Tench Cholnoky
Projects
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02.17.23
Concept
Our central focus: biomimicry - the ways that digital and natural worlds mirror each other. Centering the digital world around its biotic origins is a necessary first step towards integrating the digital into the natural. When building a digital world the only world we can look to for examples is the natural world, so digital creations involve some mimicry of the natural by necessity. Our wire networks become root systems, and our A.I. evolves like an organism, mutating and rearranging. The show rests in the space where machines and the forest can nurture each other. The reflection of the natural world exists in all digital creations. We invite you to reside in the space where machines and forests can nurture each other.
Auto-Organics was principally focused with digital replication of natural processes, and how interwoven the digital and organic realms were. We wanted to position them as bound together, not diametrically opposed as they so often are.
My Focus
We started Auto-Organics hot off the tail of Cyborg//HYPERMEAT. With some new knowledge and practice under our belt, I began to think about algorithmic botany, generative plant growth, and the verdant digital. Those conversations evolved into Auto-Organics. Auto-Organics was the first show I used Touchdesigner, but the vast majority of the visuals were still made completely from scratch at runtime in Hydra.
Regarding curation, I wanted to get a variety of people engaging with the natural world. Some folks decided to make pieces about climate change, about organic decay, machines who breathed, the stories remembered by soil, and the biomimicry of military weapons. This group of install artists needed a lot of set up and prep, we had to drill load bearing anchors into the ceiling to suspend sculptures and glass panels, projection map, and lots of other tech. I was thinking about digital naturalism in a very broad sense, and wanted to get a variety of folks working in sculpture, physical computation, projection, video, and installation.
Documentation
2. Performance by and Install by Tao Liu
4. Performance by Cass Yao
6. Installation by Lauria Clarke
8. Installation by Pepi Ng
10. Performance by Katherine Bahena-Benitez
3. Performance by ZAI accompanied by my visuals
5. Performance by and Install by Tao Liu
7. Installation by Julia Daser
9. Full Upstairs of show
11. Performance by Magali, A Cult accompanied by my visuals