Synthesis II: Earthbound
SPECTRA STUDIO X RIP SPACE PRESENT
SYNTHESIS II : EARTHBOUND
Speculating the World, Worldbuilding the Present
Spectra Studio and Rip Space are partnering up to present a full day of talks, performance, and music featuring LA-based artists, theorists, practitioners and musicians working across media and emergent technologies.
SYNTHESIS II: EARTHBOUND foregrounds techno-critical discourse and infrastructural thinking during Frieze LA. Co-curated by Vera Petukhova and Spectra Studio this program positions worldbuilding from speculative practice to material condition. It asks what it means to build worlds when digital systems are no longer separate from physical reality, but embedded in hybrid infrastructures that merge computation, land, labor, and planetary processes. Any account of the present must now reckon with Earth as a finite, entangled system, ecological, geological, technological, and political.
Featuring: Alice Bucknell, Colloboh, Cabbibo, Isabel Beavers, Nat Decker, Whisper, Shanhuan Manton: Secret Server Club (SSC), Kira Xonorika, Qianqian Ye + Maisa Imamović, John Miranda, Kai Luen Liang, Naomi Sam
PROGRAM:
3:00 - 6:00 PM
Alice Bucknell, “All The Worlds Polygons” Live lecture-performance staged inside the real-time 3D engine Unreal Engine. The performance moves through evolving game levels and real-time environments exploring ecological simulation and how predictive climate technologies shape and potentially limit our imagination of planetary futures
Isabel Beavers, “Game Stone Sky Gaze” A multi-media research performance examining ritual and computation through the material history of digital devices. Layering land-based research on copper mining with Greek mythology and ritual objects
Nat Decker, Whisper, Shanhuan Manton: on digital sovereignty and collective infrastructure through Secret Server Club (SSC) community-held server systems as alternatives to corporate cloud platforms. Their work re-grounds digital technology in material reality and shared stewardship, treating infrastructure itself as a collective artistic and pedagogical practice.
Kira Xonorika + Vera Petukhova an open dialogue on worldbuilding and futurity, exploring how curatorial practice engages emergent technologies and in-process work. The conversation traces how speculative systems, evolving tools, and unfinished forms shape new cultural narratives and experimental infrastructures
Qianqian Ye + Maisa Imamović: What’s More Important Than Two Women Talking About Teaching Creative Coding in the Age of AI? A dialogue performed in the style of a web-series blurring irreverence, internet culture and critical insight, this conversation explores how AI reshapes creative coding practices, classroom dynamics, and access to technological literacy; foregrounding feminist and community-centered approaches to teaching emergent tools.
7:00 - 10:00 PM
Live A/V Sets:
Colloboh
Cabbibo
John Miranda
Kai Luen Liang
Multi-Media Installation:
Naomi Sam
Spectra Studio