The
Lahnfenster
is open from
March to October
every
Friday, Saturday, and Sunday
, as well as on all Hessian school holidays and public holidays (except Good Friday)
Friday:
(March, September, October)
3 pm – 6 pm
(April to August)
3 pm – 7 pm
Saturday, Sundays/Public Holidays:
1 pm – 6 pm
During Hessian school holidays
Monday to Thursday:
1 pm – 6 pm
Towards SYMBIOCRACY Nature’s AI-Avatars: Lahn River
HAVE YOU EVER HEARD A RIVER SPEAK?
This project explored planetary agency by creating an AI-powered interactive Avatar, embodied in a physical sculpture that serves as a voice to the Lahn river in Germany.
Science and art duo Danilo Olivaz and Ingvild Syntropia traversed the technically and ethically complex landscape of using artificial intelligence to represent the possible interests of a living ecosystem.
The voice-activated sculpture, made from local, natural, and upcycled material, houses a large language model (LLM) which is fed real-time environmental data from sensors in the Lahn’s waters as well as scientific research, and cultural knowledge specific to the Lahn. With sensors installed at the
Lahnfenster
, the sculpture stands as both a poetic and political gesture.
With the invaluable support of Mayowa Osibody (from Aditu Tech), the AI logics of the avatar were assembled together. Furthermore, thanks to Travis Kiplean, Kevin Miniter and Chad Brower (the team behind the online dialogue platform consider.it), the avatar has an online presence at a first-o- its kind custom digital forum for structured collective deliberation between people and the River, around the question of "What are the biggest opportunities for The Lahn's future?"
Rooted in the concept of symbiocracy, the project imagines rivers, forests, and other ecosystems as political beings, able to communicate their perceived needs.
Building on the success of the precursor Rio Sagrado AI-Avatar, the Lahn Avatar continues to merge art, science, and collective effort. These Avatars offer a blueprint for planetary democracy through meaningful, cross-species dialogue, remembering a future where rivers speak and we listen.
Danilo Olivaz
and
Ingvild Syntropia
are current Fellows in the Planetary Scholars & Artists in Residence Program at the Panel on Planetary Thinking, Justus Liebig University.
Ingvild Syntropia
is an artist-philosopher, treading the sensorial landscape of interspecies kinship and storytelling. She is part of
Sympoiesis:
interspecies synaesthesia through Art & Science, where she explores topics such as interspecies relations, deep time, acting techniques for empathy, the creative process, and what it means to embody the values of the future today. She has collaborated on various documentary films in the Netherlands, Kenya, Norway, and the UK. Her upcoming documentary on the donkey skin trade is her debut as a director. She is also a
vocalist
in
Necessary Animals (
UK), and sings Nordic Folk. She has a BA in Philosophy and the History of Ideas, Southampton & Bergen University, and an MA in Media for Development and Social Change, Sussex University. Originally from Norway, Ingvild has, over the past decade, lived as an expat in the UK, France, Switzerland, Brazil, and now the Netherlands.
The window exhibition
The Temple of Science
presents an investigation of the entwined geological, glaciological, and human histories of the Unteraar glacier through a reconstruction of the Hôtel des Neuchâtelois. The exhibition is realized as a collaboration between Kunsthalle Giessen and the Panel on Planetary Thinking. The installation continues the INSIDEOUT exhibition series in the window of the Kunsthalle. The work showcases the results of Aisling O’Carroll’s fellowship within this year’s focus on ‘Planetary Times’ in the Planetary Scholars & Artists in Residence Program (2022-2025).
Complementary movie screening: Last Things (Deborah Stratman, 2023)
November 5, 2024 | 6:30 pm | Kinocenter Giessen
Last Things
looks at evolution and extinction from the perspective of the rocks and minerals that came before humanity and will outlast us. With scientists and thinkers like Lynn Margulis and Marcia Bjørnerud as guides and quoting from the proto-Sci-fi texts of J.H. Rosny, Deborah Stratman offers a stunning array of images, from microscopic forms to vast landscapes, and seeks a picture of evolution without humans at the center.
Aisling O'Carroll
(Fellow in the Planetary Scholars & Artists in Residence Program 2024) is a designer, researcher, and landscape architect. Her work uses experimental methods to reconstruct landscape histories from diverse material archives, including drawings, photographs, written accounts, geological records, and botanical material. These reconstructions aim to reconsider dominant models of environmental knowledge and our present relations with land in order to enable more inclusive, just, and diverse approaches in the future. She is a Lecturer at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, where she is currently completing her PhD in Architectural Design.
July 6th 2023 - July 11th 2023 - Exhibition"Unstable Planetary Spaces"
From the shrinking of the mega-lake Chad due to climate change to the irradiated Fukushima exclusion zone caused by the nuclear fallout in Japan 2011, Unstable Planetary Spaces explores how artists and activists are dealing with some of the most challenging durational disasters.
A detailed report of the exhibition can be found
here
.
Artists
Jason Waite
(Fellow in the Planetary Scholars & Artists in Residence Program 2023, Don't Follow the Wind)
Adenike Titilope Oladosu
(Fellow in the Planetary Scholars & Artists in Residence Program 2023, I Lead Climate Action)
Eva & Franco Mattes
(Don't Follow the Wind)
Ahmet Öğüt
(Don't Follow the Wind)
Adenike Titilope Oladosu
Adenike Titilope Oladosu is an ecofeminist, ecoreporter, and climate justice leader based in Abuja, Nigeria. She is the founder of I Lead
Climate Action Initiative that advocates for a green democracy across Africa and the restoration of Lake Chad using remote sensing tools. She specializes in peace, security, and equality in Africa, especially the Lake Chad region. She has showcased her climate action in both international and local forums, and is Fellow of the Panel on Planetary Thinking.
Don't Follow the Wind
Don’t Follow the Wind
is a collective of artists and curators (Chim↑Pom, Kenji Kubota, Jason Waite, Eva & Franco Mattes) running a long-term project inside the inaccessible and radioactive Fukushima exclusion zone. The exhibition of 12 new artist commissions collaborating with displaced residents that host the projects in their abandoned homes in the zone opened in 2015 but can’t yet be seen as the zone remains closed to the public.
Jason Waite
is a curator and researcher based in the UK and a Fellow of the Panel on Planetary Thinking.
Eva & Franco Mattes
are an artist duo based in New York, part of the collective and also participating artists in Don’t Follow the Wind.
Ahmet Öğüt
born in Diyarbakır, is a sociocultural initiator, artist, and lecturer based in Amsterdam, Istanbul and Berlin, he is a participating artist in Don’t Follow the Wind.
