Kurina Sohn

Department: Contextual Design
Website: kurinasohn.com

Extended Nature

What: An exploration of the relationship between real and unreal through a deep-sea organism.  

Why: Today, we experience a version of nature that is manicured, virtual, and artificial. The internet provides a ubiquitous matrix, in a parallel reality of real nature. The technological perspective on nature is always flattened, abstracted, altered through layers of machine interpretation. According to Kurina Sohn, the relationship between representation, creation and life can no longer be divided between real and unreal. As a result, the boundaries between nature, imagery, machine and body blur. 

How: Kurina reconstructed a crinoid (or ‘sea lily’) in the form of a kinetic structure that mimics natural behaviour. Also, using digitized fossil records, she used a syringe to pump air into the soft robotics and resin-print object.

“We may think we have mastered nature, but we have mastered only its imagery”