Water Organoids

Presented by the collective Shapes of Emergence (Baudouin Saintyves, Séverine Atis, Otto Briner, Ben Kinsinger & Roiel Benitez), the piece challenges our perception of the most familiar and vital substance on Earth—water—while underscoring how it is often overlooked in the context of unsustainable development.

In physics, the concept of memory refers to a system’s sensitivity to its own history—that is, to the sequence of events it has experienced. Evolution can be seen as a form of memory at the ecosystem level, allowing new generations of living systems to “remember” characteristics of previous ones in order to adapt.

Live visual physics experiments are performed alongside improvising musicians, as a kind of puppetry that animates an emerging, primitive form of life. Motion patterns arise from fluids and granular materials manipulated live before the audience and projected on a large scale.

In this practice, the emergence of artistic and natural forms becomes inseparable. Each performance is unique: rather than controlling every step of creation, the actions are guided by the evolving dynamics of natural processes.

The film version will be presented as a fulldome projection of the performance.

Drawing from sonic worlds deeply influenced by jazz and Chicago’s experimental music scene, Water Organoids premiered—and was awarded—at the International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA) in Paris in May 2023. It has since been presented at major international events, including the Chicago Architecture Biennial, Ars Electronica, the Current New Media Festival, and La Nuit des Idées (Villa Albertine).