Symbionts

Symbionts

2022

ceramic, textile, wood, electronics

various dimensions

photo: Jakub Jančo

Symbionts are interactive ceramic and sound objects that respond to the conditions in the environment where they “live”: temperature, humidity, air pressure and quality, and other sensory inputs.

The project looks at the perspective of the sustainability of the planet’s memory footprint: objects, depending on their location, emit sounds that constantly recontextualize real-time recordings of natural and man-made environments in the global Internet database. The objects were created using the technique of manual shaping of clay and firing with glazes reflecting the surrounding environment. Their visual appearance and technological component are based on the concept of natural and artificial hybridity. The ideological starting points of the project develop current philosophical approaches such as acoustic ecology (R. Murray Schafer), dark ecology (Timothy Morton), object-oriented ontology (Graham Harman) or the new climate regime (Bruno Latour).

Symbionts were created in a collaboration with sound artist and musicologist Slávo Krekovič.