Grappling with climate change and collective cooperation, a collaboration emerges as the XR art exhibition: Seed Systems. Six international artists who specialize in virtual world-building and plant knowledge, explore speculative approaches to future human-nature relationships, using new digital media art to cultivate an immersive garden of growth and foliage. Surpassing borders and moving between realities, Seed Systems brings perspectives from other places to Toronto/Tkaronto as an exchange between the exhibition visitors and artists responding to our current climate crisis and envisioning potential futures together.
Artists:
Alison Bennett (AUS) | Nicholas Delap (UK) | Matthew D. Gantt (US) | Mohsen Hazrati (IRN/DE) | Nadine Kolodziey (DE) | Lauren Moffatt (AUS/DE)
Curated by Miriam Arbus (Sky Fine Foods) and Peggy Schoenegge (peer to space)
In cooperation with Goethe Institute Toronto, Radiance and STYLY
At: Goethe Institute Toronto, 100 University Ave, Toronto, ON M5J 1V6, and online via STYLY
Duration: September 21 – October 26 2023
Opening: September 21, 2023, 6:30-8:30pm
Exhibition hours: Thursdays from 4pm – 7pm, or by appointment (info@skyfinefoods.com)
Seed Systems: Speculative Ecologies in XR Art Today
In the age of the extractivist Anthropocene, nature is dominated by human impact. We built capitalistic structures by extracting and selling natural resources for our own benefit. The dramatic increase in CO2 emissions since the Industrial Revolution and the devastating effects of human activities on the global environment have profoundly changed the Earth system. Escalating climate disasters like wildfires, floodings or frost call for a change in overall behavior. The resulting environmental precarity underlines the need for new, innovative visions for the future.
Following the idea of neo-ecologies, virtual technologies provoke new states of being, illustrating concepts for our future. Reformulating approaches to environmental questions, interactive Expanded Realities (XR) immerse us into speculative ecosystems. Divergent futures emerge as a digital garden, where growth is as inevitable as decay. The tensions of human impact are deeply rooted within the exploration of possibilities. In this discourse, humans’ inevitable depletion of resources is the critical object of consideration.
Grappling with these topics, the XR art exhibition Seed Systems emerges as a collaborative cultivation. Six international artists use augmented and virtual realities to explore speculative approaches to future human-nature relationships, forming a spatial and sonic occurrence of growth and foliage. They unite their expertise in virtual world-building and plant knowledge, shaping alternative ecologies and biologies. The artworks create networks and systems of seeds as future concepts for environments. Activated in XR through computer-generated images (CGI), animation, point clouds and interactions, the digital biosphere – nourished by visions – grows as a space for meeting and reflection. In this speculative approach, new possibilities for action, care-taking, and reciprocity flourish, visualizing a necessary change in perspective.
Alison Bennett considers Australian native flowers as celestial encounters by exploring vegetal thinking, digital gardening and post-human neuroqueer phenomenology through today’s possibilities of expanded photography. Nicholas Delap examines histories of folklore and the nettle plant – a mysterious and overlooked plant whose medicinal qualities make it one of the most potent and widely available healing tools. Matthew D. Gantt interconnects responsive sound elements with the visual, engaging with Brian Eno’s notion of generative electronic music as bottom-up gardening – emergent structures flourish with no predicated finale. Mohsen Hazrati creates a virtual bioluminescence with a metaphorical approach to understanding wine as an alternative source of energy, which he considers in the context of Irianian culture. Nadine Kolodziey explores how to plant something digital and intangible in a physical space, while playfully questioning future interactions within our technologized environment. Lauren Moffatt establishes cycles of flourishing and decay in nature, examining how different virtual and physical ecosystems become linked by human movement and behavior.
Inspired by gardens that carefully construct spaces of experience and interaction, the exhibition considers how new media can be used to reimagine ecological systems and facilitate mindful, inclusive futures. Planting seeds of reflection and growth raises the question of what we can do at a small scale to initiate patterns for the greater system. Should this practice be considered rebellious, productive or promising? Can this artistic activism really contribute to a positive development of our planet’s ecology? How can the influence of humankind change for the better?
Participating ARTISTS
Alison Bennett, Vegetal/Digital, 2022 , AR experience
Alison Bennett considers Australian native flowers as celestial encounters by exploring vegetal thinking, digital gardening and post-human neuroqueer phenomenology through the possibilities of expanded photography and point-cloud renderings. The forms seemingly dissolve and reveal individual details of the plant’s structure. Doing so, the artist creates a unique aesthetic of nature and allows a different perspective on the plant, which evolves as an artifact within the interactive AR experience.
Referring to the philosophical concept of vegetal thinking, characteristics of plant behavior and the vegetal heritage of human thought are juxtaposed. Following this idea, Bennett adds the approach of digital gardening, in which seeds of thoughts are shared and cultivated in a public, online space. Understanding the web as a kind of garden, the artist changes the technological view of the virtual and generates a speculative idea of future natural spaces. Mediated through an autistic queer lense, Bennett’s work sides with the object, creating encounters that collapse the spectral, floral and machinic.
Nicholas Delap, Urtica Portal, 2022, AR experience
Nicholas Delap’s ongoing research into intertwining of folklore and plant symbologies emerges as an AR experience that encourages a re-wilding of the mind. The user experiences an overlay of nettles that illuminate the exhibition space and become a pathway for detoxifying and cleansing. Directing the user’s focus to the natural environment, the artwork creates a contrast between the physical and digital spheres, pointing to the otherworldly qualities of what we perceive as wilderness.
Delap’s work examines wild spaces and the flora and fauna that thrive in the diverse range of landscapes of the British Isles. Examining the Urtica dioica, also known as the nettle, the artist explores a mysterious and overlooked plant whose medicinal qualities make it one of the most potent and widely available healing tools. With a rich magical history within the folklore of the British Isles and Northern Europe, the plant thrives in seemingly neglected spaces – the man-made and post-industrial landscapes that make up a large part of today’s Britain. The nettle has many properties: it detoxifies soil, regenerates ecosystems, and allows a more diverse range of plants to grow in its wake. It heals both the human and non-human worlds. Through this work, the artist responds to post-human neo-ecologies, exploring and reflecting local and global practices relating to trees and plants.
Matthew D. Gantt, Varigate, Variegated, 2022, AR experience & sound installation
Matthew D. Gantt’s AR experience immerses the visitor into a lush and imitative vegetation contained inside of a greenhouse structure. A referential experience emerges that places an immaterial architecture into the exhibition space, creating a tension between both spheres. The experience is accompanied by electronic sounds, which change and cycle over time.. Varigate, Variegated interconnects responsive sound elements with the visual, as an interactive experience, underlining the digital matter.
In the experience, the artist refers to Brian Eno’s notion of generative electronic music as a bottom-up gardening – an occurrence where emergent structures are encouraged to flourish with no predicated finale. Above this, ephemeral moments emerge, resembling the growth and mutation of vegetation. In this way, the work breaks away from rigid structures and creates something unpredictable. Gantt unveils a new, virtual dimension into the physical surroundings. In traditional analogue synthesis, a digital gate signals an electrical pulse which triggers sound events within the greenhouse. In the juxtaposition of both worlds, a reference system emerges that translates the characteristics of nature into the virtual and makes them accessible.
Mohsen Hazrati, Perception of Wine, 2022, VR experience
Mohsen Hazrati creates a virtual bioluminescence with a metaphorical approach to understanding wine as an alternative source of energy, which he considers in the context of Irianian culture. References to our technologized everyday life such as computers, screens, hard drives, and geometrical formations build an abstract architecture accompanied by floral structures and text fragments. Neon lights flicker in different colors, creating an electrifying atmosphere. The user is invited to explore the virtual realm, being confronted with Irianian literature and the meaning of.
The artist reflects on the metaphor of wine. Not just being a culinary drink that refers to from blood to a friend, among others, it also had a practical function in ancient Iran. The so-called Baghdad Battery is the oldest known example of a battery. It was invented around 2000 years ago in Khujut Rabu, near the ancient metropolis of Ctesiphon. Archeologists found this battery consisting of a ceramic pot, a copper tube, and an iron rod. In order to make the battery work, the pot was filled with wine, generating around 1.5-2 volts. Hazrati adapts this idea into our post-digital age, contemporary lifestyles, and his artistic production. This ancient improvised battery serves as a symbol for the many developments that followed it in science, product design and electricity, which passed through the ages to today’s WLAN, computer screens and countless digital devices.
Nadine Kolodziey, Root About, 2022, AR experience
Artist Nadine Kolodziey’s three-dimensional anthropomorphic figures appear as a floral formation in the middle of the physical space, breaking through the environment’s material conditions and extending its structure. The artist technologizes the image of nature and changes the way we experience it. The augmented plants are composed of shiny chrome-like surfaces, beyond physical though reminiscent of glass spheres, making the intangible forms almost fragile. They create a visceral contrast to the building that houses the exhibition space. Kolodziey invites the visitors to engage with virtual nature and explore the immaterial artwork spatially.
The artist’s depiction of a virtualized nature playfully addresses the question of future interactions with our technologized environment. At the same time she explores how to plant something digital and thus immaterial in the physical space. Thorugh this approach, a hybrid user experience opens up, oscillating between both spheres. The virtual landscapes relate to and interact with the direct, physical surroundings, illustrating a symbiotic interrelationship. Kolodziey makes clear that the communication and understanding of our environment not only takes place directly in natural space, but also through the experience of virtual landscapes. Acknowledging all that we do not know, Kolodziey broadens our understanding of reality. In this discourse-relevant approach, she shows viewers a speculative reality of nature, offering an opportunity to connect in new ways.
Lauren Moffatt, (De)Composition , 2022, VR experience
In the VR experience (De)Composition Lauren Moffatt presents a series of digital collages from the Compost series, as part of her larger Flowers for Suzanne Clair body of work. We enter a dark moonlit landscape at the scale of a tiny insect, surrounded by hybrid plants that seem to breathe and reach for us. Referencing Suzanne Clair, a secondary character in the apocalyptic fiction novel The Crystal World, written by J. G. Ballard in 1966, the artist deals with an unseen or unnoticed perspective, presenting it as a different approach for reflection. In doing so, Moffatt creates an aestheticized approach to technology.
(De)Composition explores cycles of flourishing and decay in nature and how different virtual and physical ecosystems become linked by human movement and behavior. Using photogrammetry, the artist transforms plants into 3D meshes. She virtually photographs these digital reconstructions, paints them, and projects the digitized painting back onto the 3D model, creating virtual sculptures that exude a type of organic digitality. In this context, the hybrid digital flowers take on a metaphorical function. On the one hand they are an offering of mourning for Suzanne’s missing story, the missing female voice and perspective. On the other hand, they are a tribute to the power of her imagination, which, in its absence, is infinite. In this context, technology becomes a tool of deceleration and regeneration, enabling a new, technical approach to understanding in which time we live.
Partners
About STYLY
STYLY, The Real Metaverse Platform
STYLY is the real metaverse platform that gives artists a space to express their creativity, and provides an intuitive tool for creating VR, AR, and MR content easily using a web browser. XR content can be distributed to a variety of devices such as VR HMDs, web browsers, smartphones, and AR glasses. Furthermore, the software is compatible with Mac and Windows and can be operated on popular PCs, not only VR-compatible PCs. STYLY is compatible with 3D software like MAYA and Blender, as well as with services like YouTube and SoundCloud, so you can easily import different digital media and use them to build your own unique 3D environment and experience.
STYLY Official Site：https://styly.cc/
STYLY GALLERY：https://gallery.styly.cc/
About peer to space
peer to space is an independent exhibition platform that was established in Munich in 2010 and is now based in Berlin. The ever-changing team of curators under the direction of Tina Sauerlaender has realized numerous international group exhibitions in cooperation with institutions and museums such as Parsons / The New School, New York, the Goethe Institutes in Montréal, Toronto, Washington DC and Barcelona, the House of Electronic Arts Basel, or the NRW Forum, Düsseldorf. The name peer to space combines the concept of peer-to-peer networking with the ideas of space, freedom and openness to artistic expression. peer to space is not an actual place but collaborates with other spaces to realize exhibitions and projects related to art dealing with effects of the digital and Internet on our personal environment and society.
http://www.peertospace.eu/
About Sky Fine Foods
A rejuvenating experience, concerned with ecologies, inclusion, simulation, screens and realities. An experimental project space representing international contemporary and other artists with new ideas and new methods. Specifically focused in new media, digitally informed practices, and digital processes.
About Radiance
Radiance is a research platform and database for VR art. Its mission is to present artists working with VR from all over the world to create visibility and accessibility for VR art and for faster adoption of virtual technologies. The platform works closely with artists, institutions and independent curators to select the highest quality of virtual art for public institutional exhibitions.
Radiance is a research platform and database for VR art. Its mission is to present artists working with VR from all over the world to create visibility and accessibility for VR art and for faster adoption of virtual technologies. The platform works closely with artists, institutions and independent curators to select the highest quality of virtual art for public institutional exhibitions.
Currently 193 artworks by 180 artists or artist collectives from 38 countries are presented.
In addition, we have launched the Radiance VR App for the Oculus Quest > Get the app here!
About Goethe-Institut
The Goethe-Institut is the cultural institute of Germany with a global reach. We foster international cultural cooperation and convey a comprehensive image of Germany by providing information about its cultural, social and political life. Our cultural and educational programs encourage intercultural dialogue and encourage worldwide mobility. We present important positions in contemporary German culture by bringing art and creators from Europe to Canada and introducing next ideas with an impact on a broad range of communities. We are partners for all who actively engage with Germany and its culture, working independently and without political ties, and in sustainable partnerships with leading institutions and individuals in over ninety countries. goethe.de/toronto