| © Martin Messier - 1 drop 1000 years | | | | Sonica is heading to Istanbul for the first time. For four days, audiences in the city’s heart will encounter the bold, boundary-pushing spirit that has established Sonica as an international leader in sonic and visual art. 1 DROP 1000 YEARS - Scientists agree that a drop of water travels the globe in less than 1,000 years. This drop shapes our world: it transports nutrients, heat and living organisms, while regulating our planet's climate and ecosystems. It contributes to the fundamental process of life's equilibrium. Drawing on data from the Global Conveyor Belt, the vast ocean current that orchestrates the mixing of water from the five oceans and redistributes heat on a global scale, Martin Messier underlines the fundamental role of water as a vital substance. Yet, over the past two centuries, human action has been shaking this fragile balance: the gradual slowing of this ocean current could trigger a major climatic upheaval, threatening the entire chain of life.
In this hypnotic performance, the artist explores the tensions between the global currents that drive planetary equilibrium, and the intimate currents that resonate within each of us. Fifteen suspended devices, veritable kinetic sculptures, orchestrate the flow of water particles in real time, materializing oceanic dynamics. The patterns generated, fed by data such as the temperature and salinity of the Pacific Ocean, intertwine in a visual and sonic choreography. 1 drop 1000 years reveals itself as a masterful, poetic ballet, conveying the fragility of ecosystems and the delicate harmony that binds all things on Earth. 1 DROP 1000 YEARS
Martin Messier
Sonica Istanbul | | | | | © Laura Colmenares Guerra - Ríos Trilogy | | | | © Navid Navab In collaboration with Garnet Willis - Organism + Excitable Chaos (photo: Miha Godec) | | | | Organism + Excitable Chaos
A robotically prepared historic pipe organ driven by a robotically-steered chaotic pendulum The chaotic motion of Excitable Chaos, a robotically‑steered triple pendulum, drives the aerodynamic thresholds of Organism, a robotically‑prepared century‑old pipe organ. Organism dismantles the socio‑historical tonality of the organ—civilization’s triumph over the turbulence of nature—to liberate and sound its hidden turbulent materiality. A 1910 Casavant pipe organ, rescued from a heritage site in Montréal, has its pneumatic architecture modified to remove aerodynamic stabilizations that once aimed to eliminate turbulent flow and its uncontrollable sound world, allowing long‑repressed timbres to be heard anew. Excitable Chaos is a nonlinear movement system animated by the dynamic exchange of potential and kinetic energy across its three interconnected arms. Occasionally, by modulating its pivotal joints and damper weights, it alters the mass‑orbital relationships of its arms, generating distinct movement systems—each a stochastic universe unto itself. Pivotal joints shift the system’s gravitational dynamics, while subtle adjustments to damper weights refine its resonances, phases, and grooves. These transductive modulations enable the artist to collaborate with chaos—nature’s form‑giving engine—highlighting how even the subtle fluctuations at the smallest of scales are key contributors to the emergence of cohesive behavior, whose next state remains unknowable. Excitable Chaos’s transductive dance with gravity—its energetic tensions, correlations, and upheavals continuously shaping and unshaping excitable worlds—is sensed and data‑sculpted to reveal its inner liveliness. This multivariate stream of dynamic data, extracted from Excitable Chaos’s generative movement, is mapped onto Organism’s aerodynamic thresholds, conducting its sonic behavior and thus drawing kinetic chaos into dialogue with sonic turbulence. Each undulation opens an indeterminate cycle of cascading oscillations, while chaotic attractors establish self‑similar grooves over time. The resulting turbulent sonifications of chaos serve as meditations on the spontaneous emergence of more‑than‑oneness in life and nature, and how this wild yet steerable relationality can help us co‑express worlds yet unknown. Navid Navab
Organism + Excitable Chaos
Prisma Festival | | | © David Bowen - plant machete | | | | 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 | | | | | © Barthélemy Antoine-Lœff - Tipping Point | | | The installation Tipping Point by Barthélemy Antoine-Loeff is a sensitive and poetic tribute to those dying glaciers. It stages the (re)birth of an artificial glacier protected by a dome; a drip is feeding the glacier that will grow during the exhibition. The device invites the viewer to attend the birth of this artificial glacier. It is inspired by the “ice stupas” invented by the engineer Sonam Wangchuk and used to fight against water shortages during the summer in Ladakh. Between a laboratory experiment, an attempt to repair the climate or an ironic collector’s item, the installation confronts us with time and scales; 10.000 years ago, the stabilisation of our cryosphere coincided with the first human traces we found in Mesopotamia, while the fist glaciers are disappearing in 70 years under the pressure of the human activity. Tipping Point
Barthélemy Antoine-Loeff
Migrations et Climat | | | | | © David Bowen - fly revolver | | | 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 | | | © Annelies Van Parys (photo: Koen Broos) | | | | Challenges in classical music: they exist! In her project ‘Fast nur Luft’ (‘Almost Air Only’), renowned recorder player Tomma Wessel challenges contemporary composers to write a piece, each time focusing on a different aspect of the recorder. Annelies Van Parys breathes new life into the Baroque flattement technique. Next to Annelies’ work, a lot of other composers shine their lights on other aspects of the recorder, a.o. Neyrinck, Gentilucci and Shlomowitz. Annelies Van Parys
Tickets | | | | | © Hermann Nitsch, Reliktinstallation 6-Tage-Spiel, 1998 | | | Faith No More. Rituals for Uncertain Times is an exhibition about apocalyptic thinking, despair, hope, and consolation in the Middle Ages and today, featuring live work by Tino Sehgal in de Kapel and works by Hermann Nitsch, Marina Abramović, Francis Alÿs, Joseph Beuys, Michaël Borremans, Miriam Cahn, Lucas Cranach I, Thierry De Cordier, Albrecht Dürer, Marlene Dumas and many others in the galleries. We are living in uncertain times. Climate change, wars, tensions between countries, rapid technological shifts and social unrest leave many feeling lost. At times, it seems as though we are sliding into an apocalyptic vision of the future. This echoes the late Middle Ages, when people saw their world as chaotic, threatening and unstable — and surrendered to higher powers in search of guidance. For centuries, religion offered a framework to understand life. It provided direction and comfort, but also imposed dogmas and exclusion. Faith was the way to create order in an often incomprehensible reality. Today, that self-evident role of religion has largely disappeared. We live in a secular and fragmented society. Where do we now find new forms of grounding, connection and hope? How do we give our fears and desires a place? This exhibition departs from that search. It shows how artists, past and present, grapple with uncertainty and fear, how they shape grand narratives and intimate rituals, and how art can offer new perspectives for collective grounding. Perhaps the key to our time lies not in ready-made answers, but in searching, experiencing, and imagining together what it means to be human in a world full of change. Descend into the underground galleries and immerse yourself in late medieval and contemporary art about doom and dawn, despair and consolation. Above ground, in de Kapel, live work by Tino Sehgal awaits you — a transitional ritual between the world inside and the world outside. A sensory and emotionally charged experience that cannot be captured on camera: what remains is only your memory — intimate, temporary, and unrepeatable. Faith No More. Rituals for Uncertain Times is curated by Sarah Keymeulen and Klara Rowaert in collaboration with co-curator Kendell Geers. Hermann Nitsch
Faith No More. Rituals for Uncertain Times
Abby Kortrijk | | | © David Bowen - tele-present wind | | | | Stedelijk Museum Schiedam breathes new life into the former dance hall and cinema Monopole with art. Silence & The Presence of Everything is 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. 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 | | | | | © Lawrence Malstaf - Tromsø Observatorium 02023 - 0205 | | | Tromsø Observatorium 02023 - 02025 is a transformation of a World War II bunker located at the end of a 200 meter long pier in Tromsø, North Norway. Below a project room will host interventions and discussions on urban development and nature conservation. On top a 5,6 m dome is now constructed with reclaimed materials, and offers a panoramic view on the sea, the city and the sky. It's often very windy and cold, but with a little sun it gets nice and warm like in a greenhouse. The works on the interior have started this week. With support of KORO, Tromsø Municipality, Sparebankstiftelsen
Lawrence Malstaf
Follow Tromsø Observatorium on Instagram | | | 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 | | | | |
