LIFE FORCES

hube: It seems that you move easily between physical and digital worlds. You’re placing real objects in digital space and recreating digital artworks in the real world. By frequently crossing this border, we seem to erase it. In your opinion: how long will the division between real and digital last? Will it stay with us forever or will it disappear one day?

Tin&Ed: We believe the boundary between physical and digital space is permeable, where these two worlds meet is interesting to us. The real world for us encompasses both physical and digital spaces, they’re completely interconnected. The thought of existing fully in digital space is terrifying to us, we believe it could be destructive to use digital space as a way to escape our physical reality, we need to remember that we are physical beings connected to all other living things and the planet. This is why we’re interested in augmented reality (AR), it allows the infinite possibilities of the digital world whilst still being anchored in our physical reality. We hope the future exists in a hybrid space, bringing together the best of both worlds.

h: Even though you are creating new forms of physicality for digital spaces, you still connect them to real human proportions that are not required in the digital world. How far are you willing to experiment with the body? What limitations do you see now?

T&E: The body is an important starting point for exploration, it is what we use to experience and sense the world around us. We’re also limited by our senses, so we often forget that the world exists beyond what we can perceive. Technology can open up what we can perceive and understand. With the help of microscopes and telescopes and other technologies we understand that time and space are relative. Compared to a galaxy we are tiny and insignificant, to a bacteria living in our gut we are the whole universe, our bodies are ecosystems made up of trillions of microbes, there are more bacteria within our bodies than there are human cells. Exploring how our bodies are entangled with other bodies both human or more-than-human is both fun and completely limitless.

h: It seems that creating work for urban spaces is an important part of your artistic practice. Engaging in open dialogue with an audience outside of institutions can often be challenging for artists. Can you tell us about your personal experiences of such audience interaction?

T&E: Communicating with a wide audience is important to us. In such a polarised world it’s important to connect outside of our own small bubbles. We’re interested in making work that can reach audiences that may not be interested in art, technology, or nature, which is why we love to show in public urban spaces. We need to be reminded most of our connection to nature in our cities, where we often forget we are still part of the natural world. Our installation Life Forces was originally installed at the Rockefeller Center in Midtown New York, allowing anyone on the street to engage and interact. We saw families, tourists, kids, and office workers all stop to move, dance, and play in front of our installation. Each person will engage differently, our job is to draw each person in a little deeper, we use the universal language of play to encourage curiosity and openness to new ideas. Play comes naturally to kids, but play is beneficial to all of us, adults need play the most, it’s a great tool for communicating with a wider audience. To engage people with their bodies can also lead to new forms of understanding.

h: It seems that you move easily between physical and digital worlds. You’re placing real objects in digital space and recreating digital artworks in the real world. By frequently crossing this border, we seem to erase it. In your opinion: how long will the division between real and digital last? Will it stay with us forever or will it disappear one day?

Tin&Ed: We believe the boundary between physical and digital space is permeable, where these two worlds meet is interesting to us. The real world for us encompasses both physical and digital spaces, they’re completely interconnected. The thought of existing fully in digital space is terrifying to us, we believe it could be destructive to use digital space as a way to escape our physical reality, we need to remember that we are physical beings connected to all other living things and the planet. This is why we’re interested in augmented reality (AR), it allows the infinite possibilities of the digital world whilst still being anchored in our physical reality. We hope the future exists in a hybrid space, bringing together the best of both worlds.

h: Even though you are creating new forms of physicality for digital spaces, you still connect them to real human proportions that are not required in the digital world. How far are you willing to experiment with the body? What limitations do you see now?

T&E: The body is an important starting point for exploration, it is what we use to experience and sense the world around us. We’re also limited by our senses, so we often forget that the world exists beyond what we can perceive. Technology can open up what we can perceive and understand. With the help of microscopes and telescopes and other technologies we understand that time and space are relative. Compared to a galaxy we are tiny and insignificant, to a bacteria living in our gut we are the whole universe, our bodies are ecosystems made up of trillions of microbes, there are more bacteria within our bodies than there are human cells. Exploring how our bodies are entangled with other bodies both human or more-than-human is both fun and completely limitless.

h: It seems that creating work for urban spaces is an important part of your artistic practice. Engaging in open dialogue with an audience outside of institutions can often be challenging for artists. Can you tell us about your personal experiences of such audience interaction?

T&E: Communicating with a wide audience is important to us. In such a polarised world it’s important to connect outside of our own small bubbles. We’re interested in making work that can reach audiences that may not be interested in art, technology, or nature, which is why we love to show in public urban spaces. We need to be reminded most of our connection to nature in our cities, where we often forget we are still part of the natural world. Our installation Life Forces was originally installed at the Rockefeller Center in Midtown New York, allowing anyone on the street to engage and interact. We saw families, tourists, kids, and office workers all stop to move, dance, and play in front of our installation. Each person will engage differently, our job is to draw each person in a little deeper, we use the universal language of play to encourage curiosity and openness to new ideas. Play comes naturally to kids, but play is beneficial to all of us, adults need play the most, it’s a great tool for communicating with a wider audience. To engage people with their bodies can also lead to new forms of understanding.

h: The pursuit of a fresh aesthetic is an important creative incentive. How can you describe the connection between ethics and aesthetics in your artistic practice? Have you experienced any ethical limitations in your work?

T&E: For us, aesthetics is the language that develops through our process, it can also be a tool to engage with different audiences. Our aesthetics are defined and informed by the language of nature, how patterns evolve on sea slugs, how climate can affect the forms of different mushroom species, the way certain orchids and bees can co-evolve to look more like each other, we’re interested in aesthetics as a way to understand how things are connected, the intimate relationships of living beings. In a fully interconnected world, ethics are important because everything we do has an impact on everything else. Our job as artists is to find as many ways to articulate this interconnectedness to as many people as possible.

h: New digital forms of community enable participants to reinvent themselves: to select a new physical appearance, character, and history. This raises questions about the digital afterlife. How do you think this digital community will evolve in the future? And what place can you take in there as simple users and as artists?

T&E: To us an eternal digital reality is a form of death, it’s too disconnected from our physical planet and the natural world. We believe our digital future needs to be anchored in our physical world, in our connection to the natural world, in our physical connection to each other.

h: You work a lot with dynamic three-dimensional shapes. In that aspect, how dependent on technology do you feel right now? Are you satisfied with our current technological capabilities? What new research projects in the fields of new technology, science, and design are you following especially closely?

T&E: A lot of our work looks at ways to simulate biological structures, organisms, and ecosystems. Our goal is to shift the way we think about the natural world, that we’re part of it not separate from it.  We’re dependent on technology to make our work but we’re just as interested in what we can learn from nature.

Nature is a source of infinite creativity and ingenuity. It has developed far more advanced technologies than we have as humans. As technology and our skills develop, we will be able to simulate more complex systems in nature. We’ve been learning about evolutionary biology and endosymbiotic theory, how collaboration or learning to live together with other species is just as important to survival as competition. We have future projects exploring life at the molecular level. We’re excited by AlphaFold [an AI system that predicts protein’s 3D structure] and the possibilities of machine learning to open how we see the living world. We’re also reading about how different organisms experience and sense the world, experiencing the world from the perspective of other life forms is interesting to us.

h: When thinking about the future, people tend to simplify things by using extremes. For example, saying we are destined for either a terrible catastrophe or a utopian idyll. In this regard, artists are usually more astute. How do you feel about the future? 

T&E: Artist can also be responsible for perpetuating these extremes. When we think of the future, we feel all kinds of emotions; sadness, fear, excitement, confusion, focus, hope. The future is still in our hands, our job as artists is to create wonder and to encourage a playful curiosity for the world around us. As a species we have a lot to overcome, we need to learn how to live together, not just with each other, but with all living things on this planet. The only way forward is together.