Festival for expanded media 37. Stuttgarter Filmwinter

Kunstbezirk Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany
Curator: Marcus Kohlbach
Artists: Amal Zen, Vladimir Mitrev, Catrine Val, Susanna Hanna, Wolfgang Oelze, IP Yuk-Yiu, Paul Mignot, Marc Lee, Eyal Gruss, Robin Alysha Clemens
https://www.filmwinter.de/

Kunstbezirk Stuttgart

Speculative Evolution, Prototype 1 is a speculative place where living and non-living nature co-exist, a place where nature and machines interact and co-evolve, a place that you can co-create. Through the perspective of the AI agent, you are invited via mobile app to fly through a speculative ecosystem and create new animal, fungi, plant and robot variations based on scientific publications in the field of synthetic biology and machine learning. At the same time, this experiment aims to inspect our tendency to simplify complex ecosystems by treating nature as a system that can be calculated and optimized. Launch of the mobile app at Filmwinter.

🏆 Expanded Media Award for Network Culture, Stuttgarter Filmwinter, 2024

The Expanded Media Award for Network Culture goes to Marc Lee in collaboration with Shervin Saremi (Sound) for their mobile app Speculative Evolution, Prototype 1

Jury Statement

Speculative Evolution, Prototype 1 is a speculation about the future in a 3D game world, insane and yet frighteningly probable, almost baroquely exuberant and yet scientifically sound. In the age of the Anthropocene, Marc Lee holds up a mirror to a society playing God and viewing nature as a system that it can control and shape at will. Humans seem to have the upper hand here; what at first appears to be documentation of a well-researched scientific investigation, sucks the unexpecting viewer into a system where they are implicated in the creation of an entirely new ecosystem consisting of both known and mutated species of plants, fungi, animals and robot variants using an AI plug-in. However, evolutionary control is lost when the creations start to mutate into human-like creatures through the embedded evolutionary AI glitches. This world is all contained within a portable and interactive mobile app with sound by Shervin Saremi.
In the face of blatant environmental destruction and questionable human interventions into our biome and genetic structures, Marc Lee shows how we humans focus on our food chain for our own benefit without regard for other living creatures or the delicate balance in our natural systems. In doing so, the artist arouses legitimate concern and unease, but also inspires amazement and deeper consideration for our relationship to the natural world. The committee was also impressed by the commitment of the artist to his world building which has taken place over the past three years.
https://filmwinter.de/en/blog

Exhibited Artwork

Speculative Evolution, Prototype 1

Mobile App as Interface for Net-Based Installations

Scientists and farmers are increasingly relying on technologies such as genetic engineering, synthetic biology, and machine learning to address the challenges of species extinction and global warming. Speculative Evolution imagines a speculative ecosystem 30 years from now, where artificial intelligence and biotechnologies work together to create and optimize species to withstand the increasingly more …

Kunstbezirk Stuttgart

Kunstbezirk Stuttgart

Kunstbezirk Stuttgart

Publication

A Show of Affection, Collection Constellation 1, Booklet

Photo Museum Winterthur
Exhibiton Booklet, color, 84 pages, 18 x 27 cm
2024
English, German
Edited and Published by Fotomuseum Winterthur

Fotomuseum Winterthur, PDF Booklet: EN, DE

Fotomuseum Winterthur is taking the opportunity presented by the institution’s thirtieth anniversary to examine its own collection, with a selection of artworks providing an insight into the museum’s collecting activities. On display are works by a total of 19 different photographers and artists, a mix of well-known names and new discoveries.

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