PSY000T3
Regulator of the Symbiocene2025
Driven by Albrecht’s concept of the Symbione, a speculative future epoch grounded in mutualism, slowness and interdependence, the project stems from the artist’s own experience of hypothyroidism (an endocrine disease where the thyroid underproduces key metabolic hormones). In the project, the “malfunctions” of hypothyroidism: fatigue, slowed cognition and depression, are reframed as tools for speculative design. Rejecting a clear split of the human and machine, the installation produces a new body, a hypothyroid cyborg. As its silicone body inflates and deflates slowly, powered by an electro-pneumatic circuit informed by actual data on thyroid function, metabolic delay turns into embodied poetics. Placed within the setting of a control room, the cyborg’s metabolic slowness becomes a regulator of macro-level phenomena: climate scenarios. Using global warming datasets and regulating their outcomes through the decelerating function of the hypothyroid body, the computed worlds imagine the possibility of a cooled and recovering Earth, shifted towards logics of the Symbiocene. As we enter this control room, surveillance is made visible. We are watched by the cyborg, but not in an attempt at control, but in protection. The audience is integrated within the system, entangled and reflected, as potential co-habitants of a symbiotic future.
- Vid Koprivšek
Ph. MFRU31 Archive
Multimedia-Interactive installation, variable dimensions, monitors, beamer, computers, webcams, OpenCV and mediapipe tracking technology, VVVV software patch, soft-sylicon robot with arduino driven pump mechanism.
Exhibition view at Esoteric Ecotechnics, Inroot, MFRU - Maribor International Festival of Computer Arts, Maribor, Slovenia