Silvia Binda Heiserova | Hash Breakdown v2 | Electronic and digital assembly
Hash Breakdown v2 is a critical interface constituted by an electronic and digital ensemble of microcomputers, modules, 3D prints, sensors and codes with real-time functionality. The system parses sentences related to the keywords “feminism is” from the World Wide Web and then initiates a slowed-down explanatory process of converting the parsed sentence into a hash using the SHA-256 (Secure Hash Algorithm 256-bit) algorithm.
The artwork articulates critique directed towards the mystifying, elitist and masculine narrative around algorithms and the blockchain. The purpose of Hash Breakdown v2 is to demystify, decompose, slow down and break down the hashing process of a SHA-256 algorithm. What normally takes less than a millisecond is here extended into a 4-minute explanatory cycle, represented visually within a structure imitating parts of a simplified logic gate diagram of the very same SHA-256 hashing function.
Silvia Binda Heiserova is a visual and multimedia artist, researcher, and creative coder. She earned her Doctoral Degree in Fine Arts: Practice and Research from the Polytechnic University of Valencia, where she was part of the Art and Gender research group. She holds a Master's in Artistic Creation with a focus on Painting and Contemporary Artistic Practice, as well as a Master's in Visual and Multimedia Arts from the same institution.
Her work studies power relations in the digital era from a gender perspective. The artist applies an analytical and critical point of view to subvert stereotypical and biased gender representations articulated visually and linguistically in social and virtual spaces. Recently, her works have been exhibited in the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Spain, Chile, and Brazil, among others. She currently lives between her native country and Spain.
Paula Nishijima | Networked Play
Networked Play delves into the decentralized behaviour of living systems, network topologies, and philosophical inquiries. In its initial form, it presents a video installation and an online game. In this online game, players connect as the master in a network of brine shrimp. The master is able to control the position of a light beam in order to attract the Artemias. The goal is to navigate the brine shrimp through different rocks and complete a circuit without backtracking.
In Networked Play, the light distributed on the rocks symbolically relays the individual decision to relinquish control in order to achieve a collective goal. Just as the movement of Artemia collectively alters their environment, so too, do our interconnected actions as individuals generate amplified effects on the planet.
Paula Nishijima is a visual artist whose research-based practice unfolds at the crossroads of art, life sciences, and technology. She investigates the collective, self-organized behaviour of decentralized systems in nature, and how it can inspire more collaborative, sustainable, and ethical forms of relationship between humans, nonhumans, and the environment. Her artistic research is materialized and documented through various media, such as video, photography, games, art installations, and sculptures.
Recent exhibitions include In Touch – How to Connect in the Age of Digital Humanity? IMPAKT, Utrecht, Netherlands, 2024; Living Systems – Concepts of Natural and Artificial Otherness in Collective Habitats, Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb, 2023; and the 20th Media Art Biennale WRO, Fungible Content, Wroclaw, Poland, 2023. She has been nominated for the OplinePrize, France, 2024; Bio Art and Design Award, 2022 and the Young Master Award of Media Art Friesland, 2021, both in the Netherlands.
Merlina Rañi | Lithium Republic XYZ & Anatomy of the Republic of Lithium
Lithium Republic XYZ is a research project based in the metaverse that studies the territory known as the Lithium Triangle (located in the wetland region between Chile, Bolivia, and Argentina). Through the virtual replication of crisis environments, the project aims to support interdisciplinary research addressing the current situation in this space and to gather information about the complex network formed between the future of energy, geohumanities, and indigenous critique.
The project is directed by Cristian R. Espinoza and Merlina Rañi, with IT architecture by Daniel Moreno.
In addition to this artwork, Merlina will also exhibit Anatomy of the Republic of Lithium.
Merlina Rañi currently resides in Spain. She is an art curator specializing in digital media and scientific dissemination. Her research revolves around virtual environments and their connection to physicality. In her recent projects, she delves into the impact of technological abstraction on the political and affective aspects of society, exploring themes such as virtuality, language, complexity, and machine learning.
Michele Bazzoli | The Merge
The Merge is a single-channel digital video that explores dystopian future environments and landscapes where a Material Artificial Intelligence (MAI) has been synthesized to counteract the environmental effects of the ecological crisis, which, in the not-so-distant future where the story is set, has made the atmosphere uninhabitable. This new material-based artificial intelligence system transforms objects and materials into large hollow structures that constantly grow in response to external atmospheric conditions, offering a shelter to humans and other species.
This video work is an introduction to the online platform www.themerge.space, a transforming digital space and virtual environment that the artist keeps developing over time, to host a variety of contents including virtual exhibitions, digital artistic projects, and essays by various authors exploring non-anthropocentric futures.
Michele Bazzoli is an Amsterdam-based visual artist who works through sculpture, installation, and digital media. His artistic research can be seen as an attempt to create an autonomous visual language with which to relate, explore, and question the current ecological breakdown and the environmental transformations of our present.
His works have been exhibited at ETOPIA (Zaragoza), KunstRAI (Amsterdam), Galleria Lampo (Milan), Fabbrica del Vapore (Milan), Het Blauwe Veld (Arnhem), 9hrs Capsule Hotel (Tokyo), among others. In 2023 he has published a book with Onomatopee (NL), and in 2024 he has taken part in the research project Organismo by TBA21 in Madrid.
Cristobal Ascencio Ramos | Maiz
The cultivation of maize in Mexico has a strong cultural and eco-
nomic value. There are 64 varieties of maize in the country, each
with specific traits and characteristics. These plants have played a
crucial role in Mexico’s history, culture and economy. Their rich di-
versity has been adopted and maintained thanks to the efforts and
practices of environmentalists, farmers and indigenous populations.
All this is against the impositions of big agribusiness, which in its
quest for quick profit tampers on the biodiversity of traditional crops
and indigenous varieties to sell patented seeds. In this installation,
we are faced with collection of 3D models of each of the
different varieties of maize.
The artist has involved experts from the maize industry, agriculture
and cultural heritage to create these models. In this choral research,
photogrammetric techniques have been used to create a perennial
visual archive of this heritage that will be stored in a distributed and
secure way thanks to the blockchain.
Cristobal Ascencio Ramos is graduated in Audiovisual Media and Advertising at the CAAV in Jalisco and Master in Contemporary Photography at EFTI. He currently lives in Madrid. His work and research focuses on the relationship between images and memory and how we construct identities and realities from this correspondence. At the same time, his practice expands to new forms of the image such as virtual reality, data manipulation and photogrammetry to expand photography to new forms of consumption.
His work has been exhibited at FOAM (NL), Villa Perochon (France), Karne Kunst (Berlin), Getxo Photo (Spain), Athens Photo Festival (Greece) or Pictura Gallery (USA), among others. His work has also been selected and awarded in numerous competitions such as Art Photo Bcn or Panoramic Festival.
Carlos Monleon-Gendall | Dropstream Economies
Dropstream Economies questions the logic of water management to propose models of custody of both physical and digital common goods that align with planetary life cycles. Its research and production phases integrate currents of thought around water, scientific research around its properties and capacities, as well as technological advances in both distributed physical computing and the creation of digital assets that capture the value(s) of ecosystem.
The aim of the work is to inspire ways of thinking about the relationship between the different uses and life and needs of the river whilst using protocols such as smart contracts and oracles to communicate between remote sensing and decentralised ledgers.
The installation sketches a sonic dashboard which captures the variability of river metabolism and turns remote sensing data into a voice through which the river can speak.
Carlos Monleon works with a variety of processes and materials, living and non-living, that result in sculptural and participatory artworks. These span across different levels of bodily sensation and awareness; from the microbiological to the performative and social bodies. His main line of line of work traces evolutionary processes that stem from digestion and cognition and result in the distribution of biological processes across multi-species entanglements and cybernetic metabolisms.
Carlos has developed collaborative projects at spaces such as Auto Italia, Seventeen Gallery and Diaspore Project Space in London; at Cráter Invertido in Mexico; at Hangar in Lisbon; and at institutions such as CA2M and Matadero, Madrid and HIAP Helsinki. He has exhibited his solo practice at LUMA Arles, Z33, Istanbul Design Biennial, Porto Design Biennial, and the Tallin Biennial, amongst others.
OPN Studio | Bubble
Bubble is a project based on speculation and the carbon footprint caused by Ethereum before «The Merge», as a human parasitism representation, and its criticism per se. Bubble consists of 10 original and unique NFTs. These NFTs are recreations of scenes, where persistent symbiosis occurs between different organisms of imaginary species. These species give rise to examples of symbiotic mutualism, increasing their biological fitness (survival capacity).
Bubble is an NFT collection where 10% of the benefits will go for reforestation to help inherited carbon footprint offset. These benefits will be allocated to the sustainable initiative called El Bosque de los Zaragozanos. Furthermore, Bubble is a collection where no participant suffers losses, the only penalty that a speculative participant can suffer is ending up being the collector of a piece of art.
OPN Studio – Susana Ballesteros and Jano Montañés. Both combine complementary training based on Art, Design, Programming, Mechanical, Electronics and Audiovisual, that clearly mark all their line of work. OPN’s research reflects on the individual in a broad context, focusing their study on the vicissitude related to the human condition, as a social being, as a mortal entity or corporeal substance
Their work has been exhibited in Europe, America and Asia. Highlighting, Beijing Art Fair, ARCO Internacional contemporary Art Fair, CBA Círculo de Bellas Artes Madrid, NTMOFA Taiwan National Museum of Fine Arts, Würth Museum, LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial, LACDA Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, Kapelica Gallery or ARS Electronica.
Dmstfctn | Fango 1000
Fango 1000 is an onchain multiplayer game where players compete for narrative control. The game is set in a Middle Ages Italian village where a trove containing a thousand chronicles have suddenly appeared inside a Monastery. Each chronicle describes how humans from another time train a mysterious “machine intelligence” for an unknown purpose. Players join one of three factions, each with a conflicting worldview, and compete to tell the best story about what the “intelligence” might be, the secrets it may hold, and the role it could play in society, by interpreting the chronicles. The best stories will be pinned to the monastery’s door and last forever, the worst stories will be buried under mud.
These chronicles are based on a record of actions generated by thousands of players in a separate AI training game, Godmode Epochs, developed by dmstfctn in 2023. Consequently, each play-through of Godmode Epochs creates a factual dataset that becomes part of the universe of Fango 1000. The game’s backend is developed using MUD, an open-source framework for onchain development. This means that the rules, state, and data of Fango 1000—essentially the entire game, excluding the user interface—are executed or stored on the blockchain, bypassing the need for a centralized gaming server.
dmstfctn, pronounced 'demystification,' is a London-based artist duo formed by Francesco Tacchini and Oliver Smith, working with audiovisual performances, installations, films, and video games. Their work investigates complex systems by directly involving audiences, inviting them into the 'demystification' of systems by replicating and replaying them, and into their 'remystification' by building worlds, characters and myths atop them. Since 2018, dmstfctn have performed and exhibited internationally in venues such as Berghain, Serpentine, Design Museum, HKW and at festivals such as Unsound, CTM, transmediale, and Impakt. In 2021, Krisis Publishing released ECHO FX, the duo’s show about Brexit market manipulation later also included in Ø (Flatlines/Hyperdub). In 2019, Mille Plateaux released Flash Demons, a collection of AV performances focusing on financial market crashes.
ARTeCHÓ - Art, Economy & Technology - Unleashing the potential of Crypto Art and other tech tools for European creative industry, regions and society is a European initiative created by five European institutions: SERN - Startup Europe Regions Network, Baltan Laboratories (Netherlands), FZC-Etopia Center for Art & Technology (Spain), Frankfurt School Blockchain Center (Germany) and MEET Digital Cultural Center (Italy). ARTeCHÓ is funded by the European Commission under the Creative Europe Programme.
ARTeCHO is co-funded by the European Union. Grant agreement n° 101056278. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.