1 drop 1000 year at MUTEK JAPAN
20.11.2025 MUTEK Japan
Tokyo (JP)
1 DROP 1000 YEARS - Scientists agree that a drop of water travels the globe in less than 1,000 years. This drop shapes our world: it transports nutrients, heat and living organisms, while regulating our planet's climate and ecosystems. It contributes to the fundamental process of life's equilibrium.
Drawing on data from the Global Conveyor Belt, the vast ocean current that orchestrates the mixing of water from the five oceans and redistributes heat on a global scale, Martin Messier underlines the fundamental role of water as a vital substance. Yet, over the past two centuries, human action has been shaking this fragile balance: the gradual slowing of this ocean current could trigger a major climatic upheaval, threatening the entire chain of life.
In this hypnotic performance, the artist explores the tensions between the global currents that drive planetary equilibrium, and the intimate currents that resonate within each of us. Fifteen suspended devices, veritable kinetic sculptures, orchestrate the flow of water particles in real time, materializing oceanic dynamics. The patterns generated, fed by data such as the temperature and salinity of the Pacific Ocean, intertwine in a visual and sonic choreography. 1 drop 1000 years reveals itself as a masterful, poetic ballet, conveying the fragility of ecosystems and the delicate harmony that binds all things on Earth.
Tipping Point in "Migrations et Climat"
17.10.2025 - 05.04.2026 Palais de la Porte Dorée
Paris (F)
The installation Tipping Point by Barthélemy Antoine-Loeff is a sensitive and poetic tribute to those dying glaciers. It stages the (re)birth of an artificial glacier protected by a dome; a drip is feeding the glacier that will grow during the exhibition. The device invites the viewer to attend the birth of this artificial glacier. It is inspired by the “ice stupas” invented by the engineer Sonam Wangchuk and used to fight against water shortages during the summer in Ladakh.
Between a laboratory experiment, an attempt to repair the climate or an ironic collector’s item, the installation confronts us with time and scales; 10.000 years ago, the stabilisation of our cryosphere coincided with the first human traces we found in Mesopotamia, while the fist glaciers are disappearing in 70 years under the pressure of the human activity.
plant machete in Other Intelligences
10.10.2025 - 23.11.2025 MU Hybrid Art House
Eindhoven (NL)
What forms of intelligence are there? What significance do they play in our understanding of ecology and society? With Other Intelligences a group of twelve international artists delves into the different forms of intelligence: artificial, technological, but also the organic one of flora and fauna in their interactions within an ecosystem.
The artists investigate what intelligence can be in the age of artificial intelligence (AI) and what other forms of nonhuman intelligence could be relevant in forging our future. They explore how the synthetic brain of an artificial intelligence operates or how organisms from the animal and plant world sense and act, and what we can learn from other such intelligences.
So, what do ChatGPT and the rainforest have in common? Both are currently much discussed social issues. They represent the two areas, namely AI and the climate crisis, whose development will have a radical impact on the future of humanity. They are also representatives of two different, non-human systems of intelligence. In the exhibition we are seeking to examine both these aspects of non-human intelligence, as understanding of and empathy for other forms of intelligence are becoming the most important survival strategies for our species.
Curated by Sabine Himmelsbach, Marlene Wenger and Angelique Spaninks
This installation by David Bowen enables a live plant to control a machete. plant machete has a control system that reads and utilizes the electrical noises found in a live philodendron. The system uses an open source micro-controller connected to the plant to read varying resistance signals across the plant’s leaves. Using custom software, these signals are mapped in real-time to the movements of the joints of the industrial robot holding a machete. In this way, the movements of the machete are determined based on input from the plant. Essentially the plant is the brain of the robot controlling the machete determining how it swings, jabs, slices and interacts in space.
1 Drop 1000 Years at Sonica Istanbul
02.10.2025 Babylon Istanbul
Istanbul (TR)
Sonica is heading to Istanbul for the first time. For four days, audiences in the city’s heart will encounter the bold, boundary-pushing spirit that has established Sonica as an international leader in sonic and visual art.
1 DROP 1000 YEARS - Scientists agree that a drop of water travels the globe in less than 1,000 years. This drop shapes our world: it transports nutrients, heat and living organisms, while regulating our planet's climate and ecosystems. It contributes to the fundamental process of life's equilibrium.
Drawing on data from the Global Conveyor Belt, the vast ocean current that orchestrates the mixing of water from the five oceans and redistributes heat on a global scale, Martin Messier underlines the fundamental role of water as a vital substance. Yet, over the past two centuries, human action has been shaking this fragile balance: the gradual slowing of this ocean current could trigger a major climatic upheaval, threatening the entire chain of life.
In this hypnotic performance, the artist explores the tensions between the global currents that drive planetary equilibrium, and the intimate currents that resonate within each of us. Fifteen suspended devices, veritable kinetic sculptures, orchestrate the flow of water particles in real time, materializing oceanic dynamics. The patterns generated, fed by data such as the temperature and salinity of the Pacific Ocean, intertwine in a visual and sonic choreography. 1 drop 1000 years reveals itself as a masterful, poetic ballet, conveying the fragility of ecosystems and the delicate harmony that binds all things on Earth.
FIELD at MA/IN Festival
28.09.2025 Teatro Paisiello
Lecce (IT)
Field is based on the idea that sounds can emerge from the electromagnetic fields that are omnipresent in our environment. This performance reveals these invisible forces, essential and imperceptible to the eye and ear, which orchestrate our gestures and movements.
Residual electrical signals are picked up by electromagnetic transducer microphones. Recorded beforehand, they then become Martin Messier's raw materials. On stage, the artist interacts with two aluminum panels, linked by a network of cables that he continually connects and disconnects, generating a choreography of sound and light. From these repeated gestures, a hypnotic composition emerges. Evolving in an infinite loop, each iteration, though familiar, is different. The visual power of the work, evoked by electrical conduction and lightning-like flashes of light, plunges viewers into a state of fascination. This revelation of electromagnetic forces brings us closer to their mystery, making the inaccessible tangible.
With surgical synchronization of light and sound, and shadow effects that animate a constantly changing landscape, Field is a landmark project in Martin Messier's artistic research.
the two (premiere) in machinekind
25.09.2025 - 13.12.2025 PRAx
Stirek Gallery, Oregon State University, Corvallis (US)
The exhibition machinekind aims to explore the liminal space between machine-generated efficiency and the poignant and sometimes valuable inefficiencies that accompany human behavior. What vision of a future built on machine-collaboration do we hope for? When and how do we want artificial intelligence making decisions with us, or altogether for us? As those invested in the technological innovation behind machine-kind market dreams of a world made easier, what elements of human social interaction might be lost or reinterpreted in the process?
machinekind invites the viewer to explore the notion of artifice as it relates to the tangible, cultural, and ethical consequences of AI. The invited artists engage with questions of outsourcing care and connection, the often-biased logics embedded in data models, the humor in glitches, and the moments humankind and “machinekind” recognize one another in unexpected contexts.
is it possible for robots to fall in love?
This installation consists of two identical robotic arms with cameras connected to two identical computers. Each computer is running a custom deep neural network that is trained to recognize the other robot. Using their cameras, the robots attempt to find and track each other as they move independently. Playfully dancing, the robots at times are attracted to each other. While at other times they seem repelled by their mate. Tension increases as they almost touch only to quickly pull away. If one of the robots does not see the other it will go to a resting position briefly before it begins to look for its counterpart again. When a robot positively identifies it’s mate a given number of times, the network is re-trained based on the new data. Through this continual training and re-training, the robots conceivably increasing their proficiency at recognizing and finding one another. In this way, as they lock onto each other’s loving gaze the robots become more and more familiar with their mates.
tele-present wind (Mars wind version) in Silence & The Presence of Everything
21.09.2025 - 03.05.2026 Monopole
Schiedam (NL)
Stedelijk Museum Schiedam breathes new life into the former dance hall and cinema Monopole with art. Silence & The Presence of Everything opens to the public on Sunday, September 21, 2025: an exhibition full of intriguing art installations exploring natural phenomena. Immerse yourself in magical natural phenomena and experience captured sunbeams, weather systems of dust and light, swaying reeds from Schiedam bending with the Minnesota wind, boundless horizons, and dancing droplets flowing toward the center of the earth
The art installations of artists Sabine Marcelis, Guido van der Werve, Tina Farifteh, Lachlan Turczan, David Bowen, Gordon Hempton, Lily Clark, Carel Balth, and Boris Acket are spread throughout the Monopole. The artist Boris Acket, is also the guest curator of the exhibition, alongside co-curator Sanneke Huisman.
Silence is the Presence of Everything The inspiration for this exhibition comes from the acoustic ecologist and philosopher Gordon Hempton. He once placed a microphone on the world and put on headphones. According to him, this gave him an unforgettable experience. Boris Acket and Sanneke Huisman: “We’ve taken that feeling as the starting point for this exhibition. You enter a world where everything seems new, seen through the eyes and ears of the artists. The title of the exhibition is therefore derived from a statement by Hempton, which encapsulates everything: ‘Silence is not the absence of something, but the presence of everything.'”
This installation by David Bowen consists of a series of 126 x/y tilting mechanical devices connected to thin dried plant stalks installed in a gallery and a dried plant stalk connected to an accelerometer installed outdoors. When the wind blows it causes the stalk outside to sway. The accelerometer detects this movement transmitting the motion to the grouping of devices in the gallery. Therefore the stalks in the gallery space move in real-time and in unison based on the movement of the wind outside.
Elusive Matter
18.09.2025 - 19.09.2025 Transart Festival
BASIS Vinschgau Venosta, Silandro, Bolzano (IT)
18 September 2025 from 21:45 until midnight
19 September 2025 from 9:00 until 15:00
With Elusive Matter, a minimalist sound and light performance, Martin Messier transforms simple wisps of smoke into a veritable projection screen. In a room plunged into darkness, armed only with a projector as a source of light, the artist creates tableaux in an intangible mist: a myriad of ghostly spaces, architectural forms and dreamlike images take shape in the mist, suspended just a few centimetres above the viewer's head. This proximity of matter creates the illusion of a moving space, blurring spatial reference points.
Exploring the boundary between the tangible and the intangible, Elusive Matter brings light and sound into tension to generate atmospheres that are both ethereal and soothing. Guided by the search for an immaterial device, Martin Messier creates a sensory universe where matter fades away to make way for an experience oscillating between presence and absence, intangible beauty and dream.
Innervision
11.09.2025 Transart Festival
NOI Tech Park, Bolzano (IT)
Opening performance Transart Festival on 11 September 2025
at 20:30 & 21:30
A living sculpture takes shape with 62 dancers, each facing an amplified light table, and guided live by Martin Messier. At the heart of this human wave that passes through and encompasses the audience, each performer follows the artist's instructions, as if carried by an inner voice, oscillating between obedience and free will. Dressed in black, the performers merge into a pulsating collective body, swelling, shrinking, advancing or collapsing, embodying the power and malleability of the social body.
In this vast choreographic device, the dancers hold a stone, symbolizing raw material and original nature. Their simple, repetitive gestures - rubbing, throwing, catching - evoke both a return to our roots and a harbinger of humanity's future struggles. In a space saturated with technology, this visceral, prophetic performance returns us to the timeless power of nature and the weight of our collective heritage.
tele-present wind (Mars wind version) at Ars Electronica
03.09.2025 - 07.09.2025 Ars Electronica
Postcity (Groundfloor), Linz (AT)
Futures Entangled: Material Intelligence, Memory & Movement
Istanbul Digital Art Festival (IDAF)
The exhibition Futures Entangled: Material Intelligence, Memory & Movement, presented within the framework of the Ars Electronica festival’s PANIC – yes/no theme, offers a narrative that weaves together the urgencies of migration and ecological crisis. Through installation and data artworks, it explores the emotional, material, and technological dimensions of displacement, adaptation, and survival.
This work invites audiences into an environment where speculative ecologies, nonhuman data, and alternative systems of exchange come to life—proposing new sensibilities for how we sense, share, and sustain in a rapidly transforming world. By engaging with both planetary and personal scales of crisis, the work asks: How do we navigate panic—not just as fear, but as a potential for transformation?
tele-present wind (Mars wind version)
This installation by David Bowen is a collaboration with the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The piece consists of a series of 84 x/y tilting mechanical devices connected to tall dried grass stalks, installed like a field in the gallery. The mechanisms will tilt, move and sway based on data collected from the wind sensor on the Perseverance Mars rover.
Dr. José A Rodríguez-Manfredi, lead scientist on the Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer on Perseverance, assisted in collecting the wind data for the project. That data is mapped to the movement of the mechanisms. Thus, the individual components of the installation here on earth will move in unison as they mimic the direction and intensity of the wind from another planet.