As Above, So Below is an interactive installation that uses computational biology and agent-based modelling to simulate the biochemical, metabolic and planetary processes within soil, and highlights how it is deeply impacted by the speculative logic of financial markets and industrial agriculture.
The floor projections simulate a living soil ecosystem, showing interactions between organisms, nutrients and seeds. Live agroindustrial market data displays crop demand, whilst touch-sensitive ceramic seeds help restore balance to the projected ecosystem by altering the sound and light in the space. This reveals how key agents in soil formation are affected by external forces like the stock market—reflecting how speculative financial activities, upon which organic life ultimately depends, influence and distort the biological cycles of our world.
Visitor presence and interaction contributes to the virtual biodiversity of the space, repairing broken pathways and revitalising the soil, supporting the seeds to germinate.
The installation offers a critical reflection on the accelerating pace of computational and speculative processes in the market, challenging our perception of human and more-than-human relationships in the age of digital capitalism.
//
Semantica is artist duo Jemma Foster and Camilla French, whose work explores fragile ecologies and interspecies communication through emerging technologies.
Their practice incorporates biodata, sound, film, generative art and sculptural works. Collaborating with engineers, biologists and musicians to examine ways of sensing and co-creating with more-than-human worlds, they create large-scale interactive installations.
They have produced projects about human and plant mythology, planetary processes, the soil microbiome, industrial agriculture and altered states of consciousness.
Their work has been exhibited at Somerset House, Ars Electronica, FACT Liverpool, Festival de la Imagen, Voltaje Festival, Istanbul Digital Art Festival, Museo la Tertulia, COP28, and COP16. In 2023, they were awarded the Golden Nica for Digital Music and Sound Art at Ars Electronica for their collaborative piece with Atractor Studios; ‘A Tale of Two Seeds: Sound and Silence in Latin America's Andean Plains.' This piece now forms part of the private collection of Banco de la República in Bogotá.