Extending the Body, Reflecting the Earth

A project powered by Faculty of Arts and Design, West University of Timisoara, Center for Research and Creation in Decorative Arts and Design (CCCADD), Creative Center of Contemporary Visual Arts (CCAVC), and UVT Art Center

Concept

The exhibition Extending the Body, Reflecting the Earth is conceived as a living constellation—an experiential ecosystem where bodies, technologies, and planetary atmospheres co-evolve as interdependent agents of sensing, memory and imagination. Rather than framing the artworks as discrete media installations, the exhibition understands them as relational nodes whose connections produce new forms of ecological awareness. Together, they explore how perception can be expanded, how presence can be recalibrated, and how technological systems can operate not as instruments of control, but as membranes of attunement and care.

The notion of extending the body begins from the premise that the body is not a closed biological unit but a porous interface—an organ of resonance, orientation and relationality. Across the exhibition, breath, movement, gaze, atmospheric disturbance, symbolic interpretation, intuitive gesture, and algorithmic patterning become modes of expanded embodiment. Technologies such as atmospheric sensing, computer vision, AI-based image synthesis, voice/breath detection, and dynamic simulation are not treated as external tools, but as participants in ecological co-creation. Each installation extends the body outward—toward air, water, light, data, symbols and speculative environments—situating human presence within a broader continuum of earthly processes.

Reflecting the Earth introduces a reciprocal movement. Instead of projecting human meaning onto the planet, the exhibition asks how the Earth reflects—through hydrological instability, atmospheric turbulence, cultural resonance, environmental signals, collective identity, and the speculative futures encoded in emergent systems. The installations propose different modes of ecological reflection: the fragility of water cycles (H₂O Transition), the volatility of air as medium (Desert Storm, Breathing Fields), the shifting significance of symbols (Circle of Power), the intuitive mapping of embodied gestures (Constellating Intuition), the communal identity embedded in shared presence (Feature Fusion), and the generative potential of algorithmic worlds (What If? Worlds Reimagined). These reflections reposition the Earth not as passive background, but as an active interlocutor in the meaning-making process.

The exhibition aligns with the subtheme Charting Constellations – Digital Geographies, but also with Eco-Tech Futures – Ecologies of Place – to reveal them as interdependent ecologies, rather than isolated conceptual territories. The works form a network of sensory and conceptual connections, mirroring the structure of a constellation in which each node gains meaning through its relationship to the others. Technologies here are approached as techno-ecological agents—capable of facilitating relationality rather than dominating it. Visual data becomes a material for empathy, computation becomes a field for shared imagination, and interactivity becomes an ecology of care. By engaging visitors as co-creators—where breath becomes landscape, movement becomes turbulence, faces become communal images, gestures become constellations, and presence influences speculative ecosystems—the exhibition positions perception itself as an ecological act.

Ultimately, Extending the Body, Reflecting the Earth proposes that media art can cultivate new forms of planetary imagination. By linking embodied experience, environmental sensibility, intercultural reflection and technological mediation, the exhibition invites audiences to inhabit a constellation of shared vulnerability and possibility. Curating becomes an ecological practice, and experience becomes a site where bodies, atmospheres and technologies learn to sense—and to reflect—the Earth together.

Artists

The artists participating in Extending the Body, Reflecting the Earth form an interdisciplinary collective of emerging practitioners, composed of students (Paul Babencu, Deian Berar, Timeea Dragomir, Cristina Iordache, Tudor Predescu, Miki Velciov) and alumni (Livia Mateias, Marius Jurca, Vlad Jelmarean) of the Faculty of Arts and Design, West University of Timisoara. Their backgrounds span media art, installation, sound, performance, interactive systems, experimental image-making, and computational practices oriented toward speculative futures. They share an interest in ecological perception, sensory experimentation, and the poetic potential of technological environments.

artworks

Extending the Body, Reflecting the Earth brings together six media installations and a screening gaming art selection that investigate how bodies, technologies, and ecological processes co-produce new forms of perception and meaning. Conceived as an interconnected constellation, each artwork acts as an ecological node—activating a distinct modality of sensing while remaining in dialogue with all the others.

Artwork 1 — Desert Storm

Artist: Paul Babencu
Sub-theme: Eco-Technology – Ecologies of Place

Desert Storm creates an atmospheric environment in which artificial turbulence becomes a perceptual interface. Haze, responsive lighting, and an interactive video projection and audio system generate shifting vortices of light and sound that react to the movement and presence of visitors. As bodies navigate the space, sensors translate motion into variations of luminosity and visual density, revealing the volatility of air as an active medium rather than an invisible backdrop. By foregrounding atmospheric disturbance, the installation draws attention to the material fragility of climate systems and reframes presence as an ecological negotiation between the body and the turbulent field surrounding it. Desert Storm proposes a form of embodied sensing that situates the visitor inside an unstable, dynamic ecosystem.

Artwork 2 — H₂O Transition

Artist: Livia Mateiaș
Sub-theme: Eco-Technology – Ecologies of Place

H₂O Transition examines the symbolic and ecological fragility of water through elemental transformations—liquid, vapor, ice, and reflective surfaces held in metal vessels. Dramatic modulations of light and shadow evoke landscapes on the verge of desertification, where hydrological cycles destabilize under climate pressure. As visitors move nearby, reflections shift and shadows bend across the vessels’ surfaces, creating a slow cartography of luminous fragments. Rather than illustrating environmental crisis, the installation cultivates attunement: water becomes a living system in constant transition, and the viewer encounters its delicate equilibrium through subtle perceptual shifts. H₂O Transition invites an embodied awareness of hydrological precarity, framing water not as a resource but as a relational presence.

Artwork 3 — Feature Fusion

Artist: Deian Berar
Sub-theme: Celestial Dialogues – Intercultural Dialogue

Feature Fusion is an AI-based interactive installation that generates a collective portrait by merging the faces of visitors in real time. A camera system captures facial features—without storing or identifying individuals—and an AI model reconfigures these visual parameters into a fluid, continuously shifting composite face. As new visitors enter or leave, the portrait transforms, producing a living map of communal presence. Rather than reinforcing the logic of machine surveillance, the installation reclaims algorithmic vision as a poetic medium, exploring identity as a shared, relational construct. The result is a luminous, hybrid visage that reflects the diversity and interdependence of the participants. In the multicultural context of Dubai, Feature Fusion becomes a visual metaphor for collective identity within a global technological landscape.

Artwork 4 — Breathing Fields

Artist: Vlad Jelmarean
Sub-theme: Digital Geographies – Cartographies of the Body

Breathing Fields uses breath and voice detection, haze, and laser lines to create ephemeral topographies of air. Each exhalation generates expansions, contractions, or dissolutions of light, transforming respiratory patterns into atmospheric drawings. Breath becomes a cartographic gesture, inscribing temporary traces within the shared environment. The installation reveals air as an ecological medium connecting all bodies and visualizes the delicate interdependence between human respiration and atmospheric conditions. By turning the most intimate of human rhythms into spatial form, Breathing Fields reframes the body as a shifting geography embedded in an extended ecological field.

Artwork 5 — Circle of Power

Artist: Miki Velciov
Sub-theme: Celestial Dialogues – Intercultural Dialogue

Circle of Power investigates how symbols shape collective perception. A circular array of chromatic elements responds to the visitor’s position, revealing patterns reminiscent of national flags—yet abstracted beyond specific iconographies. Instead of fixed identifiers, the installation presents symbols as emergent constellations of color and form. Visitors engage in perceptual negotiation: meanings shift as perspectives shift. Through this relational dynamic, Circle of Power encourages reflection on cultural memory, symbolic power, and the fluidity of identity within intercultural environments.

Artwork 6 — Constellating Intuition

Artist: Marius Jurca
Sub-theme: Celestial Dialogues – Mapping Intuition

Constellating Intuition translates small hand movements into star-like compositions on a suspended screen. Points of light cluster and disperse, forming intuitive diagrams that resemble mnemonic maps or cosmic sketches. As each constellation dissolves, a printer records the fleeting pattern, preserving intuition as a visual artifact. The installation positions intuition as an ecological gesture—emerging from relational attunement rather than isolated cognition. It bridges gesture, memory, and cosmic metaphor, inviting visitors to navigate space through embodied, non-verbal forms of knowing.

Artwork 7 — What If? Worlds Reimagined

Artists: Timeea Dragomir, Cristina Iordache, Tudor Predescu
Sub-theme: Symbiotic Imaginaries – Speculative Futures

What If? Worlds Reimagined presents an audiovisual simulated environment in which speculative ecosystems evolve continuously. The work highlights the entanglement between human agency and computational systems, imagining futures that are neither utopian nor dystopian but fluid, relational, and contingent. It situates technological futures within ecological imagination, treating speculation as a mode of care and cohabitation. What If? explores the symbiosis between imagination, technology, and ecological possibility.

curator

Aura Bălănescu is a media curator, artist, and researcher whose practice explores intersections of art, technology, and ecological thinking. As a lecturer at the Faculty of Arts and Design, West University of Timișoara, she develops research-based pedagogies integrating interactive systems, biofeedback sensors, AI-generated structures, and atmospheric sensing. Through her affiliation with Tehnoarte Association, she focuses on sensory environments and expanded embodiment, treating artistic practice as a living system where bodies, materials, and technologies co-evolve.

Her recent curatorial project, Techno-Ecologies for a Fragile Earth, exhibited at Ars Electronica Campus Festival 2025, explored global ecological vulnerability through interactive installations combining perception, environmental data, and technological reflection. Across her practice, she advocates for art as an interface of ecological empathy and for media technologies as agents capable of cultivating care, awareness, and relationality.