cyber sculpture

Cyber Scuplture

Installation. Various computer parts, glass, fish (white pearlscale angelfish), plants (nephrolepis biserrata), etc. 1m×0.4m×0.5m.




Huanzhe Hu’s installation Cyber Sculpture (2019) is a life-sustaining apparatus made with recycled computer parts. This complex bricolage ecosystem hosts shrimp, fish, plants, and invisible microbes, which are sustained by repurposed heat and cooling systems. At the same time, the organisms’ transpiration ensures the smooth running of the CPU components. Additionally, the apparatus also periodically takes photos of the critters and posts them on social media. The agenda of this prototype is not to preserve a state of stasis, but to facilitate, document, and adapt to changes that occur within its miniature biome.

What does animation through symbiosis look like? The machine is ensouled as its functions merge with its symbionts’—respiration, thermoregulation, photosynthesis, etc. In contrast to most agricultural biotechnologies (e.g. , automated farms, genetic engineering), the machine’s agenda is no longer to optimize productivity or to maintain an equilibrium. In lieu of a cybernetic system that aims to regulate nature, here is a mechanical holobiont (an organism that hosts multiple other species) that embraces change and co-evolves with the species it hosts, allowing roles to blend and new relations to emerge.





Taken together, the machine, shrimp, fish, plants, and microbes can also be considered a whole cyborg, which radically blurs the ontological boundaries between the “biological” and the “artificial.” Such a blurring is perhaps more urgent in the context of today’s ecological crises because it enables us to envision a future of animistic, affective machines that thrive on reciprocities with organic lifeforms.

Exhibition publications: SÉANCE FICTION at Brooklyn, NY.