Stedelijk Museum Schiedam breathes new life into the former dance hall and cinema Monopole with art. Silence & The Presence of Everything opens to the public on Sunday, September 21, 2025: an exhibition full of intriguing art installations exploring natural phenomena. Immerse yourself in magical natural phenomena and experience captured sunbeams, weather systems of dust and light, swaying reeds from Schiedam bending with the Minnesota wind, boundless horizons, and dancing droplets flowing toward the center of the earth.

The art installations of artists Sabine Marcelis, Guido van der Werve, Tina Farifteh, Lachlan Turczan, David Bowen, Gordon Hempton, Lily Clark, Carel Balth, and Boris Acket are spread throughout the Monopole.
The artist Boris Acket, is also the guest curator of the exhibition, alongside co-curator Sanneke Huisman.

Silence is the Presence of Everything
The inspiration for this exhibition comes from the acoustic ecologist and philosopher Gordon Hempton. He once placed a microphone on the world and put on headphones. According to him, this gave him an unforgettable experience. Boris Acket and Sanneke Huisman: “We’ve taken that feeling as the starting point for this exhibition. You enter a world where everything seems new, seen through the eyes and ears of the artists. The title of the exhibition is therefore derived from a statement by Hempton, which encapsulates everything: ‘Silence is not the absence of something, but the presence of everything.'”

tele-present wind

This installation by David Bowen consists of a series of 126 x/y tilting mechanical devices connected to thin dried plant stalks installed in a gallery and a dried plant stalk connected to an accelerometer installed outdoors. When the wind blows it causes the stalk outside to sway. The accelerometer detects this movement transmitting the motion to the grouping of devices in the gallery. Therefore the stalks in the gallery space move in real-time and in unison based on the movement of the wind outside.

David Bowen 
tele-present wind
Monopole

The exhibition machinekind aims to explore the liminal space between machine-generated efficiency and the poignant and sometimes valuable inefficiencies that accompany human behavior. What vision of a future built on machine-collaboration do we hope for? When and how do we want artificial intelligence making decisions with us, or altogether for us? As those invested in the technological innovation behind machine-kind market dreams of a world made easier, what elements of human social interaction might be lost or reinterpreted in the process? 

machinekind invites the viewer to explore the notion of artifice as it relates to the tangible, cultural, and ethical consequences of AI. The invited artists engage with questions of outsourcing care and connection, the often-biased logics embedded in data models, the humor in glitches, and the moments humankind and “machinekind” recognize one another in unexpected contexts. 

the two

Is it possible for robots to fall in love?

This installation by David Bowen consists of two identical robotic arms with cameras connected to two identical computers. Each computer is running a custom deep neural network that is trained to recognize the other robot. Using their cameras, the robots attempt to find and track each other as they move independently. Playfully dancing, the robots at times are attracted to each other. While at other times they seem repelled by their mate. Tension increases as they almost touch only to quickly pull away. If one of the robots does not see the other it will go to a resting position briefly before it begins to look for its counterpart again. When a robot positively identifies it’s mate a given number of times, the network is re-trained based on the new data. Through this continual training and re-training, the robots conceivably increasing their proficiency at recognizing and finding one another. In this way, as they lock onto each other’s loving gaze the robots become more and more familiar with their mates.

David Bowen
the two 
machinekind

What forms of intelligence are there? What significance do they play in our understanding of ecology and society? With Other Intelligences a group of twelve international artists delves into the different forms of intelligence: artificial, technological, but also the organic one of flora and fauna in their interactions within an ecosystem.

The artists investigate what intelligence can be in the age of artificial intelligence (AI) and what other forms of nonhuman intelligence could be relevant in forging our future. They explore how the synthetic brain of an artificial intelligence operates or how organisms from the animal and plant world sense and act, and what we can learn from other such intelligences.

So, what do ChatGPT and the rainforest have in common? Both are currently much discussed social issues. They represent the two areas, namely AI and the climate crisis, whose development will have a radical impact on the future of humanity. They are also representatives of two different, non-human systems of intelligence. In the exhibition we are seeking to examine both these aspects of non-human intelligence, as understanding of and empathy for other forms of intelligence are becoming the most important survival strategies for our species.

Curated by Sabine Himmelsbach, Marlene Wenger and Angelique Spaninks

plant machete

This installation by David Bowen enables a live plant to control a machete. plant machete has a control system that reads and utilizes the electrical noises found in a live philodendron. The system uses an open source micro-controller connected to the plant to read varying resistance signals across the plant’s leaves. Using custom software, these signals are mapped in real-time to the movements of the joints of the industrial robot holding a machete. In this way, the movements of the machete are determined based on input from the plant. Essentially the plant is the brain of the robot controlling the machete determining how it swings, jabs, slices and interacts in space.

David Bowen
plant machete
MU Hybrid Art House

0—1 is a contemporary nomadic curatorial platform that moves how it needs to — tech-aware, a bit restless, and always asking why. Since 2017, it’s shaped by artists who keep things in motion — not here for fixed ideas of what art’s supposed to be. No walls, no permanent fixtures, stubborn curiosity, and the need to say something that matters.

Concluding a conceptual trilogy, Roaring Into Being marks the final phase of ESC 2034 evolving study into digital futures, tracing a trajectory from subtle machine-nature interactions to a world shaped almost entirely by technology. The exhibition moves between the rumble of machines, the resonance of nature, and the shifting terrains of digital evolution. Each work reflects on humanity’s changing relationship with technology — its imprint on the environment, the body, and ways of seeing.

Roaring Into Being looks at the convergence of the synthetic and the organic. Some works treat ecology as metaphor, others as method — erasing the divide, questioning interdependence, and tracing the fragile systems we inhabit. Digital landscapes wrap around human forms; closed-loop environments fold organic and artificial into each other.

Across the exhibition, technology appears not as future, but as condition — embedded, felt, and already altering what it means to be physical, connected, or alive.

fly revolver (video)

Based on the activities of a collection of houseflies, this device controls a revolver. The flies live inside an acrylic sphere with a target backdrop. As the flies move and interact inside their home they fly in front of and land on the target. These movements are collected via video. The movements are processed with custom software and output to a robotic device that aims the revolver in real-time based on the flies’ relative location on the target. When a single fly is detected the revolver simply follows the movement of that fly. If several flies are in the field of view the software moves the revolver based on the activities of the collective. If a fly is detected in the center of the target the trigger of the revolver is pulled. In this way, the flies are essentially the brain of the device controlling the revolver by determining where it is aimed and when it is fired.

David Bowen
fly revolver 
Roaring Into Being
Quartair