Neural networks trained on the sounds and images of the day-to-day of the world around us generate a constantly shifting, hybrid ecosystem.
Entangled Others Studio was founded to tease out the complex entanglements between the human and the “more-than-human” world. Neural artist Sofia Crespo, generative artists and former architect Feileacan McCormick, sound artist Alejandro Mune and creative researcher Alan Ixba define an entanglement as “a complex state one where no single entity can be said to be separate, or somehow unaffected, by any other present entangled.” In acknowledgment of the continual blurring of physical and virtual space due to the development of more and more complex technological systems, Entangled Others assert that “the rich substrate of the uncanny, eerie spaces between us and the non-human world cannot remain as an aesthetic space, our world cannot bear this self-imposed distance and denial of our inter-twined state of us and other.” Instead, through a communal generative art practice, the studio seeks to encourage and nurture an interconnected world in which the natural and the artificial, the human and the more-than-human exist in dynamic harmony.
Hybrid Ecosystems is an ongoing work that is emblematic of this engagement with everyday entanglement. “The digital and physical world seems at first glance separate, occupying different layers of reality that seem to reluctantly interact, this is further reinforced through the manner in which digital interfaces are designed,” explain the studio. “The reality of our mundane life is that these two layers of reality are in fact tightly interwoven, constantly influencing, interacting, shaping & reshaping, consuming and acting. Our inherited bias towards seeing the man-made, or artificial, as different from the natural world further obscures this reality where digital agents (software & hardware) behave and interact as an ecosystem, also with the natural world.” Aquatic life-forms suggest themselves before rapidly evolving into more complicated variations and blending seamlessly into artificial abstractions, intricate coral formations and deep-sea organisms sharing space with oscillating circuit boards, formless electronics and unrecognizable virtual interfaces.
“By prompting neural models trained on the vast mundane visuality of our world, i.e. with standardised datasets that are considered a benchmark for the status quo of our day-to-day lives, we attempt an exercise of re-imagining,” continue Entangled Others. ” Starting well within the familiar, this exploration of neural-speculative visions of reality attempts to manipulate and distort our mundanity into speculative representations of the digital & physical entanglement: exploring how we can stretch our imagination so as to see a world of harmoniously interacting artificial and natural life as one single, sustainable ecosystem.” Set against the uncanny, discordant tones of Alejandro Mune’s sound design, Hybrid Ecosystems approximates the experience of being submerged, not in the aquatic environs that the work gestures towards, but in the ceaseless currents of an entangled, harmonic environment.
For more information about Entangled Others Studio you can visit the studio website and follow the studio on Instagram. You can also find Sofia Crespo, Feileacan McCormick, Alejandro Mune and Alan Ixba on Instagram.
Watch next: Against The Clock – Stiff Pap
