At the intersection of art and technology: ‘Soft Robots’ at Copenhagen Contemporary

From June 20th to December 31st, 2025, Copenhagen Contemporary (CC) transforms 1,700 square meters of its industrial halls into a sensory exploration of the intersection of art and technology. The large-scale group exhibition, Soft Robots. The Art of Digital Breathing, brings together 15 international and Danish artists working across artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, and immersive installation, inviting visitors to reflect on the role of technology in our lives.

Curated under the direction of Marie Laurberg, the show examines how machines—often perceived as cold and mechanical—can also evoke empathy, transformation, and even spirituality. Through newly commissioned works and landmark pieces, the artists explore what it means to share our emotional, ethical, and creative spaces with technology.

Artificial Intelligence in art: reimagining identity

Among the most talked-about contributions are from Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst, whose AI-driven work generates real-time digital versions of Herndon. The Embedding Study 1 & 2 piece examines the growing complexity of identity in the age of AI, where likeness and voice can be endlessly replicated. By turning Herndon’s signature traits—her blue eyes and orange hair—into endlessly recombined digital portraits, the duo asks who truly controls our virtual selves in an era when personal data is currency.

The role of technology in our lives: ephemeral machines and living sculptures

The Japanese-British duo A.A. Murakami offer one of the most poetic experiences in the exhibition. Their immersive installation fills a darkened gallery with giant machine-generated bubbles that drift, shimmer, and vanish in bursts of mist—an evocation of impermanence rooted in Buddhist philosophy and the Japanese concept of the “floating world.” By merging high-tech engineering with fragile, transient materials, the artists remind viewers of the fleeting beauty in both nature and technology.

Klára Hosnedlová sets the tone at the entrance with a sculptural installation from her To Infinity series. These cocoon-like forms—sprouting hands, faces, and subtle anatomical details—suggest transformation and rebirth in a post-industrial world. Crafted with meticulous attention to texture and form, the works blur the line between human and artificial, inviting viewers into a liminal space between the organic and the mechanical.

In Soft Robots. The Art of Digital Breathing, CC offers a compelling counterpoint to the usual narratives of technological anxiety. The exhibition invites audiences to see machines not only as tools or threats, but as collaborators in creativity—capable of tenderness, humor, and even soul.

From breathing bubbles to AI-generated portraits, the artists of Soft Robots push the limits of how we experience art in the 21st century. In exclusive conversations for our website, A.A. Murakami reflect on turning mist, light, and science into meditations on impermanence; Klára Hosnedlová shares how embroidery, brutalist architecture, and generational memory weave into her immersive environments; and Holly Herndon & Mat Dryhurst, joined by curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, unpack the ethics, beauty, and human potential of AI in art.

Read the full interviews online to step deeper into their worlds.