Deep Meditations: Abiogenesis (2020)

This project is part of the Deep Meditations series.

Deep Meditations is a series of abstract films and installations that explore how we make meaning and the gap between felt experience and representation. The works invite us on a spiritual journey through slow, meditative, continuously evolving images and sounds: fragments of our collective experience refracted through a deep neural network.

“It feels like the machine is trying to tell me something…” – audience member

Part of the Deep Meditations (2018) series, Deep Meditations: Abiogenesis focuses on the emergence of life, and the evolution of single and multicellular organisms. Created used Deep Learning and artificial neural networks trained on thousands of microscopic images.

Deep Meditations is a series of works that exist in various forms, primarily a large-scale video and sound installation; a multi-channel, long-form abstract film; a monument that celebrates life, nature, the universe and our subjective experience of it. The work invites us on a spiritual journey through slow, meditative, continuously evolving images and sounds, told through the imagination of a deep artificial neural network.

We are invited to acknowledge and appreciate the role we play as humans as part of a complex ecosystem heavily dependent on the balanced co-existence of many components. The work embraces and celebrates the interconnectedness of all human, non-human, living and non living things across many scales of time and space – from microbes to galaxies.

“We are all connected. To each other, biologically. To the earth, chemically. To the rest of the universe atomically.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson

“The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.” – Carl Sagan

“How can we think in times of urgencies without the self-indulgent and self-fulfilling myths of apocalypse, when every fiber of our being is interlaced, even complicit, in the webs of processes that must somehow be engaged and repatterned? Recursively, whether we asked for it or not, the pattern is in our hands.” – Donna Haraway

Images

“Deep Meditations: Abiogenesis (2020)” Installation view “The Beauty of Early Life”, 2022, © ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Photo: Felix Grünschloss.
“Deep Meditations: Abiogenesis (2020)” Installation view “The Beauty of Early Life”, 2022, © ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Photo: Felix Grünschloss.

Series

More works in the Deep Meditations series.

Selected Exhibitions, Performances & Presentations(10 / 10)

Only selected shows with project pages are listed below. For more complete exhibition and performance history please see Show History.

Words(5 / 5)

The artist’s own writing about this work.

Press(28 / 28)

Articles, reviews and other press relating to this work.

Interviews(4 / 4)

Features(4 / 4)

Books(1 / 1)

Catalogs(3 / 3)

  • 2026  EMERGENCE, Kate Vass, Ágnes Ferenczi (eds.), Kate Vass Galerie, pp. 95–114 · Catalog
  • 2023  Contemporary Istanbul, 18th Edition — Catalogue, Contemporary Istanbul, pp. 129 · Catalog
  • 2020  Immaterial/Re-material: A Brief History of Computing Art, Jérôme Neutres (eds.), UCCA Center for Contemporary Art / Culture and Art Publishing House · Catalog

Other Coverage(6 / 6)

News(3 / 3)

Academic Papers(7 / 7)

Collections(1 / 1)

Show History(15 / 15)

Solo Exhibitions and Presentations(2 / 2)

  • 2024  Gallery QI, La Jolla, CA, USA, 25 Jan 2024
  • 2020  Deep Meditations: A brief history of almost everything in 60 minutes, How We Make Meaning, QUAD Gallery, Derby, UK

Performances(1 / 1)

Group Exhibitions(12 / 12)

Details

Medium
Custom software, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Generative Adversarial Networks, Variational Autoencoders.