Current performance played: Water Organoids

Water Organoids is a live cinema performance using an “immersive microscope” to film and project an invisible and counter-intuitive reality of self-organizing water structures. Physical experiments are performed alongside improvising musicians in front of the audience, as a puppetry of an emerging, primitive form of life. With custom technologies, it explores poetic narratives with real world materials that force performers to react to unplanned events that are unique to each performance.

Shapes of Emergence is a live cinema collective exploring the intersection of experimental sciences, music, and cinema. Founded by artist, physicist and roboticist Baudouin Saintyves, the project originated from projections of experiments on forms that he conducted alongside his scientific research at MIT. It then moved to the University of Chicago, where physicist Séverine Atis joined to develop the first choreographies and explore new experiments. The duo presented a first eponyme live cinema performance, Shapes of Emergence, drawing on Chicago's rich experimental music scene. They were joined by musicians Otto Briner, Ben Kinsinger, and Roiel Benitez to further refine their medium and develop a new performance, Water Organoids. Like a metaphor for a scientist in the lab, the inherent variability in the physics experiments they "perform" on stage becomes a central element of the show, allowing for the development of a symbiotic approach to sound and image that put emphasis on improvisation and "discovery." Exploring sounds heavily influenced by Chicago's jazz and experimental music scenes,Water Organoids premiered as an award winner at the International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA) in Paris in May 2023, and was subsequently featured at international events such as the Chicago Architecture Biennial, Ars Electronica, the Current New Media Festival, or La Nuit des Idées (Villa Albertine).

Support