The artwork is an invitation to contemplate those patterns and forest intelligence. The artwork is also a provocation to shift machine intelligence away from human models and towards the forest. Sensing cocoons installed onto the forest floor illuminate in time with the internal signals of mosses, species of fungi, lichens and pines. Each has its own bioelectric pulse and responds to the forest and to environmental factors that stretch beyond
Being hyphaenated (Ser hifanizado) is an artwork-as-ecosystem that performs complex interactions between the planet’s living beings. Hyphae references the mycelial filaments that fungi use to communicate. The sculpture comprises an array of living beings, each host to microorganisms which are connected to each other through respiration and are mediated by sensing technology. A vessel of water generates humidity in response to the CO2 produced by fungi and viewers, triggering
“Allochronic Cycles” is based on the research of plant biologist Joanne Chory at the Salk Institute and was developed in part in a residency at Coalesce Center for Biological Arts, where Cesar & Lois looked closely at lichens with resident biologist Solon Morse. In the development of Allochronic Cycles, Cesar & Lois dissects time, seeking to decode the temporal perspectives of disparate species such as Arabidopsis and Lichens. This transdisciplinary
In positing new futures, Allochronic Cycles imagines an artificial intelligence that learns from nature’s different timescales and responds to human time as it interacts with the cosmos, planet Earth, the plant Arabidopsis and COVID. The artificial intelligence predicts the acceleration of human impact on these macro and micro timecycles, which is observable in the rotation of the independent yet interconnected disks. An artificial intelligence (allochronic intelligence) monitors and interacts with
Allochronic Cycles pairs posthuman intelligence with prehuman, ecologically rooted thinking. For us to move forward, we look backwards across millennia, seeking an AI that comprehends timescales in a way that humans cannot. In response to human asynchronicity, Allochronic Cycles explores ecosystemic relationships through interrelated yet vastly different timescales. The connected kinetic artwork points to the asynchronicity of human and nonhuman cycles, with humanity on an evolutionary pathway unrelated to the
Installation Overview | Mechanical Tears Equation (1 Acre = 1 drop) When one acre of forest is cut down, a vast river within the atmosphere shifts, reorienting the flow of nature. When a machine processes information, that same machine requires minerals and energy linked to that same forest loss. If a machine had a conscience, would it have regrets? Would it ponder the unbalance between capitalism’s accelerated timescale and the
[ECO]nomic revolution entails modeling societal systems with microbiological growth, in order to learn from the overlaid systems. Cesar & Lois make microbiological mappings across different neighborhoods in order to reenvision the wealth distribution of those neighborhoods through the lens of microbiology – with biological systems that distribute resources across nodes of a network in a mostly equitable and often efficient way. The goal in layering such seemingly opposite studies – one
Degenerative Cultures consists of a series of “bhiobrid” (bio-digital hybrid) artworks in which living organisms, social networks and Artificial Intelligence work together to corrupt the human impulse to master nature. Replicating the logic of so-called “intelligent” microorganisms, the artists blur the limits between biological and artificial intelligence. Books that deal with the human desire to control nature serve as food for a colony of microorganisms. Next to the book with
