGO Overseas Taiwanese for Democracy, and edited the bilingual political magazine NewBloom. They are also the leader and visual designer for a rally of 200 people Anti-Black Box Education (2016), 40 cities-wide rally Equality of Same-Sex Marriage (2016), and the organizer of the indigenous protest Passage of Time (2016). They are currently the founder of Tinyverse NPO, which facilitates transdisciplinary, collaborative art projects, and curator of Sensefield, an art and anthropology biennale.

Winnie Soon is a Hong Kong-born artist coder and researcher interested in the cultural implications of digital infrastructure that addresses wider power asymmetries, engaging with themes such as Free and Open Source Culture, Coding Otherwise, artistic/technical manuals, digital censorship and minor technology. With works appearing in museums, galleries, festivals, distributed networks, papers and alternative written forms, including co-authored books titled Boundary Images (2023), Fix My Code (2021), and Aesthetic Programming (2020). Winnie is the co-editor of the Software Studies Book Series (MIT Press), Co-PI of the research project Digital Activism and co-research lead, British Digital Art, British Art Network. Artistically, Winnie received the Golden Nica at Ars Electronica (Artificial Intelligence and Life Art Category), the Expanded Media Award for Network Culture at Stuttgarter Filmwinter — Festival for Expanded Media, WRO 2019 Media Art Biennale Award, and the 26th and 17th ifva awards (Special Mention and Silver award). Currently, they are Associate Professor of Art and Technology at UCL Slade School of Fine Art and visiting researcher at the Centre of the Study of the Networked Image (CSNI), London South Bank University.