Only until May 27th! Visit "Theatrum Radix" exhibition at the Tieranatomisches Theater in Berlin before it's too late. Open from Tuesday to Saturday, 2 PM to 6 PM. VR viewings available from 4 PM to 6 PM. Don't miss this captivating experience!
Immerse yourself in a world where glass and 3D printed creations, natural history specimens, and their virtual counterparts converge. Step into the transformed lecture hall of the historic anatomical theater. Explore the intriguing connection between historical objects and their digital scans from the Museum für Naturkunde's CT Laboratory and Mediasphere For Nature. Virtual reality animation takes you on a narrative journey, intertwining art and technology.
Discover a surreal world where the theater's architecture blends with nature's order.
Join me in questioning conventional thinking and exploring new knowledge models. Let's challenge anthropocentric ideologies and reconsider hierarchical concepts in biological classification systems. My art invites critical reflection on the colonial origins, preservation, and presentation of objects.
This collaboration between the Tieranatomisches Theater and the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin sparks a dialogue between art and natural history. Don't miss out on this opportunity!
Experience the captivating intersection of art, nature, and technology. Visit "Theatrum Radix" before May 27th. @mfnberlin@tieranatomisches_theater@ikonospace@vr4content@invr.space@jorisdemnard@farremanuel@art.hock@daniel__benyamin@alan.horsley@poslednayanadjeshda@berlinglassworks #virtualreality #glassart #contemporaryart #naturalorder #nature #theatre Photo by @gideon.rothmann
Theatrum Radix
Artist : Marlene Bart @marlene.bart@somaart.berlin@futuracanvas.con
〰️Archive
Theatrum Radix is a transdisciplinary virtual reality project by Marlene Bart in collaboration with Ikonospace founder Joris Demnard and 3D artist Manuel Farre.
Combining surreal narratives of nature with CT scans from the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, the work constructs a contemporary architecture of knowledge.
Grounded in Bart’s artistic research on encyclopaedic metaphors of the world, the project revisits the ancient fascination with the order of things and beings.
It opens a surreal dialogue on the role of objects within scientific and artistic discourse, bridging historical context and contemporary perspectives on knowledge systems and the display of natural and artistic artefacts.
〈Theatrum Radix〉는 Marlene Bart가 Ikonospace 설립자 Joris Demnard, 3D 아티스트 Manuel Farre와 협업한 초학제적 가상현실 프로젝트입니다. 자연에 관한 초현실적 서사와 베를린 자연사박물관(Museum für Naturkunde)의 CT 스캔 데이터를 결합하여, 동시대적 지식의 건축을 설계한 작업입니다.
본 프로젝트는 고대부터 이어져 온 ‘사물과 존재의 질서’에 대한 탐구를 바탕으로, 세계를 백과사전적 은유로 재구성하며 과학적·예술적 담론 속 오브제의 역할에 대한 초현실적 대화를 제안합니다.
"Patterns of Pathology tells a story. It is a tale of questions that have long intrigued inquisitive minds. The journey begins in 1875, when a scientist in Liverpool revealed that the brains of monkeys and rabbits produce faint electrical signals, or voltage fluctuations, originating in the cortex, which could be influenced by sensory stimuli. Could it, then, be possible to chart the electrical activity of brains? Many experiments subsequently followed, at first on animals and later humans, and today we have all come across the electroencephalo-gram, or EEG in one form or another.
Patterns of Pathology is also a tale of two women. It is equally the tale of seven women, whose names were omitted from history. When Marlene Bart and Flora Lysen meet in the virtual realm, they begin to discuss the gaps in the history of EEG. What is missing? Where does pattern recognition, replete with sharply defined boundaries like a chessboard, reach its limits? Where and how does artificial intelligence become the supposed beacon of hope?
Flora shows Marlene a historical atlas, filled with EEG recordings from the 1940s. Marlene is entranced by atlases. Flora scans the entire atlas, and Marlene is drawn to the EEG data recorded from women of her and Flora's age when the atlas was compiled – seven women between 30 and 40 years old, identified not by their names but by their ascribed conditions. For this AR animation, the data, regardless of whether these women were classified as normal, schizophrenic, epileptic, or manic-depressive, are brought together as a classless group: simply seven individual women, without labels. They enter into a dialogue. The binary of normal and abnormal is transcended, and the seven women, along with the two, are brought into a living conversation through their EEG data." #mediaart #artandscience #eeg
Meine künstlerische Arbeit setzt sich mit enzyklopädischen Denk- und Ordnungsmodellen auseinander, nicht aus einer bloßen Faszination für deren Sammel- und Systematisierungsdrang, sondern aus dem Bedürfnis heraus, ihre inneren Bruchstellen sichtbar zu machen. Mich interessiert die Enzyklopädie weniger als abgeschlossene Wissensform denn als kulturelle Metapher: als Ausdruck eines gesellschaftlichen Bedürfnisses nach Orientierung, Verortung und Sinnstiftung. #artisticpractice #encyclopedia #knowledgeorganization #orientation #informationculture #digitalization #reflection #archive #metaphor #structure #systems #knowledge #society #artandscience #criticalpractice
Patterns of Pathology ♟️
A short video glimpse into Patterns of Pathology, a book based augmented reality work that revisits overlooked chapters in medical history, focusing on the discrimination against women and the construction of “normal” versus “abnormal” body data.
The project draws on historical and contemporary EEG (electroencephalography) recordings — a neurological research method used to measure and visualize brain activity. The animations are generated from EEG data of seven women recorded in the 1940s. By scanning collages viewers unlock three distinct chapters, each introduced by short audio narrations. The activated data transforms into moving patterns, inviting the audience into an interactive dialogue with these archival traces.
Patterns of Pathology was developed through a collaboration between artist Marlene Bart and scholar Flora Lysen, initiated by the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science.
The work is directed and written by Marlene Bart, produced in collaboration with @ikonospace special thanks to @farremanuel & @jorisdemnard
The project appears as part of the publication
Biomedical Visions – Epistemology, Medicine and Art Practice.
#AugmentedReality #ARArt #MediaArt #artandscience
In meiner Arbeit verstehe ich mich als künstlerisch forschende Enzyklopädistin. Enzyklopädist:innen initiieren, organisieren und realisieren enzyklopädische Vorhaben. Dabei können sie sowohl Produzent:innen als auch Verwalter:innen von Inhalten sein. Ein Blick auf enzyklopädische Projekte der Frühen Neuzeit zeigt, dass weniger die Produktion eigener Inhalte als vielmehr das Sammeln von Informationen sowie das Entwickeln von Systemen und Strukturen zur Wissenserschließung zu ihren zentralen Tätigkeiten gehörte. #encyclopedicpractice #artisticresearch #knowledgeorganization
#informationgathering #knowledgeproduction #earlymodernstudies
#researchbasedart
Thank you so much, @dianedrubay for mentioning @ikonospace and my project Theatrum Radix in The Liminal Review — it even led to us becoming the cover image for the related article published in Forbes @forbes .
#TheatrumRadix #newmedia #Forbes #TheLiminalReview #DigitalArt
In my artistic work, I am interested in the epistemological potential of images. How much knowledge is embedded in images from natural history encyclopedias, and how can this knowledge be made visible through artistic means? Here is a small excerpt from my latest artist talk Galerie @petergaugy in Brussels.
#artandscience #bookculture #contemporaryart #brussels #encyclopedia
Circulatory (2018–2024)
Experimental film, 7:19 min
A visual dialogue between past and present:
Fragments from English-language educational films of the 1970s are reassembled into a poetic, collage-based reflection on humanity, knowledge, and the origins of the world.
At its core lies a question:
Who defines knowledge? And who grants authority to truth?
The starting point is the Encyclopædia Britannica — a publication claiming the task and authority of collecting and transmitting human knowledge through scientific reliability. Circulatory examines this claim, interrogating and critically reframing it.
Installation Shot at SOMA Art Berlin @somaart.berlin by @gideon.rothmann
#experimentalfilm #foundfootage #videoart #movingimage #conceptualart #contemporaryart #archivepoetics #artfilm
Unknown Femur (2024) by Marlene Bart
At the intersection of biology, history, and art, this totemic sculpture reimagines the femur as a boundary object—a speculative hybrid of bone, glass, and 3D-printed molecules.
Inspired by Susan Leigh Star and sci-fi works like Annihilation, Bart explores how life mutates, shifts, and resists categorization.
📍Villa Heike
📸 Photo: Michael Schäfer
#MarleneBart #UnknownFemur #ArtAndScience #Posthuman #BoundaryObjects #SpeculativeArt #BioArt #GlassArt #3Dprint #ContemporaryArt #VillaHeike
