National Museum of Art Timișoara and Ars Electronica Center in Linz are simultaneously hosting, during July 23 – September 17, 2023, the installation I, HUMAN by Saint Machine, as part of MNART BAROQUE RELOADED, a multiannual project of Timișoara 2023 Cultural Programme –European Capital of Culture, financed by Timiș City Council.
I, HUMAN is conceived as a modular media sculpture resembling a neural network that detects the emotions of its visitors and converts their empathy into coherent light to influence the vital biological processes of microorganisms, as a symbol of the fragility of our planet’s ecosystem, whose survival depends on human cohesion.
Visitors in National Museum of Art Timișoara interact in real time with those in Ars Electronica Center in Linz (Austria), the sculpture transferring their levels of empathy into laser light pulses to symbolically connect the two cities. The artwork uses human emotion as content and coherent light as content carrier to influence the feeding conditions of a population of Euglena in a bio-photonic at the Center for Advanced Laser Technologies in Măgurele. The visitors thus become both subjects and observers of the experiment. In a society polarized by war and political discourse, we are reminded that our emotional cohesion also impacts the ecosystem we are all part of. I, HUMAN is a metaphor of our evolution as species, whose survival may depend on our capacity to care of the collective organism that we form with our planet.
The official opening of the exhibition is on July 23, 2023 at 18:00 in the Baroque Hall of the National Museum of Art Timișoara. Until then, an intro of the exhibition can be tested by the public in Timișoara and Linz, in the foyer of Ars Electronica Museum in Linz and at the National Museum of Art Timișoara (Mercy Gallery underground).
Organiser: National Museum of Art Timișoara
Co-organiser: Ars Electronica Center - ART, TECHNOLOGY, SOCIETY.
Science partner: Center for Advanced Laser Technologies, Măgurele (RO) (Dr. Phys. Marian ZAMFIRESCU)
Artistic producer: Tumult Space
Curator Baroque Reloaded by MNART: AURA BĂLĂNESCU
Curator ARS ELECTRONICA CENTER : VERONIKA KRENN