Echoes From the Valley of Existence
Creator:
Amy Karle
Year Collected:
2024
Echoes From the Valley of Existence is an interactive artwork that engages participants to consider how their biological and digital remains echo through time and space.
The artwork reflects visitor’s bio-digital echoes through real-time body tracking, biometrics, and the mirroring of a person in digital form modified by current environmental conditions. The artwork offers the opportunity to leave messages and DNA for the future, creating an experience that prompts questions on the boundaries of human existence and bio-digital afterlife or “other life” in a technologically integrated future.
As part of this piece, an ensemble of imagery, text, data, and DNA from this installation will be preserved in an archive that will be launched into space and embedded on the moon.
The key concept to consider is our bio-digital afterlife – what we leave and how that potentially may be used in the future, how we may “echo” through time into the future.
Hope to Inspire:
The artwork explores the interplay between physical and digital realms and represents a bio-technologically integrated future where our bodies, beings, and environment eclipse
in a poetic piece of ultra-contemporary art.
Upon approaching the artwork, visitors are greeted with the decision of whether to partake in the interactive elements of facial and body tracking, and the submission of text and or DNA. This juncture invites participants to approach the engagement as a ritual, consciously considering what one will be leaving and how it could be used in a distant future.
Wether one participates or not – this is where interesting discussions arise.
The mirroring of oneself across biological, digital, and quantum dimensions allows the audience to interact with and witness their own echoes through these realms.
The prospect of embedding a part of oneself into a cosmic archive that transcends earthly existence adds a profound and, for some, a spiritual dimension to the experience.
It also invites deep thinking about how this could be used in the future.
Invitation to Interact:
Would you leave your DNA or not leave your DNA?
Why or why not? amykarle.com/project/echoes/
Creator Bio:
Amy Karle is an internationally award-winning ultra-contemporary artist working at the nexus of where digital, physical and biological systems merge. Karle is also a provocateur and a futurist, opening future visions of how art, science, and technology could be utilized to support and enhance humanity while making advancements in the technology towards those goals in the process of making her artworks. Current projects probe who we could become as a result of our exponential technologies and how interventions could alter the course of our future.
Karle has shown work in 54 international exhibitions, including at: The Centre Pompidou, France; The Mori Art Museum, Japan; The Smithsonian, USA; Ars Electronica, Austria; Beijing Media Arts Biennale, China; FILE International Electronic Language Festival, Brazil. Karle is also regularly invited to share her innovations and insights as an expert speaker and in think tanks world-wide. She was honored as one of BBC’s 100 most inspiring and influential women, has been named one of the “Most Influential Women in 3D Printing”, and was Grand Prize Winner of the “YouFab Global Creative Award”. Karle was also an Artist Diplomat through the U.S. Department of State tasked with diplomacy, social innovation, women’s empowerment, and supporting cross disciplinary collaborations using art and technology to address social issues.
Her work speaks to a wide audience as it inspires exploration into what it means to be human and encourages us to contemplate the impacts of technology on our future. The long-term goals of her work are to continue to pioneer in ultra-contemporary art, bioart, and the art and tech fields and make contributions to the advancement of society, technology and healthcare in the process.
More info:
Attributions:
This artwork was made possible through the collaborative efforts and generous support from:
*Creative technology solutions developed in collaboration with Sefa Sagir and Bartosz Wyszynski including interactive system design in collaboration with Bartosz Wyszynski and sound design in collaboration with Sefa Sagir,
*Data and network engineering, Wiktor Krokosz,
*Support from Sapporo International Art Festival 2024 (SIAF2024) and team,
*Sponsorship from LifeShip,
*Support from the Goethe-Institut Irland as part of the Studio Quantum residency 2023
and all those who made this project possible through their support, knowledge, and contributions.