XENOLALIA
2023
SOFIAN AUDRY
TEZ
Italy / Amsterdam
Xenolalia is an art-science installation exploring computational and biological sentience through a feedback loop connecting an artificial neural network with a colony of microalgae to create a speculative living alphabet.
The alphabet emerges through an iterative morphogenetic process. The neural network projects a glyph onto a Petri dish. Drawn to the light, the microorganisms move toward the shape, acting like a living photographic substrate. Their image is captured and fed back to the network, generating a new glyph. Over time, a hybrid biological-computational symbol gradually takes form.
Displayed at micro, meso, and macro scales, the work invites curiosity and imagination. Visitors witness a unique form of communication between biological and computational agencies, exploring a speculative language they must interpret.
On this metamorphic stage of human, non-human, biological, and computational entities, the audience is encouraged to rethink language, perception, meaning, and sentience from a non-anthropocentric perspective. The installation hints at future interactions between computational, carbon-based, and even xenobiological entities.
Sofian Audry explores hybrid agents at the intersection of art, artificial intelligence, and artificial life. They create fragile, adaptive systems that blur boundaries between nature and technology, biology and computation, human and machine. Audry's experimental practice subverts traditional technoscientific frameworks by destabilizing technology's role as a tool for control, redistributing agency among human and nonhuman to reveal the precarious humanity of machinic and living agents while inviting audiences to question their own nonhuman character.
TeZ (aka Maurizio Martinucci) is an interdisciplinary artist and independent researcher, living and working in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. TeZ explores the boundaries between human perception and all physical phenomena associated to vibrations. He crafts custom generative software and instruments for sound and light propagation, as well as specific architectural structures where subtle oscillations can reach the body and stimulate meditative and immersive experiences.
Biologist : Nishad Jayasundara
Assistants : Etienne Montenegro (coding, electronics, fabrication), Guillaume Cramoisan (fabrication), Matthew Loewen (coding), Ian Donnelly (biology), Brynn Yarbrough (biology)
Soutien : Canada Council for the Arts, Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec, Mondriaan Fund, Hexagram, Université du Québec à Montréal, University of Maine
60 minutes
$6,75
1-4 people
The installation activates the moment you enter EISODE.
Book a time slot, then receive a code by email allowing you to access EISODE for a private 1-hour session with the artwork.
SELF-LED EXPERIENCE
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MARCH 05 → APRIL 23
SOFIAN AUDRY & TEZ
75 minutes
≥ $24
1-4 people
Fermented Japanese black tea will be served.
Over a tea, the host presents the exhibition and guides your attention to foster an active artistic experience.
GUIDED EXPERIENCE
MARCH 05 → APRIL 23
SOFIAN AUDRY & TEZ
Free / RSVP
Join a discussion about the collaborative process between artists and the development of Xenolalia's bio-computational language.
Mediation event with the artist
MEETING
MARCH 09 / 7PM
SOFIAN AUDRY & TEZ
Free / RSVP
Watch a demonstration of Xenolalia's morphogenetic process.
Mediation event with the artist
MEETING
MARCH 17 / 7PM
SOFIAN AUDRY
Accédez à l'ensemble des activités dans la billetterie.