Skip to main content

BioMedia: The Age of Media with Life-like Behavior exhibition featuring work by Prof. Haru Hyunkyung Ji

Conservation of Shadows, in the ZKM_Haru Ji

Work title: Conservation of Shadows, in the ZKM
Medium/techniques: 0.5 cubic meter salt, 4 ESP32 microcontrollers, 56 vibration motor-driven bells, 2 LiDar sensors, 3 projectors, 2 HTC VIVE Pro HMDs, 2 PCs, custom software.
Team name: Artificial Nature (Haru Ji & Graham Wakefield)
Photo by: Jonas Zilius

Who or what defines on what is alive and what is intelligent? Can artificial forms of life be empathetic? What does the cooperation of human beings and artificial agents look like? What ethical questions arise? The exhibition »BioMedia« invites visitors to learn about and discuss possible forms of cohabitation between organic and artificial forms of life.

Conservation of Shadows, in the ZKM is a site-specific interactive mixed reality installation. It involves a network of motor-actuated bells, projections upon large beds of salt, and virtual reality perspectives with real-time volume capture. This work responds to the specific history of the host venue, with a central conception of sounds and shadows as shared physical connections between visible and invisible realms.  

Invisible unknown beings seem to explore the space - shadows passing across the salty floor, and whistling past the small bells, making them ring. The shadows of the visitors mingle with the ghostly vortices in the space. Entering the virtual reality, visitors dive deeper into an artificial ecosystem cohabiting in superposition with our own. What first appeared as flat shadows on the floor is unveiled to be a biome moving around the viewers: a constantly growing mycelium of virtual creatures and snake-like metallic entities that inhabit the building of the former munitions factory. Thus, these beings become part of a networked structure of feedback from the world and from us. Neither completely programmed nor entirely random, they leave enough room for organic, collective, and self-determined growth.  

Artists
::vtol::, Kees Aafjes, Refik Anadol, Artificial Nature (Haru Ji & Graham Wakefield), Torsten Belschner, Samuel Bianchini, Frank Bierlein, Michel Bret, Ludger Brümmer, Daniel Canogar, Aristarkh Chernyshev, CITA, Edmond Couchot, Stephanie Dinkins, Melissa Dubbin & Aaron S. Davidson, Anna Dumitriu, Jake Elwes, Justine Emard, Cécile B. Evans, Edo Fouilloux, Yves Gellie, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, Libby Heaney, Stephan Henrich, Katrin Hochschuh & Adam Donovan, Yannick Hofmann, Yasha Jain, Daria Jelonek, Nikolai Konstantinov, Bernd Lintermann, Christian Mio Loclair, Hasan Mashni, Alex May, Mélodie Mousset, Gordon Pask, Špela Petrič, Sascha Pohflepp with Alessia Nigretti & Matthew Lutz, Nina Rajcic & SensiLab, random international, Anna Ridler, Birk Schmithüsen, Alexander Schubert, Jeffrey Shaw, Karl Sims, Maria Smigielska & Pierre Cutellic, Christa Sommerer & Laurent Mignonneau, Jakob Kudsk Steensen, Martinus Suijkerbuijk, Maija Tammi, Universal Everything, Harm van den Dorpel, Jeroen van der Most, Peter van der Putten, Günter Weseler, Marco Zampella, Moph Zielke, Fabien Zocco

Curated by
Peter Weibel with Sarah Donderer and Daria Mille, assisted by Beatrice Zaidenberg

https://zkm.de/en/exhibition/2021/12/biomedia