Primordium is a digital solo exhibition featuring the first web-based work from media artist Sage Jenson, curated by symbios.wiki.
A primordium is an organ at the earliest stages of development, a mass of cell tissue teeming with potentiality. For Sage Jenson, primordium is material at the precipice of desire, and their material of choice. Their work functions in the aesthetics of immanence; a place where machinic systems imbue each other with unending possibility, a world in motion, out of equilibrium, and pulsating with unstable flows. Each piece in Primordium, their solo exhibition, embodies this sense of becoming, hypnotizing the viewer with an ever-unfolding actualization of the shadow future.
In each of the works in the show, there are agents (particles) that can sense, navigate, and modify their environment. The environment acts as both an arena and a message board for the agents. All of the shapes and patterns within the pieces are emergent behaviors within a rich parameter space. In one sense, the behavior of the agents can be viewed as a reaction to the current state of the environment, and in another, the environment is a creation of the agents’ will upon it.
From slime molds to the structure of the cosmic web, similar algorithmic techniques correlate to natural phenomena at the smallest and largest scales of the universe. Sage is inspired by the natural processes of Earth—a planet out of equilibrium, constantly irradiated with the energy of the sun— to create virtual worlds through the primordial logic of music. Having played the violin for over a decade, and with a deep love of sound from Ligeti to SOPHIE, their work often melts the lines between audio and visual expression.
Stealing pages from philosophy, science, and music, Sage has developed a recipe book for actuating concepts. It is their hope that these mirrorings of the complexities of nature and society, through art, can illuminate the relationship between you, the agent, and the structure of material reality. Primordium presents art at the precipice of becoming, art as a verb.
Words by symbios.wiki
