Event
About
Abyssial Mimesis
A generative immersive audiovisual installation exploring deep-sea imaginary probabilities through the interplay of digital subconscious.
Multimedia Audiovisual Installation, 2025
Audiovisual: Jiawen Wang
Exhibited at:
2025 Medienhaus UdK Berlin
--from the future, we re-imagine the past; from the deep, we re-envision the probabilities.
In Abyssial Mimesis, the uncharted territories of the digital subconscious are brought to life through the lens of speculative biology. Deep-sea creatures often evoke a sense of mystery and the unknown. They are reminders of the vastness and complexity of the world beyond our immediateperception. This immersive audiovisual installation imagines the probability of digital lifeforms from the collective unconscious. Using generative algorithms and AI-driven image creation, it visualizes hypothetical entities, drawing striking parallels between the hidden depths of the ocean and the unexamined recesses of our shared digital psyche.
The installation unfolds in two interconnected parts:
- Emergence of Forms: In the first phase, nascent lifeforms materialize as points and lines converge and coalesce, creating dynamic, evolving structures. This generative process mirrors the way ideas and identities arise from the depths of the subconscious, offering a visual metaphor for how collective memory and digital probabilities intertwine to give shape to the unknown.
- Specimen Display: The second phase shifts to a contemplative space, presenting these inhabitants of the digital deep as specimens, carefully cataloged and displayed in a futuristic archive. This pseudo-scientific display invites viewers to closely examine the intricate details of these entities and ponder their origins, potential behaviors, and the systems that have shaped them. These inhabitants reflect the imperfect and unstable nature of digital information and memory, highlighting the fragility and fluidity inherent in the systems that construct and sustain them.
As visitors navigate the installation, they are invited to reflect on their own relationship with the digital world and how it shapes thoughts, perceptions, and identities. The work poses questions about the strange and wondrous creatures emerging from our collective digital dreams and the impact of this feedback loop on our understanding of self and subjectivity.
Inspired by Gotthard Günther’s concepts of polycontexturality and meta-subjectivity, Abyssial Mimesis experiments with the fluid interplay between microcosm and macrocosm, between individual and collective. It challenges conventional notions of selfhood, presenting a multisensory journey through the infinite wrapping and unwrapping of collective consciousness.
Through speculative biology and immersive experience design, Abyssial Mimesis reimagines the digital subconscious as a generative ocean of possibilities—an evolving landscape where the mysteries of the human mind converge with the algorithmic logic of machines.
Design alternatives: