Interviews
MEET THE ARTISTS : re|thread
Bridging the gap between art and software, re|thread is a Stockholm-based collective of software researchers, artists, and designers. Their pioneering work revolves around using software as both material and medium for artistic expression.
Alice Left
Wednesday 16 August, 2023
re|thread aims to reshape the software experience, promoting inclusivity, participation, and communal contemplation through their artworks and performances.
We are incredibly excited to display their unique installation at Affordable Art Fair Stockholm!
We talked to Benoit Baudry and Erik Natanael to explore the concept behind un|fold, asking them about their journey, their inspiration and how they ended up using software as an artistic medium.
Can you tell us a bit about your story? What inspired you to start working with art and technology, and how has your vision evolved since your first project? Did you start off as artists or coders?
Erik: Since I started music school at the age of 5, and didn’t start coding until my early teens, you could say I was always an artist first. My parents claim I was enthralled by music and sound at least since the age of 2, but what made me really want to start coding was the absolute thrill when, in recess, my friend showed me the Windows 95 Task Manager listing all of the background processes and mysterious numbers describing the hidden layer beneath the graphical interface. Code always felt like magic. Although music and art have been my primary focus, I’m lucky to have the opportunity to so intricately combine my two passions.
Benoit: I played music way before coding. I played a lot until I was 25, and then I did essentially research in computer science. Coding, reading, experimenting and writing a lot about code, software and computing. It took me a decade of strict focus on science before I started thinking about how I could articulate both science and art. A meeting with Frederik de Wilde was instrumental in realizing I could reconcile these two aspects of my practice. This eventually led to the creation of re|thread in 2019, together with Erik and Nadia Campo Woytuk.
Can you tell us more about the transition and intersection between different forms of communication, and what informs your practice?
Erik: If you’re looking for all the answers to how something works, universities, books and obscure websites are great resources. Art works differently. It is great at creating a more direct link to our inner worlds, touching the imagination, and stimulating questions. By showing software from the vast, complex, slightly chaotic inside, rather than its polished outside, perhaps people will be empowered to ask the necessary questions. Most importantly, software is a magnificent sublime part of our everyday lives and our artworks unveil that invisible world.
Benoit: My research activities have led me deep into the intricacies of code and software execution. And through these years of intense scientific investigations I have come to realize how vast and complex our digital world is. From a research perspective, I started approaching software more as a natural object than a pure mathematical and human product. Meanwhile, I developed an interest in outreaching this beautiful aspect of software beyond scientific audiences. This is how I started thinking of turning our scientific discoveries into art, that can let citizens create emotions about software.
Could you give us an insight into your creative process? What’s your inspiration and what would you say are some of your main influences when it comes to creating a new sculpture, or starting a new project? How did you figure out which process worked for you?
Our process usually starts with one specific software concept that we want to explore: its speed, its evolution, its spatial distribution, its intensity, etc.. Then, we choose a specific software object that we will use to illustrate the concept: a web browser, an image editor, a music streaming application, etc.
Once we have decided on a software concept and a software object, the whole artistic process starts: what medium do we use? Do we do an interactive installation? Where will the installation be situated? How will the audience experience the installation? How abstract or close to the software concept will the installation be?
What are your thoughts on the role that technology can play in traditional artistic expressions?
Essentially all artistic practices are technological. What is ancient tradition now was once bleeding edge technological and cultural innovation. Technology seems to move quicker than ever. Will we jump on the latest trend or stay with a practice we’ve built for years and years? We are fortunate to live in a time when we can practice and experience both old art forms and new and there doesn’t have to be a barrier between the two.
We are very excited about this year’s edition of the fair and are looking forward to seeing un|fold! Can you tell us more about the sculpture you will be presenting? How did you come up with the idea, and what did you most enjoy about creating it?
For the un|fold installation, we explore the concept of the software supply chain, which we illustrate with a RNA visualization tool.
un|fold was originally designed for the Nobel Week Lights and the initial inspiration came from the work of Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna, who were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2020 for the discovery of CRISPR. In their work within the field of genetics, they regularly used a computation analogy (search and replace) to explain their discovery.
With un|fold, we actually perform a search and replace on a digital sequence of RNA, which triggers more than 200,000 small software operations, programmed by 200 different open source organizations.
This immense software sequence is then replayed on a LED structure, displayed as two columns, like two DNA strands. Colours and sound reveal the depth and diversity of code that fuels the search and replace. Mirrors amplify the light and also recall DNA copy.
With similar experiments you have done in the past, what has been the viewers’ reaction? How does the audience affect the end result? Do you enjoy this interactive aspect?
We love interacting with the audience and receiving their feedback about our installations. Reactions are always both about the art installation and about the software and technology that inspired the installation. The reactions are very diverse, but usually involve strong emotions such as surprise, contemplation, fear, curiosity, enchantment. It is always exciting for us to discuss it with the audience, since our practice is steered towards art installations that can lead citizens to make sense of software.
What are you working on next?
We have two major projects coming next: sys|calls and cre|dits. sys|call is an immersive audiovisual installation, using floor projection with the intention to totally embed the audience in the installation and bring them at the core of the internal workings of computation. cre|dits is a tribute to the tens of thousands of people across the globe who contribute to the open source software that forms the backbone of our digital society and digital art.
What is your impression of the contemporary art scene today, and what do you imagine will happen in the future?
Erik: Restless, chasing the future while desperately conserving the past. The future is notoriously hard to predict, depending recursively on the present. But perhaps the accumulation of crises will lead to a new era of Great Stories.
We can’t wait to experience re|thread art in person at Affordable Art Fair Stockholm on 5 – 8 October!
Main image: re|thread un|fold