hyperobjects.io
Software
To call something a hyperobject means to consider its inherent multidimensionality. Imagine a single mountain as a fraction of all mineral species, or the millions of years it took to form “mountain” at all. Hyperobjects are like hashtags, implying metadata of time and space.
hyperobjects.io is an interspecies social media platform that currently exists as non-native MVP.
It has been funded by
Befriending Hyperobjects
2019
Exhibition
NAVEL / Los Angeles US
The initial group exhibition featured 17 artists from 5 continents and was fully biodegradable, with exception of the technology needed for display. All artworks were manufactured using local materials and following the artist’s instructions. Instead of solitary human art practice, this show featured collaborations of human and nonhuman entities.
Sonja Gerdes + #oxygenenergizer, Elisa Balmaceda + #ringoffire, David Sampethai + #suburbia, Familia Villaroel + #rain, Tomoko Sauvage + #water, Acqua Vrzal + #emotion, Sylbee Kim + #osteoarterial joints, Terra0 + #flower, Susanne Probst + #earth, Cojimo Ancerias + #volcano, Hayden Dunham + #DD.
Screenings: Nina Sarnelle/Sara Drake: Let us know if yr free, Judith Sönnicken: Google Gardening, Lauren Bon / Metabolic studio: Intention and Release for Living Systems, Samuel Mountford: Cromlech, Sofia Albina Novikoff Unger: Bufo Bufo (aeons below)
Exhibition design in collaboration with Charles Mathis / California Carts
Image credit: Amanda Vincelli, Jay Are
The first microproject: Hahamongna Native plant nursery, Pasadena US
2019
The exhibition was connected to a first local test micro-project. Visitor donations were given to Hahamongna Native Plant Nursery in Pasadena, a volunteer-driven invaluable asset to the Arroyo Seco and Southern California.
Restoration efforts along the Los Angeles River have accentuated the largely unmet need for native plants that are regionally sourced and genetically appropriate. The nursery provides low-cost native plants for restoration, conservation and climate resilience as well as education on how to promote and disseminate these plants.
More info at
Hyperobject Virtual Lab
A multidimensional consciousness exploration
Curated and hosted by Judith Sönnicken
2020 - 2023
Tabita Rezaire
Huniti Goldox
Dk Osseo-Asare
Felipe Aracena
Yuqing Liang
Catalina Africa
Carlos Monleon
Yewande Pearse
El Larson
Saewon Oh
Terra0
Görkem Bereket
Elisa Balmaceda
Dambi Kim
Nicole L’Huillier
Dambi Kim + #plant
Virtual tea + incense ceremony and herbal tarot reading
September 26th, 2021 11am PST
“Each year, I try to live with the seasons. Every year I’m slowly improving. ”
Dambi Kim captures the serenity and transience of life through tea, incense, words and sounds. Through playing a Korean traditional black zither, she was first introduced to the way of tea. Philosophically, medieval Japanese Tea Master Sen Rikyu’s wabi-sabi teaching caught her mind. She simply wanted to put it into practice in her every day life.
Uploading ancient technology into the virtual-spiritual world, Dambi conducts research on herbs and plants to create functional nutrition for holistic experiences. With her practice, she aims restore the connection between human and non-human beings in a playful manner.
Image credit: Dambi Kim
https://www.dambikim.com/
Dk Osseo-Asare + Felipe Aracena
Ecology and Kinship
October 3rd, 2021 11am PST
What is environmental stewardship? This session features a conversation about restoring ancient ancestral technology, relearning to deep-listen to non-human beings, working with the elements more consciously, and remembering our alchemical understanding of natural cycles. Felipe and Dk are sharing their wisdom and mission on Earth.
“If you let a non-human entity guide you, you are working on your ego.” - Felipe
Felipe Aracena is a nature photographer and researcher of the Mapuche cosmovision and other ancient cultures in South America. His mission is to preserve oral indigenous knowledge, the concept of kume mognen (mapuche) or sumaj kausay (quechua) = “good living”. He facilitates ceremonies in collaboration with traditional plants, educational workshops and earth rituals.
https://www.instagram.com/felipearacenafoto/?hl=en
“We’re looking forward to many spacecrafts in the fleet.” - Dk
DK Osseo-Asare co-founded the Ashesi Design Lab as Chief Maker and is Assistant Professor of Architecture and Engineering Design at Penn State University. He also co-founded Low down design office in Ghana, an architecture studio that realizes high design through low cost, low energy tech solutions as well as Agbogbloshie makerspace platform, a series of maker camps to imagine the future of Ghana's largest e-waste processing zone.
https://www.architectmagazine.com/practice/low-design-office_o
Image credit: Dk Osseo-Asare, Felipe Aracena
Judith Sönnicken
Quantum meditation: #water
October 10th, 2021 11am PST
Clear ancient regenerative waters! Hydrate your cells with oceanic infinity, shapeshift through 3 molecular states: liquidity, vapor and crystalline ice hexagons. Quiet your mind and detach from the idea of form! Water is immediacy, no hesitation, no linear process, no ego, surrender!
F
L
O
W
!
Drop falls into ocean. May you remember your liquidity at all times.
Join us to paint, draw, shape or write our #water journeys!
Sound in collaboration with Miguel Oliveira
Image credits: Judith Sönnicken, Alexey Kljatov
Judith Sönnicken
Quantum meditation: #time
October 17th, 2021 11am PST
“We create ourselves in the forms we imagine. Years pass, we are what we have spoken.” - Osiris
“Synchronicity is an everpresent reality for those who have eyes to see.” - Carl Jung
We’ll be looking into different types of temporalities, archetypes, synchronicities, geometries and oscillating systems. I’ll be guiding a meditation in which we consciously work with time in quantum manifestation, bending time, timeline jumping and time travel.
Image credit: Rafael Fuentes
Terra0 + Görkem Bereket
Ecology, economics, sovereignty
October 31st, 2021 11am PST
“Can a forest own itself?” - Terra0
Via instantiating a Decentralised Autonomous Organisation atop areas of land to manage them, terra0 aims to create technologically-augmented ecosystems that are more resilient, and able to act within a predetermined set of rules in the economic sphere as agents in their own right.
Can ecology and economics synthesize into forms of stewardship? What is a circular economy? We’ll be looking at organic and inorganic economic models, and infrastructures for environmental stewardship. This session will frame the relation between existing token economies and the related externalities - thereby trying to sketch new ways of agency through the creation of speculative assets.
terra0 (as a research group) favors a materialist reading of blockchain-based tokens as always entangled with their site and event of production. In earlier experiments with the medium of unique non-fungible tokens (NFT‘s) they explicitly bound tokens to manual and artistic work in a specific environment.
https://terra0.org/
Görkem Bereket is a blockchain communications specialist with an academic background in sustainability and nature conservation with circular economy, planetary boundaries and systems thinking focus.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gorkem-bereket/
Image credits: Terra0
Judith Sönnicken + El Larson
Quantum meditation and soundbath: #mineral
November 7th, 2021 11am PST
“Carved into the hill were small dwellings where buddhist monks would study and meditate, and singing or chanting in them reverberated sound through my bones.” - El
Minerals contain memory records of all species and systems in deep time, geological time, ancestral infinities. Who was here before? Can you hear their sounds? DNA codes are stored within chrystalline structures. Tectonics are forming mountain ranges, new continents, within timeframes that appear abstract. Gravity is anchoring us to a liquid core while meteoric iron is ejected into our galaxy in stardust clouds.
El Larson is a Los Angeles-based sound practitioner and wellness designer who works with sound and space to help balance internal and external environments. El is certified in sound healing, reiki, Ayurveda, feng shui (BTB school), and the WELL and fitwel building standards. Her personal practices include several limbs of yoga, martial arts and shamanism. She is grateful to blend her experiences, visions and years of training into a suite of remedies that help balance our environments, on every scale.
Image credit: Judith Sönnicken
Dr. Yewande Pearse + #dna
An audio-visual exploration of genetic play
November 14th, 2021 11am PST
“How do genomics inform identity in the age of a quantified self?” - Yewande
We’ll be exploring galactic backend code and ways to communicate with it, the idea of a ‘quantified self,’ DNA ASMR, horizontal passing along of ancestral wisdom, inclusive technology, the infinite magic of sound, and a 528 hz activation.
“DNA is a quantum computer that localizes a non-local omnipresent consciousness or spirit into spacetime energy information and matter.” - Deepak Chopra
London-born Dr. Yewande Pearse is a neuroscientist and research fellow at The Lundquist Institute in Los Angeles. In the lab, Dr. Pearse’s work has specialized in treating rare genetic brain disorders with stem cell therapies. Outside of it, she has popularised science inclusivity, contributing to Massive Science as a writer and hosting a globe-spanning series of live events, podcasts, and talks, including First Fridays Connected with the Natural History Museum, L.A., and the YouTube series‚ Music on My Mind‘, with John Legend.
https://www.yewandepearse.com/
Image credits: The medical futurist, Digizyme
Elisa Balmaceda in collaboration with Rodrigo Rios Zunino + #sun
Solar Alignment: A cosmic journey into planetary geometries
January 30th, 2022 11am PST
“Being situated in a place and tracing the alignment to a hyperobject, this big entity, drawing these invisible lines that connect you and your body to this other body which is the sun, you need these other bodies inbetween, like a mountain. In the end, it’s always a system of communication, connecting your body to your surroundings. And your presence - I think it has a lot to do with being present.” - Elisa
How do we connect to the sun? And how does the sun connect us to everything on earth? Can a mountain be a platform of observation, or an antenna for energies and electromagnetic waves that communicate with us?
Through our screens, we'll align ourselves with Elisa and Rodrigo on top of a mountain in the southern hemisphere to embark on a cosmic journey. We'll be learning how to connect ancestral and modern technologies to become aware of the entanglements of our embodied presence with the planetary geometries we all inhabit.
Elisa Balmaceda is a visual artist, experimental educator and researcher. Her work explores the entanglements between the biosphere and the technosphere, the material and energetic realms of the human and the non-human relations and the cosmic and planetary geometries and ecologies related to them.
https://elisabalmaceda.com/
Image credits: Elisa Balmaceda
Tabita Rezaire + #infinity
Lineages vortex (An ancestral meditation)
November 11th, 2022 6pm GMT
“May we find our soul on our path. May we listen to the songs carried in the wind. May we search our hearts for guidance. May we grow our practice of love onto infinity. Blessings to you all.” - Tabita
Tabita Rezaire invites us on a journey into the ancestral realms, to call upon those who have walked the path we are walking to inform and guide us. Join us to sit with the ancestors, to travel through the lineages who have birthed us, to honor, receive, release, and embody the gift of life.
Tabita Rezaire describes herself as infinity incarnated into a multidimensional agent for healing. Her practice layers organic, virtual and spiritual experiences as technologies to serve the shift towards heart consciousness. Through screen interfaces and collective offerings, she reminds us to access our own inner data center and download directly from source. Since 2020 she has been developing AMAKABA, a centre for the arts and science of the earth, the body and sky, combining spiritual and ancestral philosophy with an agroecological cacao farm and yoga centre. “AMAKABA is a vision for a space where one can connect with a journey into the depths of themselves, guided by the wisdom of the Amazonian forest… The ambition is to contribute to a more conscious and responsible way of living and being, and to respond creatively to the many challenges we face.”
Image credits: Courtesy of Tabita Rezaire and Goodman Gallery
Carlos Monleón + #microbiome
untitled
November 24th, 2022 6pm GMT
“A time layer that digests space.” - Carlos
As multidimensional enzymes we will journey through elemental digestions that precede food, drawing forms from the ancestral chain and assembling biofilms that slime us across time and space. Please have at hand any materials you'd like to use to trace a movement or make a mark, e.g. drawing materials or any other preferred medium.
Carlos Monleón materializes sculptural and participatory artworks, tracing evolutionary processes that stem from digestion and cognition across multi-species entanglements and cybernetic metabolisms.
He is interested in the relationship between bacterial activity and decentralized spatial intelligence of organisms, specifically lichens, scobys, or slime molds, that operate through forms of relational nourishment, guided by sensibility and sensation. What defines symbiosis between species?
His work inquires on the liquid and solid membranes that make up a life form in the physical realm, and their microbiotic opacities. Glas, fabric, skin and clay operate as infrastructure for storage, transportation, fermentation, and data streams.
Image credit: Carlos Monleón
Huniti / Goldox + #water
HEAVY MATTER / An audio-visual experience
December 15th, 2022 6pm GMT
“where does the circulation of falling and rising come from” - Huniti Goldox
This meditative session explores deeper relational layers of seeing, listening and feeling a subterranean mineral cave in Amman, Jordan.
Ancient waters, heated in the planet’s crust, rise to the surface before dripping down from a body with a skin of jagged and soft rocks. It has a sense of reptile inhaling sentient weightless ions abundant in the atmosphere.
By rendering this body to the virtual sphere the question arises whether the texture comes to life only through light and reflection? Where is it in the absence of its digitalisation? Where does its orientation and circulation of falling and rising come from? What language are we following here?
HUNITI GOLDOX explore the performativity and weight of the material realm through digital renderings. Their process includes an experimentation with new media technologies, augmenting the depth of emotion and memory embedded in water.
Image credit: Huniti Goldox
Yuqing Liang + #breath
Intangible conversations
January 22nd, 2023 6pm GMT
“Everything around you is breathing with you, or maybe you joined their breath. Synaesthesia is a hyperobject. The supreme self that lives within your heart” -Yuqing
Yuqing Liang narrates the relationship between a body and its surroundings through technology, evoking emotions through materials and ritual behaviours.
From tangible to intangible, we will embrace the non-human systems through a series of multi-sensorial experiences. Together we will explore a de-anthropocentric universe where our reverence for the surroundings goes beyond our perceiving limitations.
Yuqing Liang is a multi-media designer and creative technologist based in New York. Her research lies in the intersection of speculative design and multi-sensorial experience. She narrates our relationship with the non-human entities with a speculative lens and multi-sensorial channels. She focuses on the unseen and the unknowable, and believes that humans are more intimately connected to these things than we realize.
Image credits: Yuqing Liang
Catalina Africa + #cosmos
I wanted to create a portal, and I found out I’m a portal.
- Shapeshifting as a practice
February 20th, 2023 5pm GMT
“To paint is to revel in the process of shapeshifting, a process through which we can transform ourselves, through which we can recreate ourselves, die and be born over and over again. I place my handprint in the center of the painting, not to claim authorship of it, but rather as a way of saying that “I” am created by the painting, the painting creates me.” - Catalina
Catalina Africa‘s work oscillates between painting, video, music and dance. She transcends the boundaries between earth and sky, physical and non-physical, into immersive and vibrant love declarations for this universe. Her paintings, often co-created with her daughter Yana, operate as celebratory gateways into molecular densities, cosmic infinities, and the entire spectrum inbetween.
Image credits: Catalina Africa
Nicole L'Huillier + #frequency
An invitation to behave like a membrane (and resonate like a drum)
April 2nd, 2023 4pm GMT
“A musical instrument that only plays in zero gravity” - Nicole
This is an invitation to activate and resonate with a membranal practice.
We’ll attune to vibrations that make things tremble and shake limits that fragment bodies, knowledges, languages, temporalities, signals, and straight lines, among other things that can—and must—be blurred.
Throughout this performative lecture, we will dive into the transductive world of resonances and membranes arranged by sounds, theories, (quantum*) listening exercises, poetry readings, multidimensional forms of silence, and an improvised distributed digital choir.
*citing Pauline Oliveros’ notion of quantum listening
Nicole L’Huillier is a transdisciplinary artist and researcher from Santiago, Chile. Her practice centers on exploring sounds and vibrations as construction materials to delve into questions of agency, identity, collectivity, and the activation of a vibrational imagination. Her work materializes through installations, sonic/vibrational sculptures, custom-made (listening and/or sounding) apparatuses, performances, experimental compositions, membranal poems, and writing.
Image credits: Nicole L’Huillier
Saewon Oh + #flower
Quantum Flowering
May 21st, 2023 6pm GMT
“Welcome to a virtual earth offering, an exploration of flower consciousness and the co-creation of a healing elixir to support the flowering of humanity.” - Saewon
Flowers have been our healers and teachers since the beginning of our time on this planet. They are portals to healing, remembering and other realms of consciousness beyond the linear and egoic human mind. Using a flower induction, we will embark on a hypnosis journey across time and space to meet with our flower guides of the future who can support us through this precarious time in the Anthropocene.
Saewon is exploring plant journeying, interspecies communication, and hosts an on-going collaborative flower archive, aiming to cultivate healing connections between humans and plants. Her essences are touch points between spirit and matter, quantum sculptures, ceremonial alchemy, energy work made tangible, a relationship with the elements, earth spirits, consciousness, water worship, an asking, a receiving, and a vehicle for shapeshifting.
Saewon Oh is an artist, educator and healing arts practitioner based in Joshua Tree, Ca. Her work weaves in and out of trance states using sound, hypnosis and plant consciousness for ritual, performative and healing purposes. She is also the founder of Sun Song, an embodied research lab for vibrational essence therapy, and hosts SSEER a monthly virtual gathering for group flower essence explorations.
Image credits: Saewon Oh
