SFER IK AWARD: The Exhibition ART IN NATURE
Nurturing Artistic Excellence,
INSPIRING Tomorrow
In 2023, the SFER IK Museum promoted an Open Call for works created by artists from all disciplines worldwide. The program aims to foster creativity and projects around themes that reflect our core values: biodiversity, interspecies collaboration, ancestral knowledge, and the harmonious integration of science, technology, and nature.
We received more than 140 proposals from 35 different countries. We encouraged projects to utilize artificial intelligence technology for their visualization and processes, believing that, in these challenging times, AI can be a powerful ally in reconnecting us with nature and our roots, as well as providing a deeper immersion into the outstanding nature surrounding us in Tulum.
The award provides resources for artists to create works that would not normally have the means or space to be realized. As we develop new museum spaces more integrated with nature, we want artists to respond creatively to these challenges.
This exhibition showcases the past works of the 7 laureates of the SFER IK Award, as well as their 4 project proposals for works being developed over this year at the AZULIK FabLab. The AZULIK FabLab is a multidisciplinary lab researching new materials, techniques, and processes that unite art, crafts, and technology, located in the middle of the jungle next to the SFER IK Museum's main site in Francisco Uh May. Artists will be in residence throughout the year at the museum to develop their projects.
Simultaneously, we are opening the Jardín En-Cantado by Cristina Ochoa, a short walk from SFER IK Tulum, featuring a collection of the "plants of power" of the Mayan culture, interpreted through today's knowledge and connected with ancestral wisdom.
Award and Residency
France
European artist working at the intersection of science and sensory immersion, field recording and sound storytelling, data and music composition. His creations take the form of listening experiences, immersive moments and audio meditations exploring our relationships with the living world. His work has been presented at Tate Britain, Palais de Tokyo, Serpentine Gallery, KIKK festival, STRP festival, Sonar+D, CCCB Barcelona, Dutch Design Week, Nuit Blanche Paris, le 104, Centre Wallonie Bruxelles, Gaité Lyrique. He produces a quarterly show called “Edge of the forest” on NTS radio weaving together field recordings, data sonifications and science inspired meditations.
Studio Antoine Bertin was created in 2018, bringing together a multidisciplinary team that develops, produces and delivers listening experiences. Studio Antoine Bertin is based in Paris and Alicudi Island and works internationally.
The Bat Cloud is a proposition for an interspecies installation, exploring the language of bats through artificial intelligence. The work operates simultaneously as a bat habitat, a scientific station, a multispecies art studio and a public listening space, located in the jungle surrounding the museum.
The objective of the Bat Cloud is the sculpting of new sustainable relations between humans and other species, through the elaboration of artist lead scientific rituals, harvesting the capacity of machine learning to decode.
& Pascal Hachem
Lebanon
Rana Haddad and Pascal Hachem, have made indelible marks on Beirut's cultural landscape. Operating at the intersection of activism and art.
Their performances, interventions, and practices address overlooked aspects of places, languages, and objects, offering alternative narratives. By focusing on urban contentions that affect citizens on a daily basis, they ignite debates and challenge socio-political measures through simple yet impactful gestures.
Emerges as a public installation, a symphony of interconnectedness, and a poignant call to action. At its core, this project seeks to illuminate the delicate dance between ancestral wisdom and cutting-edge artificial intelligence, leveraging both to accelerate our understanding of endangered species and the vulnerability of jungle ecosystems due to human impact.Ancestral Wisdom, deeply rooted in the indigenous knowledge of the jungle's custodians, collaborates with artisans to craft the objects using materials sourced exclusively from the rich flora of the region. Simultaneously, Artificial Intelligence becomes the modern oracle, analyzing sound data from disappearing creatures, laboratories, and the jungle itself. Through this synthesis, AI transforms the raw data into frequencies that spark a kinetic response within the mechanized canopies.
Alex Finnemore
& Graeme Revell
New Zealand
Mika Revell, Alex Finnemore, and Graeme Revell comprise the artist team. They are based between Costa Rica & Berlin, and New Zealand, respectively. The team brings together deep expertise in the natural sciences, conceptual and visual arts, and experimental music composition. Their work has brought attention to a broad range of subjects including how biology can inform sustainable material design, to feminism in the contemporary Asian diaspora, and innovation in world music and contemporary sound.
They have produced artworks in eight countries including solo shows of paintings, large-scale public sculpture, and an oeuvre of invention in the world of music.
This proposal outlines a soundscape sculpture that uses AI to interact with the audience and promote reflection and connection with nature. The rammed-earth sculpture, with a reflective curved void, is inspired by indigenous ways of being and designed to challenge anthropocentrism. The AI-generated soundscape combines field-recorded animal calls with synthetic meditative tones and responds to the presence and arousal of onlookers.
RECOGNITION
& Mari Nagem
Brazil
Leandro Lima
Born in 1976 in São Paulo, has participated in various national and international residencies, including the HIAP (Finland), UNESCO, Vancouver Biennale, and Artist Links (England/Brazil) facilitated by the British Council.
Mari Nagem
Born in 1984, in Belo Horizonte, Brazil Mari Nagem is a conceptual artist working on the perception of digital culture and its relation with nature. Navigating among a variety of media, using luminous colours and sharpened edges, Nagem creates works that enlighten our perception on critical aspects of the information age, such as the artificiality of landscapes, data subjectivity, and the capitalist race for happiness. With wit, and combining appealing titles, she raises existential questions while trying to bring sensibility to our relationship with and through machines.
The project "SIREN" is a sound installation using AI and 3D printed clay. The first step of the project consists in researching sounds of Southern American birds, focusing on similar species of those who are critically endangered or extinct. Feeding a machine learning model with this material, we aim to create an original sound composition that represents the sound of the extinct birds.In parallel, we'll be studying diverse bird nest models, their patterns, compositions, shapes and layers. A 3D model will be developed based on that information, creating modular nests whose interior works as a sound amplifier structure, so these 3D models become nest-amplifier devices. These modules will be 3D printed in clay and equipped with individual speakers, emitting the song of the extinct birds.
models for this project:
The first model will be created using a database of existing sounds and bird characteristics. Using a RNN or Transformer network we can create correlations between sound properties and physical characteristics of birds, like beak size, body size and wingspan. Once the model is trained it will be able to create sounds from these same characteristics, but from extinct birds.
