As part of the Ars Electronica Campus Exhibition, the Media Art & Design programme of the Faculty of Art and Design is showcasing five artistic projects under the title of »Cybernetic Subjects«: The Pond, Ymr.x, Latent Heat Generation, She’s So Centsible, Sonic Ecologies, and Humans. The exhibition revisits cybernetics – the science of control, regulation and communication in systems – and critically examines the links to artificial intelligence (AI) and ecological practices. While cybernetic systems are modelled on nature, today’s technologies seldom aim to truly understand nature and the environment. This is precisely what the central project »The Pond« addresses.

For several semesters now, students and teaching staff have been using a combination of technical sensors (e.g. temperature sensors, microphones, cameras) and biological indicators to monitor a pond specially created on campus. Daphnia (water fleas) and Chlamydomonas algae count among the »natural sensors«. The research process can now be experienced in the multimedia installation forming part of the exhibition. The data received from the sensors is translated into sound or visual impulses, for example, to enable new sensory approaches to the environment. The reaction of the Daphnia to changes in water quality is also discernible. The project invites us to question the prevailing notions of AI, environmental control and technical measurability and to understand nature not merely as something for us to measure, but as a complex, living system.