BUG
media installation
2023
artists in residence impakt utrecht
CODE 2023
denisa půbalová
lea luka sikau
antje jacobs
exhibitions:
ars electronica festival 2023
impakt festival 2023
isea melbourne 2024
Recently, videos of bug fights swarm the internet. Our relationship with other-than-human species is mediated by digital encounters, always one a click away from insect livestreams. We look at animals via computational interfaces, marginalizing their embodied existence outside the screen.
This speculative instrument merges aesthetics of telescopes and camera lenses with microscopes and weapons. Instead of looking up into space, you gaze down into the sewage system. The manhole functions as a portal to an uncanny encounter with a bug’s fictional reality: As you stand face-to-face with the eye’s of this insect, you notice being looked at – by the bug, yourself, and other surveillance systems.