October 1 - October 26, 2024

Being Transducer is the first solo exhibition held by SYNPHYSICA in New York in 2024. This exhibition is an extension of the group’s long-term exploration in the cross-species context of “bio-Internet of Things,” pivoting on the idea of object-oriented ontology developed by philosopher Timothy Morton to delineate a network of biosignals that transcend entities, species, and the flowing confluence of time and space, which reveals the intricate relationships in the ecosystem.

SYNPHYSICA is an artist collective founded by Chiaochi CHOU (ACC 2023) and Youyang Hu in Taiwan in 2018; the team is renowned for creating and developing large-scale installations that incorporate living creatures. Their creations aim to highlight the existence of subjectivity of non-human entities through bioelectrical signals, break the natural physical boundaries of species, and visually describe the ecological landscape of collective interactions. With the team’s ongoing creation and research being published, SYNPHYSICA has gradually expanded their exploration into inter-object relationships that are beyond telecommunication signals and incorporated such exploration within multidimensional ecological models; such conduct creates a resonance between the ecological perspectives of the team and the era of object-oriented ontology. The form of creation has also evolved from installation art to shaping regional systemic ecological landscapes and creating indeterminate ecological sculptures.

This solo exhibition, Being Transducer, is held at Pace University Art Gallery in Manhattan, USA. The exhibition responds to Timothy Morton’s concept of “dark ecology,” emphasizing that all elements within an ecosystem, including humans and non-human species, coexist within a blurred and inter-infiltrating network. This exhibition foregrounds not only the apparently perceivable interactions within the ecology but also the interactions lying beneath the surface and difficult to directly perceive; it is also because the boundary between humans and nature is absolutely blurred that we cannot regard nature simply as an external world; the concept of humans and nature being a binary relationship must be cast away.

Based upon past explorations, attempts, and concrete performances rendered in their works, SYNPHYSICA has unveiled more hidden aspects of ecology for their audience, describing the constitution of the ecologically cognitive system. The exhibited items cover the creation development of SYNPHYSICA from 2020 to 2024, revealing to the audience how subtle life signals occur within materiality and traverse among humans, nature, and objects, physically and virtually, and making connections from New York where the center is teeming with skyscrapers to forests around the world.