Karolina Żyniewicz

Stretching Senses School

From the curators:

The Stretching Senses School is an education-as-research project at the Tieranatomisches Theater Berlin (TA T) attached to the exhibition Stretching Materialities, co-partnered with the Node Institute Berlin. Through this workshop-based contribution to the exhibition, we are fostering collaboration between anthropology and immersive interaction art. We are engaging with experimental collaborations [undefined] alongside digital artists and creative coders in order to raise awareness of the public on the multiscale and embedded interconnections between humans and other earthly beings.

Leaking Bodies

Leaking Bodies is a project by Charlotte Roschka, Hugo Larqué, Karolina Żyniewicz, Jemma Woolmore, Mickey van Olst, Yoonha Kim, and Maxime Le Calvé that explores the hidden energies and activities of matter. Created as part of the Stretching Senses School it responds to the exhibition »Stretching Materialities« of the MoA project Object Space Agency Tieranatomisches Theater Berlin.

Leaking Bodies explores the connection between the earthly atmosphere and earthly beings to gain an understanding of the connection these beings share with the atmosphere and with each other through the atmosphere. The leaking bodies of the exhibition's beings and their particles exchange, revealing hidden stories and experiences, allowing the visitor to grasp a piece of their universal knowledge transfer.

With this project, we add another level to the existing VR experience in the exhibition at TAT. The visitor uses the portal-like VR elevator and is transported to a space at the level of the clouds in the troposphere. In the elevator hangs a cloud being, correlating to the real cloud in the physical exhibition. Out in the exhibition space are three sites where three beings; a tree, rock, and decaying wood await. The electromagnetic fields of the artificial cloud machine and an artificial wind machine are recorded and transposed to their real locations in the exhibition. Recordings that represent the electromagnetic fields of the exhibition’s beings are connected to the three sites in VR. If the visitor approaches a being leaking an electromagnetic field into the atmosphere, hidden from the visitors’ senses, it now becomes audible in VR.

Spoken stories reveal a personal connection to the beings in the space; cloud, rock and tree. Through storytelling, we evoke memory and experience, questioning whether these are only human abilities or are, in fact, possessed by all matter.

The exhibition’s beings introduce the visitor to a renewed encounter stretching the visitor’s senses through VR. Each being is part of a process of leaking and exchange, their particles coalescing in the cloud. The atmosphere and all the particles have a tale to tell. Meeting a particle reveals insights into their exchanges through sound and story.