Invisible Forces extended captions
Filip Hodas
Childhood Memories, 2016/2022
In childhood, our imagination helps us to create magical worlds based on all kinds of everyday objects and experiences. As children, we naturally transcend the boundaries of the familiar, relativising or stopping time and seeing possibilities at all turns. As we grow older, this ability seemingly fades, until eventually we part with it completely. What happens to our imaginary worlds once we leave them behind?
Filip Hodas is a Prague-based 3D artist, who previously studied at the Faculty of Information Technology at the Czech Technical University in Prague. Since his first renders in 2015, his work has focused on themes from pop culture. Hodas often draws on popular cartoons and their characters, bringing them into dystopian imaginaries across his art.
Martin Houra
Irregular Condition #9, 2022
Irregular Condition #119, 2022
Irregular Condition #176, 2022
Irregular Conditions is an eightfold colour story collection created by Martin Houra which centres on the idea of controlled chaos. Drawing inspiration from the movement of liquid, such as droplets running down a wall, unique paths and patterns of colour have been translated into 500 semi-generative artworks. Originating from an algorithm, each piece has been hand-selected, manipulated, and overlaid with subtle motion effects to increase the inherent tension between the impulse to move or change whilst remaining completely still. This sense is compounded further through the use of borders that accentuate the image boundaries, where patterns seemingly attempt to break free of the imposed structure.
Martin Houra is a Melbourne-based CGI artist with over 15 years of experience working in 3D, and the creative director of Mogamma, a studio focusing on architectural visualisations. Fascinated by organic matter such as liquid, Houra looks to capture moments in time in macro-microscopic form. He is drawn to synthetic works that are made to feel alive through coding and other techniques.
Johana Kroft
Underwater Orchestra, 2022
‘Our work comes from the depths of the ocean, where things have tangled together and accumulated over the years. Here we find indeterminate objects of all kinds, many made of plastic, which over time have become underwater creatures. Their sounds come from loneliness and sadness, because as more rubbish comes into the ocean, the creatures get bigger and their pain continues.’
The animation and sound were created by Maxim Kroft.
Johana Kroft lives alternately in Berlin, England, and the USA. She studied Multimedia Design at the Ladislav Sutnar Faculty of Design and Art at the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen. She works in design, illustration, animation, and 3D creation. Her personal work is playful and poetic, inspired by travel, dogs and emotions.
Jana Stýblová
Resonant Frequency, 2021/2022
Resonant Frequency explores the nuance in the digital representation of a moiré. At different scales and on different screens, a single video creates a sense of duality as a result of interference patterns between the representation of the moiré and the pixels that it is viewed on. The visual distortion and new patterns that occur are made by the viewing platform, your computer display, and how your eyes process the lines. No one viewing experience can be truly identical to another—an ode to our lives and the interference patterns we create by simply existing.
Jana Stýblová is a multidisciplinary artist working to bring together the analogue and digital worlds. Fascinated by the ephemeral and subconscious, she limits her direct hand in creation by documenting chemical reactions at work. By combining subtle code-augmentations, otherworldly landscapes are born, often blurring the lines between the physical, and the digital. To Stýblová, art is a celebration and admission of flow, time, and simple moments of chance.
Jakub Špaček
Purpura, 2021
ze série Bloom
The Bloom collection, which consists of four magical iterations of a fictional plant, is a unique personal project that was initially shaped by the idea of deepening one’s creative knowledge in the context of procedural and simulation techniques within the theme of natural and hyperrealistic organics.
The collection offers a gradually evolving observational experience that captures the complete cycle of flowering from the initial bud awakening to the final bloom. The flower itself is inspired by the enchanting elements of several different plants, which are here brought together in a complementary composition.
The accompanying atmosphere-enhancing soundtrack is provided by Echoic Audio.
Jakub Spacek is a London-based artist who is originally from the Czech Republic. Across his work with many different studios, he has expanded his artistic perception by developing a deep passion for abstract visions of real-world phenomenon, often focusing on the smallest subtleties of shape and motion in his art. His immersive and meditative pieces invite us to find new ways of engaging with digital artworks.
Ondřej Zunka & Zünc Studio
PHOTOSYSTEM II, 2022
Without light there is no life: it is essential for plants to convert carbon dioxide and water into oxygen, a process we know as photosynthesis. Photosynthesis is the foundation that has allowed Earth to evolve into the biodiverse, oxygen-rich, green planet we know today. Appreciating plants for the fascinating, sophisticated systems that they are can help us to understand how they adapt and live in harmonious symbiosis with others.
The installation PHOTOSYSTEM II consists of a series of large-scale projections that represent the phenomenon of photosynthesis through different interpretive lenses. It features an immersive fly-through projection of the eternally flourishing evolution of biodiversity, alongside manmade objects constructed from living organisms. This interactive work responds to the movement of visitors by growing tendrils and releasing oxygen. Plants are presented as alluringly complex systems of adaptation, and as integral components of biodesign. A glimpse into the intricacies of photosynthesis can be surprising: we can learn, be inspired, and discover novel ways to solve today’s pressing problems.
The namesake piece of the series, PHOTOSYSTEM II is a room-sized immersive projection that wraps around three walls to hold the viewer in its leafy embrace. The animated film progresses in complexity and scale from a waving sea of singular sprouts to massive manmade structures spilling over with abundant greenery. It references the continuous and ongoing evolution of biodiversity, which all started with a single-celled organism that learned to photosynthesise. We are reminded that symbiosis is the fundamental driver of evolution, and that symbiosis must itself evolve too. As the world around us and the organisms within it become more complicated, plants too must change to keep up. The fly-through of organic matter cycles through various states, suggesting that the human chapter on earth is a mere blip in the 3.4 billion years that organisms have been photosynthesising for.
BIO-ENCRYPTION, 2022
Clusters of bacteria swill around a borderless space, flashing with binary hues of green and purple. The individual rods cooperate through transfers of illuminated colour, with waves of green transmitting outwards from the collective mass. This work is informed by research into ‘infobiology’, and whether it is possible to store data in biological material. Indeed, experiments have found that one gram of e-coli has a storage capacity of 900 terabytes. Projected across multiple planes and without borders, data is everywhere and in everything. The bacteria move under the subtle influence of turbulence, but it is the snappier secondary rotation that is more prominent. The group of bacteria appears to be under inspection, being grasped and turned as if to get a better look. The questions posed by infobiology are poignant in a time where data is one of the world’s most valuable commodities.
PLASTIC DIET, 2022
In PLASTIC DIET, we look into an ocean tank filled with tendrilled creatures twirling past one another. The figures dart around the space among glittering bits of debris, which attach to a host of ‘sweepers’ on contact. The mundane task of rubbish collection here becomes a glitzy underwater waltz. The work is inspired by newly discovered plastic-eating bacteria, and it suggests a future where these organisms have evolved to become self-propelling beings with an appetite for microplastics. As with many things, the solutions to today’s problems are yet to be realised – or evolved. For example, through photosynthesis, some organisms have evolved to consume plastic waste as their primary carbon source. PLASTIC DIET also highlights that trees and leafy plants are not the only organisms capable of photosynthesis - in fact, nearly half the oxygen we breathe is generated by ocean-dwelling bacteria and algae.
LIVING, BREATHING WALL, 2022
As if part of the architecture of the room itself, the LIVING, BREATHING WALL pulsates slowly with the growth of micro-herbs. Silhouetted figures moving behind the structure appear to be in the gallery space itself, walking where the viewer may have been wandering themselves just moments ago. The membrane-like wall is comprised of 3D geometry generated using voxel-building algorithms based on gyroid laws of minimal surface. Gyroid structures are infinitely connected and have no straight lines, found in nature in butterfly wings and lipids. The resulting geometry was then rendered with a soft, milky material, in what became an entirely CG process of biomimicry. This hyper-real green wall blends into the space with its soothing ambience, contributing to ideas of a future where natural systems can coexist with humans in everyday places.
THE ROOTS ARE THE BATTERY, 2022
Framed from a low angle, the absence of soil in this work provides a novel view of branching roots. The intertwining limbs with their crooked fingers twinkle in the sunlight that weaves through from above. The roots are rendered as hundreds of thousands of multicoloured particles are packed together to bejewel the usually earth-covered structure. It rotates slowly and constantly, allowing us to marvel at this otherwise unseen part of the plant. Light beams that run along the spines of the smallest roots charge inwards and upwards, a quiet, constant pulse that moves what it absorbs and stores. Referencing the functional importance of roots, the light animation highlights the storage of energies created through photosynthesis, as well as the transfer of nutrients that travel from the earth to the rest of the plant.
PART OF THE EQUATION, 2022
PART OF THE EQUATION, a collaboration between Zünc Studio and Lukáš Dřevjaný, is an interactive piece that allows the viewer to participate in the process of photosynthesis. Motion sensors pick up the movement of visitors walking along the expanse of the screen, or extending their arms in front of it, from which tendrils begin to spurt and oxygen bubbles are released. It recalls an 8th-grade science equation for photosynthesis: carbon dioxide + water + light = glucose + oxygen. Humans (and other organisms) are indeed essential to photosynthesis for their ability to bring carbon to the mix. It is the presence of the spectator that initiates the exhalation of oxygen and creeping vines. At the same time, being reduced to a greenish silhouette that emits bubbles and grows fronds is humbling - a reminder that we are entirely dependent on photosynthesising plants for our own existence.
Ondřej Zunka lives and works in London. He studied systems engineering and later began experimenting with 3D software and digital art. He primarily creates photo-realist worlds and speculative realities, which provide him with virtually unlimited space for experimentation; he is also the creative director of Zünc Studio. Although his works are exclusively digital, we can often find references within them to the realities of the natural world.
