“Variants”
by Pierre Huyghe

New this year is an audio guide that can be played from your phone. The QR code for the audio guide can be found on the information board at the entrance to the artwork. The audio guide is available in Norwegian and English.

In the initial phase, the artist has taken as a starting point what is naturally found on the island. A biologist has mapped the species, a surveyor has taken precise measurements, water levels and water flow have been studied, and stones, plants, trees, insects, animals, rubbish, sounds and smells have been thoroughly documented and used in the artist's further work.

The simulation is influenced and informed by what takes place on the island through climate sensors, and creates mutations based on this information. The mutations will occasionally leave the simulation and manifest physically on the island. The location of the physical mutations is made in direct relation to the place where they have occurred in the simulation. Thus there exist two environments, or versions, of the island, both of which influence each other: a physical one and a digital one. Together they form a multipolar being that contains both the island itself and what the island could be in an alternative reality.

Pierre Huyghe about the work:

Variants

2021 – ongoing

Scanned forest, real-time simulation, generative mutations and sounds, intelligent camera, environmental sensors, animals, plants, micro-organisms and materialized mutations: synthetic and biological material aggregate.

Variants is a multipolar entity that perceives, generates and modifies. It is simultaneously an island and what that island could be in an alternate reality.

The island has been scanned to become the environment of a live simulation. The two milieux, physical and digital, are permeable.

A fictional narrative gives a set of rules and prompts, played out by an artificial neural network that generates unpredictable mutations in the simulation, of what is present on the island, animate or inanimate, sounds or things, such as trees, trash, animals, or humans.

As contingent and fluctuant events occur within the island, in its geochemical or biological activity, the generated mutations change behavior in real time and the recurring floodwater accelerates their growth. The intelligences hosted by the spectral space are in an unresolved sympoiesis and permanent crisis.

Occasionally, mutations exit the simulation and manifest physically on the island where they sustain or decay, contaminating the existing reality with an unknown possibility of itself, progressively modifying the island’s appearance.

A path cutting through the island leads to a screen where the simulated environment is navigated by an autonomous and anxious eye, witnessing the island’s ever-changing nature.

As the flood submerges the island, it becomes inaccessible. But whether immersive or impenetrable, the indifferent entity continues.

Production credits

Pierre Huyghe Studio

Anne Stenne, producer and curator

Sara Simon, producer, real-time simulation creative director

Assisted by Anne-Sophie Tisseyre, Elizabeth Burmann, Bernardita Pérez, Eduardo Pérez, Sofia Jiron, Jennifer Cohen

Real time simulation

Technical Direction, Real time System: Pixels Pixels
Technical Director: Ivaylo Getov
Lead Technical Artist: Shuruq Tramontini
Generative System Lead: Caco Peguero
Graphics Development: Nick Shelton

3D Modeling: Miwa Espinoza, Michelle Recio, Francisco Cangas Seiba, Alejandro Medina, Dirt Empire - 3D Design Studio (Nicholas Rubin - 3D Lead and Sculpting, Peter Panton - 3D Animation, Oliver Carr - 3D Modeling) Assistant 3D Modeling: Breanna Browning

Machine Learning and AI: Sarah Schwettmann

Sound Design: John Brumley, Gregorio Fontaine Correa

Sound database: Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, Carolyn Rosten and Sarab S. Sethi

Environmental Sensors: De Vinci Innovation Center

Model: Angelica Spejelkavik Sparre

3D Scanning, Pointcloud Visualisation and Engine:
Matt Shaw: Creative Director
Tom Brooks: Pointcloud Capture and Computational Design Lead
Jacques Pillet: Software Developer
Grey Greison: Pointcloud Capture Specialist
Emilia Clark: Production Manager

Physical milieu
3D Modeling and Production: Kunstgiesserei St-Gallen AG
Living: Amanda Falch
Beekeeper: Nanna Melland
Landscaping, planting: TNT, Villflor, Toppsopp
Architectural planning and realization: motorplan Architekten und Ingenieure, ELEMENTArkitekter AS
Engineering: Dipl.-Ing. Florian Kosche AS Norconsult
Construction and electricity: ITO Produksjon AS, Frya Grustak a/s, M. Carlsen & Sønn AS
Ground survey: Berntsen Plan & Oppmåling AS