Navid Navab presents Organism: In Turbulence (Live) at FIBER
31.05.2025 FIBER Festival
Orgelpark, Amsterdam (NL)
Organism destabilises the socio-historical tonality of a century-old pipe organ to liberate and sound its turbulent materiality, robotically unleashing timbres unheard after centuries of sonic restraint. During concerts, shifting metastable states allow for Organism’s energetic thresholds to rapidly fall into and out of compatibility with one another. With no digital sounds, Navab aerodynamically shapes the resulting ecology of interdependent timbres into emergent realms, traversing microsonic polyrhythms, post-rock overspill and swampy soundscapes.
Performance: solo acoustic concert for robotically prepared historic organ, 2024
1 Drop 1000 Years at Gibanja 2025
19.05.2025 Kontejner & Pogon Jedinstvo
Zagreb (HR)
1 Drop 1000 Years - In this hypnotic performance, I explore 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 unfolds as a poetic, immersive ballet, revealing the fragility of ecosystems and the delicate harmony that binds all things on Earth.
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.
Tele-present wind in Out of Control
16.05.2025 - 01.08.2025 esc medien kunst labor
Graz (AT)
"One day we may have to worry about an all-powerful machine intelligence. But first we need to worry about putting machines in charge of decisions for which they lack the intelligence." [Jon Kleinberg]
tele-present wind consists of a series of 42 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.
For this version of tele-present wind at esc medien kunst labor, Graz the sensor will be installed in an outdoor location adjacent to the Visualization and Digital Imaging Lab at the University of Minnesota, USA. Thus, the individual components of the installation in Austria will move in unison as they mimic the direction and intensity of the wind halfway around the world. As it monitors and collects real-time data from this remote and distant location, the system will relay a physical representation of the dynamic and fluid environmental conditions.
Oceanic Oscillation - première
16.05.2025 - 15.06.2025 PHOS Festival
Matane (CA)
Oceanic oscillation - In the same vein as 1 Drop 1000 Years, this piece explores thermohaline currents—the deep ocean flows that regulate our planet’s climate. Through moving drawings of the thermohaline loop, brought to life by motors, lights, and sound, the project makes visible the invisible forces that shape our world.
On an oceanic scale, surface waters and deep waters intertwine in a vast circulation network - the thermohaline loop - which orchestrates the balance of living organisms. Under the impact of human activity, this dynamic is being disrupted, weakening the interactions and stability of ecosystems. How can we, as individuals, understand these invisible forces that shape our planet?
In this installation, 21 sheets of paper carry the memory of ocean currents. Their graphic lines reveal the variations of ocean currents, while a set of motors instills subtle, organic movement. Through glass filters, the public explores these oscillations, whose perception changes according to the light reflections and their own movements in front of the work. Ambient music with evolving textures, punctuated by glitches that alter sonic harmony, accompanies this fragile breathing.
With Oceanic Oscillation, Martin Messier invites us to consider ecological issues through a prism that is both philosophical and sensory: to perceive the world's pulsations, to experience the latent tension between stability and chaos, and to detect our own vulnerability in the face of ongoing imbalances.
Organism: in turbulence
14.05.2025 Kontejner
Zagreb (HR)
Organism destabilises the socio-historical tonality of a century-old pipe organ to liberate and sound its turbulent materiality, robotically unleashing timbres unheard after centuries of sonic restraint. During concerts, shifting metastable states allow for Organism’s energetic thresholds to rapidly fall into and out of compatibility with one another. With no digital sounds, Navab aerodynamically shapes the resulting ecology of interdependent timbres into emergent realms, traversing microsonic polyrhythms, post-rock overspill and swampy soundscapes.
Performance: solo acoustic concert for robotically prepared historic organ, 2024
SHRINK 01995 at 16. Internationalen Tanztage Oldenburgisches Theater
10.05.2025 Oldenburgisches Theater
Oldenburg (D)
SHRINK 01995 - Two large, transparent plastic sheets and a device that gradually sucks the air out from between them leave the body vacuum-packed and vertically suspended. The transparent tube inserted between the two surfaces allows the person inside the installation to regulate the flow of air. As a result of the increasing pressure between the plastic sheets, the surface of the packed body gradually freezes into multiple micro-folds. For the duration of the performance the person inside moves slowly and changes positions, which vary from an almost embryonic position to one resembling a crucified body.
At 16. Internationalen Tanztage there will be 3 Shrinks and the bodies of 3 performers.
Ríos Trilogy
02.05.2025 - 09.04.2025 Festival Internacional de la Imagen
Bogota & Manizales, Colombia
RÍOS TRILOGY // CHAPTER N.2: HYBRID CARTOGRAPHIES
The second chapter of the Ríos Trilogy presents twenty-one clay 3D-printed sculptures shaped through digital hybridisation using Amazon-related data. Each piece corresponds to one of the main tributary territories of the Amazon Basin. These speculative cartographic artefacts draw on topographic and social media data to reflect the socio-environmental tensions tensions pressing on the region.
2 - 8 May 2025
CEFE - Centro Felicidad Chapinero, Bogotá, Colombia
RÍOS TRILOGY // CHAPTER N.3: HYBRID R€¥€R$€
R€¥€R$€ is a 30' Virtual Reality piece that deepens into the complex situation of Amazonia. More than half of the Amazon region, 66 per cent of it, is subject to permanent pressure due to human extractive practices such as oil and mineral exploitation, road infrastructure development, ranching, agricultural activity and hydroelectric plants. Deforestation, burning, and loss of carbon stocks are proof of the large-scale transformations taking place in Amazonia.
The ancestral Indigenous Peoples' and the biome of the Rainforest are endangered by the rapid deforestation and exploitation of natural resources. The extractivist practices operating in the region have caused irreparable damage to these vital ecosystems, threatening the survival of countless species of plants and animals. The loss of these valuable resources impacts the local communities who rely on them for their livelihoods and has far-reaching global consequences. It is imperative that we take action to protect and preserve the Rainforest and its inhabitants before it's too late.
R€¥€R$€ underlines the tensions present in the territory, where human, cultural and environmental aspects rub with power, economics and multinational interests in a context of climate stress in which importance of preserving this unique ecosystem is vital for the survival of the current life on Earth.
5 - 9 May 2025
Centro Fundadores, Manizales, Colombia
Humming the Ubique at Hear Here
24.04.2025 - 09.06.2025 Hear Here STUK Leuven
BAC ART LAB, Vital Decosterstraat 102, Leuven (B)
Humming the Ubique is a new installation and part of the Hear Here exhibition.
A mosaic of luminescent foils with artificial voices responds to the imperceptible radiation of the city.
The universe is permeated with radiation that cannot be perceived by our human senses. What is visible and audible to humans is only a very limited part of the electromagnetic and sound spectrum. Think of infrasound, ultraviolet light, or cosmic radiation. In this new work, I create a mosaic of wafer-thin foils that transform such radiation into luminous fields of color and voices. The vocal sounds are generated by artificial intelligence, while the color of the foils intensifies with voltage. The input to the work comes from sensors placed along the Hear Here Walk, directly translating the city's present but imperceptible radiations into this audiovisual artwork.
DARK at Festival Trouble #13
14.04.2025 - 16.02.2025 Studio Thor
Brussels (B)
DARK is a new performance by Kris Verdonck / A Two Dogs Company about artificial intelligence and artificial presence. In this production Verdonck continues his exploration of the tension between presence and absence, real and fake, human and technology, and all this in times of AI.
Mustaf Ahmeti and Jeroen Van der Ven are the performers for this piece that consists of three parts: DARK, ACT #2 and BRASS #2. Live and digital bodies and voices alternate, to the point where they are difficult to distinguish. In the theatre space, DARK examines that other black box: the space behind the computer or smartphone screen and the algorithms and artificial intelligence behind all kinds of social media and chatbots. A performer surrounded by glass panels manipulates the screens, disappears, reappears and seems to want to draw the audience into their space.
By means of artificial intelligence, ACT #2 continues the work Verdonck and actor Johan Leysen (1950-2023) did on Samuel Beckett. A voice speaks the thirteenth and final part Beckett’s Texts for nothing, alone in the darkness as blankets rise and fall like ghosts moving across the stage. In BRASS #2, music resounds from three sousaphones, but the source of the sounds is indeterminate in this experiment with artificial presence.
What bodies and forms of life are to be found “behind” our screens and apps? And what impact do those screens and digital entities have on our bodies, our senses, our sense of reality? Like the human performers, the objects in this performance have an ambiguous status. Are they controlled by the performers or vice versa, or do they move autonomously? Everything seems interconnected and the spectator too will have to reconsider their point of view in this haunting world in which the concept of reality is called into question.
14/4 - 20:30 - 15/4 - 20:30 - 16/4 - 15:00 & 19:30
Organism + Excitable Chaos in Proximity Music: Echoes of Entropy
04.04.2025 - 06.04.2025 Rewire 2025
The Hague (NL)
Proximity Music is a joint exhibition program initiated by iii and Rewire. It seeks to connect music, architecture, technology, ritual, and play through sensory experiences.
Proximity Music: Echoes of Entropy explores how chaos and entropy act as both forces of creation and catalysts for change. Drawing inspiration from the second law of thermodynamics, where entropy signifies the inevitable drift towards disorder, the exhibition delves into the consequences of these forces on our environment, socio-political systems, and human interactions.
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 conventional clean tones of the organ to sonify its turbulent materiality. Through the rapid exchange of potential and kinetic energy between its three moving arms, Excitable Chaos conducts Organism to create sound. This highlights how, in nature, even minor changes are key contributors to the pendulum’s unpredictable behaviour. This work reflects on how a sense of more-than-oneness may spontaneously develop in life and nature, and shows how a wild yet steerable relationality can help people to co-express unknown worlds.
Navid Navab is an antidisciplinary composer with a background in contemporary music, biomedical sonification, and philosophical biology. Through an investigative ArtScience practice, Navab's recent creations meticulously stage uncanny forms of order by imbuing machines with a sense of liveliness through fusion with the excitable dynamics of matter. These investigative works orchestrate sensory attunement to forms of life, at the pre-metabolic border between breathing and not breathing, while cybernetically enfolding these excitable dynamics.
Garnet Willis is a Canadian interdisciplinary artist, audio engineer, and instrument builder. Willis’s research investigates the crossroads between sensation, form over time, sentient matter, and material agency.