Nature has always exceeded the scale of human perception. In trying to understand the unfathomable workings of the world, people created technology. But as technology grew more complex, it began to shape a reality we could no longer grasp as a whole. The technological environment has become comparable to the natural one in scale, complexity and its impact on people.
Both environments affect our perception, behavior and bodies. Media art can create situations in which we experience nature and technology as environments. Artistic practice gives us a way to reconsider our place within these systems.
Today, an artwork can depend as much on its environment as on the artist’s intention. Data streams, temperature, air movement, the presence of a viewer and the behavior of an algorithm all determine its state in the moment. The work becomes an ongoing process. It responds to its conditions, changes with them and takes shape anew each time. In its variability and responsiveness, and in the impossibility of exactly repeating a state, it begins to operate like nature.
Media art makes the role of technology in perception particularly clear. If part of the world reaches us through a camera, sensor, satellite or algorithm, what counts as our own perception? Has it already taken on a new, distributed form? New media expand what we can see and hear while changing the way we encounter reality.
Technology is increasingly extending the human body itself. It can restore and augment bodily functions, grow tissue, read neural activity and model individual physiological processes. Our digital traces make it increasingly possible to describe our habits and behavior, forecast our responses and model how we are likely to react.
Technology is moving from observing people to shaping how we function. If the body can be augmented, physiological processes modeled and behavior partially predicted, what do we still consider exclusively human?
INTERVALS 2027 considers Second Nature a new condition of existence in which nature, technology and human life intersect. They shape shared processes and change through their interaction.
