Marc Lee (CH) in collaboration with Shervin Saremi (Sound)
Speculative Evolution
Mobile App as Interface for Net-Based Installation, 2024 – ongoing
Speculative Evolution, Screenshot from Mobile App 2, courtesy of the artist.
Due to the threatening predictions of species extinction and global warming, scientists and farmers are increasingly relying on technologies such as genetic engineering, synthetic biology and machine learning. Speculative Evolution imagines a speculative ecosystem 30 years from now, where artificial intelligence and biotechnologies work together to create and optimize species to withstand the increasingly hostile environment. From the perspective of an AI simulator, the audience is invited to create new variations of animals, fungi, plants, and robots, fly with these engineered and mutated species, and observe the changing ecosystem. Speculative Evolution responds to the trend of technology-assisted solution-making by constructing narratives of an uncomputable system under extreme control – what do we optimize, and what are we ignoring as a result? The project aims to inspect our tendency to simplify complex ecosystems by treating nature as a system that can be fixed.Marc Lee’s works, which focus on real-time processed, computer programmed audio visual installations, have been shown in major Museums and new media art exhibitions including: ZKM Karlsruhe, New Museum New York, Transmediale Berlin, Ars Electronica Linz.