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:
DOORS OPEN 2:30 PM
3:00 — 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.
3:30 — Secret Server Club (SSC) Whisper, Shanhuan Manton: on digital sovereignty and collective infrastructure: A conversation on digital sovereignty and collective infrastructure, exploring community-held server systems as alternatives to corporate cloud platforms. Infrastructure here becomes shared artistic and pedagogical practice.
4:00 — 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 Hollywood as worldbuilding machinery and how evolving tools, and unfinished forms shape new cultural narratives and experimental infrastructures
4:30 — 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.
5:00 — 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
6:00 - 7:00 Break
7:00 - 10:00 PM
Live A/V Sets:
Colloboh
Cabbibo
John Miranda
Kai Luen Liang
7:00 — John Miranda Experimental electronic artist blending textured sound design with live visual feedback and performance-based media.
7:30 — Kai-Luen Liang (aka Soulspeak) works with "hybrid instruments," AI, and experimental sound, often blending digital,, organic, and traditional Chinese/Korean instruments. His work explores themes of language, machine perception, and computer-generated, rule-based compositions.
8:00 — CABBIBO Isaac Cohen, known as Cabbibo, is a digital artist and developer based in Los Angeles who creates interactive, audiovisual, and web-based experiences. His work, often featuring recursive algorithms and immersive, procedural, or 3D-based musical environments
9:00 COLLOBOH Nigerian-born, LA-based producer known for a genre-defying sound that bridges the gap between post-rave electronica and effusive jazz ecstasy, Colloboh’s live sets are a masterclass in modular synthesis. Expect a world-stretching journey through acid-flecked basslines, glitchy IDM textures, and soul-stirring ambient landscapes. Having recently supported Beach House and performed alongside Suzanne Ciani, Colloboh continues to push the boundaries of experimental electronic music.
Multi-Media Installation:
Naomi Sam